Prompt Proofing Blog Post: 'Hang Out' Where Your Target Market 'Hangs Out'

    VANCOUVER, BC, November 30, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Countless marketing articles circulate on the web and in business magazines, giving many useful tips on how to market your business. However, many of them don't identify the root cause of many marketing plans' failures.

So many marketing plans fail to get off the ground because people don't actually sit back and take the time to consider to WHOM they are marketing. Identifying your ideal client - and therefore finding out your target market - is a necessary step in setting up any business, as it helps to ensure you waste no resources or time in marketing to the wrong people.

Sit back and consider who you have worked with in the past - if you've been in business - or who you would most like to work with in the future. Imagine your ideal client (get very specific and as creative as you want, this is 'fantasy land'). Usually people come up with a client that is low maintenance but high output, so someone who fits - in a good way - with the 80/20 rule. You want clients who take up no more than 20% of your time yet bring in 80% of your business.

Once you have identified them in your imagination - and don't just have a rough idea of who they are but imagine what kind of companies they run, and whereabouts they live and so on - think about, or research, where these people 'hang out'.

If you're a local business, then we mean 'hang out' in the physical sense - do they network at local Chamber of Commerce events, or are they a bigger business, more likely to set up a booth at an expo or trade show? Try and discover where people that you want to work with may be found in a business setting (you don't want to start bothering people at the gym!).

If your business is mainly online, consider which online forums they spend their time in. Do they use LinkedIn? Do they communicate via Twitter? Are their blogs interactive, allowing for comments and discussion with readers?

Once you have all of this worked out, the next step is to adjust your marketing plan to allow for opportunities for you to also 'hang out' in these identified meeting spots. Allow a budgeted amount to spend on attending Chamber of Commerce events, or for memberships to online forums. Then, start attending them and engaging people in discussion!

It doesn't necessarily mean that every meeting will garner results, but if 100% of your energy is put into marketing in areas where your potential clients are, rather than marketing anywhere and everywhere and hoping that somehow you bump into a good client, your results are inevitably going to reflect this.

So remember:
1) Come up with a profile of your ideal client.
2) Find out where they 'hang out'.
3) Start 'hanging out' with them!

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