Target Marketing to the Max!

Did you know that you can take a map, draw a circle around an area you want to target and identify only those potential customers with criteria that match your target customer base?

Did you know that, you can then model the profile of that target customer base and recreate test marketing in communities in a larger "geo" circle around the area your business serves? In fact, you can actually profile a region to assess and evaluate a strategic growth plan into neighboring towns and counties.

Most businesses grow by default or competitive intuition. They either pick up a client in an extraneous or obscure location by referral or the internet or they pick an area where there is little or no competition and they build a customer base from scratch.

FGM has a client who has a service business serving a rather large 100 mile geocircle, inclusive of Wisconsin and Northern Illinois. They are experts at what they do and hired FGM to create a highly optimized and educational website to drive potential new customers to their website. The result? Their web leads multiplied exponentially, however, some of them are from halfway across the country. Disappointingly, they are unable to service a need that far out of their service area and to date find themselves apologizing to potential customers in other states. They are even trying to assess ways to stop these calls by limiting the web exposure and minimize the keywords that are reaching these potential markets. I say, WHOA! Use it to your advantage!

When you start evaluating how you want to grow your business consider arranging reciprocal arrangements with companies you trust who perform similar services in other areas of the country. Establish a reciprocal fee for finding and referring a customer (if they indeed win the business) and watch your profits grow without the overhead of time or labor. Additionally, if your website or referrals are bringing in an extraordinary amount of business from an area you once considered outside of your target area, start looking at potential buy-out opportunities in which you acquire a business with a strong local reputation and start funneling all the leads you are receiving towards it.

Growth opportunities are around every corner. It's the ones under the rocks that are often the most profitable though, and often they start with a sign from your target market when they call looking for you! As my grandmother would say, "keep your eyes peeled and your ears pricked" for potential,it's never silent.

Five Brain Facts To Keep In Mind When Creating Marketing Messages

On a very personal note, I have done a great deal of research on the brain as of late and I'm afraid that in some strange way, I relate everything I learn to marketing. Blame it on my brain!

Brain 101: Every human being has a right brain and a left brain.

This is probably something you already knew, having heard your spouse or your kids refer to your left brained obsession with the cost of leaving all the lights on in the house, or your right brained obsession with velvet pain-by-numbers artwork. To that point, each of those hemispheres perform different tasks, including how they relate to and perhaps remember or immediately forget marketing messages!

1. The right brain works in sensual imagery, not in words.
2. Right brain images are direct reflections of reality as gauged by the senses, not abstract symbols of reality, such as the words in this post
3. The right brain plays the lead role in determining the relevance of incoming information and messages
4. The right brain, which looks for patterns or relationships, forms more complete images than the left brain, which focuses more on the details
5. The right brain is inclusionary and detects relationships; the left brain is exclusionary and detects categories

What this all boils down to, is that while most businesses focus on features in their marketing, all customers focus on feelings. See the problem?

Assess your marketing message for what it says about the relationship with the potential customer. For example, does it reflect images of who they want to be rather than who they are, leaving them pining for your product or service? With all the strength of the right brain's job in processing outside messages (as above, and I suggest you read them over again), you definitely don't want to leave out its most intense desire to be connected emotionally in some way to your message. It's the way to becoming memorable, even viral.

The scary part is that much of it happens in the first-impressions stage of introduction of the message. Based on the demographic of your market, a first impression can either kill the chance you will ever get a customer or win you a lifer! Find the right brain message in your marketing and write your ticket to success.