Likely Results As you can see you not only have a better chance of closing more business per marketing dollar with the scenario above on the right but you are also likely to build your brand awareness and equity too. Look at the advantages of narrowing your target list and this multi-hit approach: 1) You narrow your list to higher quality prospects so each is more likely to buy The mix of marketing also makes your company appear bigger, like a market leader and therefore increases your chances of closing any direct sale opportunity because people feel better about working with a well established company. This also helps you to test more marketing vehicles to determine what works best. It is important to experiment frugally with marketing, measure well and then scale what works. Look to marketing vehicles that can be used again and again because you can own and develop your in-house prospect list. Renting lists is okay to test but buying them is far better given this need to repeat touches. Look for ways to "touch" your prospects and existing customers again in a planned rotation or series (seasonal if appropriate). Newsletters like this one are also great vehicles for this. I hardly ever send out a C-Level Advisor without generating some direct sales of products and/or some coaching-consulting services. Free information by email that shows off your expertise, with opt-in email lists is a core media vehicle for frequency and has little cost no matter how many people you are hitting. Today this should be a core marketing vehicle for most companies. The moral of the story is that narrowing your prospect base can be very good as long as you are creating a subset with a higher likelihood of needing your product and hitting this small prospect list more with the same budget. You can adjust your product or offer to be better for this subset of the market and several ways: These minor tweaks for you can be what makes the difference between a sale and no sale for certain customers. People have so many options today they want to buy from a "specialist" in their industry, not just anyone. By narrowing your focus you can counter-intuitively expand your business many fold if you select the right niche, get you messaging and offer right and ban away at that specialty for a good long time while your competitors are trying to "be all things to all people". Understanding your product value, flexibility, market and being creative will help you decide where to focus for the best results. Step back and get outside advice too as sometimes you need to throw out the rules and lessons of the past which may not apply today due to time, market changes or just plain niche focus. The changes for the customer in that niche alone can create or destroy a market for you and the frequency of these kinds of changes is increasing. The next in this C-Level Advisor mini-series will discuss: Bob Norton is the author of four books on starting and growing companies and entrepreneurship. He runs the exclusive Advanced Entrepreneurship CEO Boot Camp to help CEOs and senior executives cut years off their learning curve and coaches CEOs at growth technology companies from startup to $150MM in sales. He has been part of eight startup companies and grown two of those to over $100MM in sales. He can be contacted at: B ob@CLevelEnterprises.com .
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