There are two things you really need to do when marketing any product or service or business opportunity:

1. Identify your ideal customer/business partner
2. Find out where and how to best reach them

Some people, especially in MLM, will teach you to “talk to EVERYONE because you never know who might be interested.” Well, I personally believe in working smarter, not harder. Talking to everyone is time-consuming. Spending a bit of time up front to identify your ideal target market, and figure out where to find them and what to say to them, will save you time and effort in the long run.

Even if you have several products that appeal to a wide range of people, each advertising campaign or “elevator speech” should be targeted to a specific group, and a specific product they might want. When you try to be all things to all people, you end up not reaching anyone.

One large fast food chain has been using rap music and other tunes that appeal to young people. The music doesn’t appeal to me, but neither does their food! I wouldn’t change my mind if they used a nice jazz tune, either. So they are being smart by “target marketing.” For those particular commercials, they want to appeal to young people.

Parents with small children are likely also a good target market for fast food. But a completely different commercial is needed to appeal to them. It’s not about hanging out with friends, someplace that isn’t expensive. It’s about speed when you have little kids! Get in and out fast, or even use the drive through. There are too many other things to do to take time to cook.

You should not try to impose your own beliefs on the market either. Personally, I think most fast food is unhealthy and don’t think people should get their kids accustomed to eating it. But if I ran a fast food restaurant while focusing on that belief I would go broke! Maybe that’s why I don’t own a fast food franchise!

And don’t forget that people buy based on what they WANT, not what they NEED. You need to show benefits that will make your target audience want what you have.

I am always looking for two types of people: product customers and business partners. I look for them in different places! And I listen for people to give me a clue, if they want to hear about what I have to offer or not.

So ask yourself who is truly the best target market for what you offer, find out where to reach them, and make your advertising appeal to them specifically. For multiple markets, create multiple targeted campaigns.

Imagine if thousands of clients were ready to snap up your hottest items even before they’re published. This is the reason you should build up a client base, a number of individuals who trust you and will more than likely purchase items you present to them. This is what will assure you of a recurring and consistent supply of income. When you generate a product, or make a recommendation, you’ve a team of individuals, in place, usually prepared to hear what you have to offer.

Therefore, do you think it would be easier to market your product or services, to some totally unknown person, or to a individual you have had dealings with before; whether via email, discussion board participation, or even an existing client. There is no question, it would be harder to sell to some completely unfamiliar person, who does not know you, regardless of whether or not you’re an honest vendor, or even if they should believe what you are saying and whether or not they think that your item will be of any advantage them.

You will find that there are a number of resources that you can draw on to start making a client base. For instance, you can subscribe to an internet discussion discussion board, or forum, and give instruction and advice free of charge. Before long, individuals will begin to recall your name and tune in, whenever you have some info to impart. You’ll become a useful friend and tutor, and gain prospective client’s trust. Most people would prefer to buy something a trusted source recommends.

Another source for your client base, which can be often overlooked, is your existing customer base. If someone has previously purchased a product from you and you answered all queries with patience and consideration, wouldn’t you expect them to purchase from you again in the future? When a client has given you his cash, this is not the end of the relationship, because by keeping in touch with them, continuing to supply helpful information and assistance, and developing a flourishing rapport with them, you’ll have a long term supply of earnings.

An additional way to construct a client base, would be to build a mailing list. There are unimaginable numbers of techniques for collecting subscribers, but when you reduced this to it’s very basis, it’s all about proving just how much of value you are to the masses, and offering a motivation to make individuals become part of your mailing list. A common example would be a web site over-flowing with freely available, useful and quality articles on a particular subject, including an “exclusive bonus” that can be downloaded free of charge, provided an email address is given. The rich content material offers primary worth, and then the “exclusive bonus” is the additional motivation for them to sign-up.

Obviously, there are many other ways to gain a client base, just keep in mind that, because it saves lots of time, effort and monetary outlay on your side of things, it’s vital to begin building a client base.

We all have data bases, some larger than others, the key to having a data base is utilizing it to it’s entire potential. This is where things start to get fuzzy. We have this massive amount of customer data and we tend to park it on our computer and from time to time we peak into the vast wealth of knowledge in our data base’s possession. We are all guilty of taking this massive amount of information for granted, we underestimate the power we hold in our possession. It’s amazing to sit back and watch the power unleashed, we are connected to so many people in so many ways, it’s hard to realize the full impact an e-mail, postcard, or even a post on our Facebook site has.

This past weekend, we participated in a local fundraiser, that was hosted by the owner of a local strip mall. The manager was trying to create a buzz for his property, he has two vacant stores and was looking to create some excitement. The brilliance behind his idea was, not only did he connect it to a charity, but, he then turned it into a chowder contest and recruited local restaurants to participate. The winner of the chowder contest was awarded a five hundred dollar cash prize, and the winner of the people’s choice award was given a check for one hundred dollars. When you entered the contest, you were instructed to pick a charity that you would donate half of your winnings to. The brilliance here was, there was a major charity represented, and the money from the sponsors and the entrance fee would be given to this charity, then each restaurant could pick their favorite charity and get the entire region involved. Once you picked your charity, the event planner sent them a notification that you were planning on donating half your winnings to them. They were given posters to put up in their organization and encouraged to have their staff and members come support their restaurant.

We’re a local Chowder House and of course we entered. We met with our management team and all agreed this was our contest to win. We are famous for our chowder, and it was up to us to go out and execute. It wasn’t enough to just win, we wanted to win the people’s choice award. Let’s face it, you never know how a judge is going to vote. To me, the people’s choice award was the one that really counted. We picked the local Senior Center to donate our winnings to, if we won. I called the head of the Senior Center and let her know what we were up to, she informed me that the event planner had already beat me to the punch. Posters and tickets to sell had already arrived. I explained that we wanted to make a statement and that I needed all the members of the Senior Center to come out and support our efforts. We needed fans there to cheer for us if we won. The next thing we did was to send out an e-mail to our ten thousand e-mail addresses and tell them about the contest, who we were supporting and to ask them for their help in supporting our efforts.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of the data base, we not only won first prize and the five hundred dollars, we won the people’s choice award, and to quote one of the judges, ” There really wasn’t even a second place, your restaurant received almost every vote there was.” The best part, we were able to take pictures with all the staff at the Senior Center with our winnings, they all showed up to support us. It felt like we were in the Super Bowl and we were playing in our own stadium. Don’t ever underestimate the power of your data base, your restaurant’s destiny is in your own hands. Unleash the power and be prepared to be awed.

One more quick note, we donated all the prize money to charity and were on the local news as well. These opportunities are available to all of us, if they’re not, create one of your own and enjoy the opportunity.

When was the last time you gave a hoot about the state of your contact database? If your professional services firm (accounting, finance, architecture, engineering, legal, management consulting, technology, etc.) is like most, it’s probably been a while. If you are not losing sleep over how your contacts are segmented or how often records are validated, you’re not alone. Contact databases are easy to neglect, yet they contain your riches intellectual property.

If you are the CEO of your firm, you don’t have time to worry your contacts…. you’ve got a company to run. Besides, you always have the holiday card list as backup.

On the other hand, if you are responsible for marketing at your firm, you probably recognize the value of maintaining a clean contact database. But the thought of scrubbing a list of hundreds or thousands of names makes you cringe. Given the bandwidth required for such an undertaking, the work will never gets done.

A firm’s technical subject matter experts (SMEs) may use contact lists on a daily basis, but their needs are basic. As a result, they are unlikely to worry about the quality of a contact database.

Keeping your contact database clean and properly segmented, however, is a critical first step to any successful marketing program.

A well-maintained database can help you in a wide variety of ways. For instance, it allows you to:

• Understand what portion of your business comes from new clients vs. referrals
• Understand which of your target market sectors is most profitable
• Track the various types of “touches” you have with your client
• Maintain your ability to communicate with clients on a regular basis and grow the relationship.
• Add value to your clients’ businesses by giving you ability to target different segments with relevant content.

Because of their long business development cycle, service firms need to be able to nurture prospective client relationships over a period of months, even years. The trick is to maintain a clean list that can be tapped with confidence at any time. I recently spoke with a professional services firm executive who had this to say about maintaining her firm’s contact database:

“Every January we say the same thing… this year our firm will focus on routinely cleaning our contact database and not waiting until the end-of-year holiday card season. This year, our firm will implement a data hygiene program that everyone in the firm participates in. Of course, it never happens that way.” Sound familiar?

Entering and validating contacts is tedious business, but the tangible benefits are well worth it.