Have you found that you are spending a lot of money on advertising, yet your company isn't making a profit?
The problem might not be with your service or your product. You may be spending time and money on marketing to the wrong audience. This might sound strange, but it happens quite often to companies small and large.
Making a mistake in your audience is a mistake any company can make.
How do you know?
The clues that you're marketing to the wrong crowd aren't always cut and dried.
It might seem obvious to a business consultant, but to the business owner trying every marketing 'trick' in the book, how do you know what the signs are? One very simple indicator is the largest – your profits. If you aren't turning a profit then chances are that you may be making a marketing mistake.
Another sign lies within actual sales.
Are clients or customers taking a long time to make a decision or purchase? If so, your prices may not be too high, you may be looking at the wrong potential customers.
Changing tactics
Changing the way you do business can be hard. If you have not been turning a profit, the only recourse may be to do a complete overhaul on your marketing strategy instead of continuing to throw money into a hole.
Most business consultants agree that there are tactics that will help target the right audience for you. The process is fairly simple and straightforward. Take a look at all of your past customers, those that were 'good' and those that were difficult. You will begin to see a trend.
By analyzing past customers, choose the ones that have been the easiest sales, the customers that paid well for your service, and were easy to work with. These people will usually have qualifications that are common in each.
Think about the common factors, and then think about the customers that were hard to work with and that were hard to sell to.
These harder customers will also have common traits. Apply the tactics used for the 'good' customers; the strategies you used or that those customers said drew them to you in your next marketing campaign.
Common ground and marketing
The avenues that you use for advertising will play a large role in attracting your target audience.
For example, if you are a pet groomer it does not make much sense to spend all of your advertising funds on space with a video game site. While people that play video games have pets, your funds are better spent by advertising on pet care sites and blogs.
Pay attention to where your own site is linked. Incoming links from adult websites aren't going to help a children's clothing store.
Stay within your niche if possible.
While it may take time to reach your target audience, trial and error will give the attentive business owner an edge over mass marketing to the wrong demographic.