Make your Business Irresistible

10 ways to make your business more attractive, if not irresistible to potential customers

1. Who are your target customers?
Knowing your specific target market is the starting point of effective marketing. To satisfy the needs of potential customers you have to know who they are and what their needs are. A useful exercise is to write out a paragraph describing your ideal client or clients. Give each ideal client (company or individual) a persona, what are their income levels, what are their interests etc?

2. How can your ideal customers find out about you?
How can you connect with and engage your ideal clients? Building awareness is the first step. Where can you meet your ideal customers? What networking groups or organisations are they part of? What publications do they read? How can you get into them? What other complimentary businesses are targeting the same clients and can you create a win/win with them?

3. Get comfortable with getting visible
The other 9 points listed in this article are all ‘doing’ steps, logical questions and answers aimed at helping you boost your business. Of course often the critical issue is the ‘being’ step. Who do you (and your staff) need to be to increase sales? This question uncovers limiting beliefs, like the fear of being visible, being seen as an expert in the field.

4. Develop your personal brand
Personal branding has nothing to do with what you think about yourself and everything to do with what your target audience thinks and feels about you. It is time to cast aside shyness or timidity. So what qualities do you need to portray to your clients? For example, sophisticated, creative, and personable?

5. What is your customer seeking?
Do you know in both quantitative and qualitative terms the value your customers are looking for? What is the ‘pain’ they want to avoid or the ‘pleasure’ they are seeking? For example, if you are a financial consultant, the client’s ‘pain’ may be ‘avoiding an uncertain retirement’ or ‘pleasure’ ‘having a residual income to fund new projects.’ You need to link the benefits of your product or service to your target client's needs and pains.

6. Focus on a winning benefit
Focus on just one benefit to build your brand. Select the one most relevant to your industry and which resonates the most with you. Trying to be more than one thing to your target audience dilutes the impact of your brand. What is the one quality which probably has the most benefit to your customers?

7. What perceived risks are your customers facing in choosing you and how can you minimize them?
At the point of making the decision to buy your product of service the customer has made the decision that their life or business will be better as a result of doing business with you. To reach that decision they obviously have to be aware of the benefits of what you do (and what that means to them) and this has to outweigh the perceived risks of doing business with you e.g. lack of return on investment. View it like a see-saw. To make the buying decision in your favour, the benefits of doing business with you (both emotional and logical benefits) have to outweigh the perceived risks. Knowing these risks, the obstacles or arguments that the potential client may voice, or worse keep in their heads, have to be minimized. Write out what are the likely arguments a client could use not to buy from you and how you could answer each of them. For example, ‘insufficient funds/ too expensive’ ‘don’t have the time.’

8. How is your product/ service unique to your target market?
Don’t’ assume your potential clients know what you do. You need to crystallise the benefits your service can provide in the minds of your clients. Have you compared and differentiated the value that you deliver from the value delivered by your competitors?

9 .It not just about attracting new clients
People or businesses that have worked with you once, providing you have at least met their expectations, are likely to return to you. For this to happen though, your business has to grow with their business. The key is to go deeper, not wider. What additional or follow-on needs do your existing clients have? How can you add more value?

10. Consistency
So you have a clear idea of your target market. You know how you want to be perceived. Now you have to ensure the message you communicate is consistent. Does your business card, stationary, website, phone message, premises, staff interaction consistently match what is now you brand?

For your business to become irresistible, your focus must be carefully directed toward exactly who you want to reach. Especially in service professions, trying to be everything to everyone is a recipe for mediocrity.

And finally, when you think of the ‘best’ company or individual in your line of work, who comes to mind? Why is that company or person a market leader? What are they doing that you are not doing? What are they not doing that you are doing?

 

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