“If I only focus on getting work in this ONE area, then am I turning away work from another area? Am I really willing to say NO to work?”
This is normally the response from a business owner who has never really gone through the process of putting down on paper EXACTLY WHO their target market is. Your target market is NOT anyone who needs to sell their house, or anyone who wants to be healthy. THAT is a broad marketplace description.
Describing YOUR target market has to get at the heart of WHY and HOW you are different. YOUR target market description has to rest upon the problems, issues and challenges that your customers face.
The Big Big Secret is that YOUR target market is most successful when it is at an EDGE and when it is NARROW.
If you define a niche target market, does that mean you are turning away business? The answer is…maybe…it depends.
If you define yourself by the narrow target market who YOU SERVE BEST – you are not excluding others (unless you want to!) you are just finding the right edge, and defining the place where you can be THE BEST in the world.
EDGES – This is a Seth Godin concept from his book Free Prize Inside, (and by the way my dad’s concept as well). In order to define yourself as unique and useful and remarkable, you can’t be all things for all people. The only way to be worthy of being remarked upon is to go to an edge, not stay in the middle. Or, as my dad says when he talks about his edge theory, “the only way we perceive the world and our lives is to understand the edges between two things, or concepts, or beliefs.”
NARROW FOCUS: This is pulled from another Seth Godin idea. The best way to be a great marketer is to make yourself the best in the world. The great thing here is that YOU define what “the world” is and YOU define what “best” means. When you do that, and then you create your marketing and your business efforts aimed at being the BEST in the WORLD, THEN you are marketing narrowly in a way that will bring you success.
So…narrow your focus when you sit down to hammer out just who it is you serve, and GO all the way to an EDGE in order to be the BEST in the world.
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