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Fishing With the Wrong Bait

You have to understand your customers. Failure to do so means you'll be making offers that they do not consider to be of value, in ways that do not appeal to them in the least.

This aspect of marketing is called "targeting" your customer. In order to reach them, you first have to know what motivates them.

You cannot market to someone you do not understand. You must market to their specific needs, and provide solutions to problems that they experience. If you cannot identify with that, you'll be baiting the hook for an entirely different species than the one you intend to catch!

I personally feel that one of the biggest problems with small businesses is that the business owner does not understand his customer. As a one person business, you have to be all things and do all things, and this aspect of marketing may get overlooked. You may feel a certain product has great potential to appeal to people, but if you don't understand the concerns and interests of the people to whom you wish to sell it, they won't buy, because you won't be able to effectively present it to them.

Sadly, some marketing professionals even do this. They are so busy trying to SELL things that they fail to ask whether what they are selling is what the target market is actually looking for. Marketing efforts should start with defining who the ideal customer is, and then noting what the problems are that they have, that your product can solve.

Some customers respond to facts, some to emotions, some to benefits, others to relationships. Some are casual, some are formal, others are academic, and some are bawdy. Your target market will consist of individuals, but within those individuals there will be patterns that you can pinpoint to present a message that is most likely to appeal to those whom you are trying to reach.

One of the reasons that people who love their business are so much more successful than those who don't, is because they have found in themselves something that appeals to them on a deep level. This gives them an empathy for their potential customers. When you have been there, and experienced the frustrations that lead you to appreciating the right solution, you can better identify with the feelings of your potential customers. People who "buy a business" just because of the dollar signs flashing in their head won't ever be able to make progress like someone who is passionate about their product because they experienced something positive because of it.

If you want to catch a trout, a nice juicy fly will work better than a hotdog. If you want to catch a crawdad though, hotdogs are the perfect tempting morsel. Know your customer if you want to get the right bait.