My friend, copywriter Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, calls your ‘target market’ your ‘tarket.’ She suggests describing your tarket as an actual person. Give them a name, age, marital status, hobbies, and so forth. You can create this IDEAL client from the data you have in your office.

Go to your file cabinets or online database and assemble a list of the Top 40 clients you’ve EVER worked with. You can choose them because they paid on time, they were fun to work with, and so on. I chose clients that fulfill these criteria: they pay in advance of services rendered (one of my policies in most instances any way), they trust me and follow through with ACTION on what I recommend, they get BIG results and they refer me other great clients.

Now, using a simple table in Microsoft Word or an Excel spreadsheet, ‘run the numbers.’ Put each person’s name on the left and then a column for every demographic factor you can think of: address, phone, fax, age, income level, marital status, children, pets, hobbies, business focus, clients THEY work with and so on. Come up with as many categories as you can.

Then look for patterns and trends. Average age? Dominant gender or even split? Income average? Careers in common? I work with a lot of women coaches who originally worked in the corporate world with incomes over $100,000 per year. What does your data show?

Then you’ll have to begin testing what this initial, and very SMALL sample, shows you. There may be factors you hadn’t considered until you start marketing regularly to this group. For example, you may find that you attract an inordinate amount of PhDs who majored in philosophy. Good. Speak directly to them in your marketing materials. For example, “Attention All PhD Philosophers Who Want To Make Money Online!” Your ‘Make Money Online’ materials might be suitable for any industry, but the more you niche it to a specific demographic, the better. Dan Kennedy, says, “Demographics are destiny.” You can also buy lists to market to that are demographic specific by going to www.srds.com. This is not an easy task but a necessary one. In fact, you may find that you can create multiple income streams by marketing your products to different industries: Make Money Online For Dentists, For Chiropractors, For Graphic Artists and so on. You may need to tweak the materials for each group, but it can be lucrative overtime. For people just starting out in business, keep it simple and stick with the demographic your Top 40 reveals. Testing this initial sample group will help you refine your market more and more over time.

BONUS TIP: In these turbulent economic times, I encourage you to market to the affluent. 1 in 5 Americans falls into this category. If you market to the 4 out of 5, you’re swimming in the sea with everyone else. The affluent are pretty much ‘recession proof’ and they buy based up the value and experience you can provide to them much more than by price. In fact, according to Mr. Kennedy, only 20 percent of folks buy based upon price any way. Caution: NEVER try to be the low-price leader or you’ll quickly find yourself out of business. Find a reason other than price for people to purchase from you.

For those of you in my Life Purpose Vision At-Home Retreat Program, these questions came in on today’s topic, as well as some other questions on other topics. I will do my best to answer them, but remember that as with most things, the answer is really: “It depends.” Many times, the answer to what you need in your business IS complex, multi-layered and will require your time, money and research data to answer.

Q: If you are your target market, does that imply that every woman will have women as her target market and men will always have men as his target market? (Recognizing, of course, that there will be other
components as well!)

A: I want to clarify this. I’m found of saying that for most solo-entrepreneurs, “You are your target market.” What I mean by this is that you will typically attract people who are interested in what you are interested in (you BETTER BE passionate about your business or no one else will be!). You might be a female business owner who works mostly with men or mostly with women. It’s much more about what you discover on your Top 40 list. I attract spirit-minded women entrepreneurs – women like me, who speak the same language. Whom are you attracting? Are you attracting the right kind of client for what YOU are passionate about sharing with the world? Does anyone care about what you are offering? Probably – but you have to test it. You may think you have the greatest thing since sliced bread but no one is interested in buying it. The key to remember is that your message MUST match with your market. Typically, people who own their own businesses feel a resonance with their market. A fine furniture maker probably wants to attract clients who love fine, hand-made furniture and are willing to pay top dollar for that value and experience. There is a resonance between the business owner and the market.

Please NOTE: Women are an ideal group – but not a ‘target market’ – they actually ARE the market – making 90 plus percent of the consumer purchasing decisions in the U.S. – houses, cars, furniture, etc. While they may not being outlaying the cash for every purchase, they are usually the final vote on what gets purchased. So I recommend marketing to women vs. men if possible.

Your ‘target market’ are the people who most NEED, DESIRE, WANT what you can deliver. The more specific you are about this demographic the better. All that being said, Who are you and what drives you? What
books do YOU read? Car do you drive? Etc. This reveals HUGE data about you and the type of people you will be drawn to – and vice versa. they could be men, women or both but what are the common denominators?
You can reverse engineer the Top 40 sample test on yourself to see what you come up with – be sure to put your name on the list and see how you compare with your clients.

Q. You say that “with few exceptions, your target market is you.” What are the exceptions?

A. Corporations (e.g. Coca Cola), B2B sellers. For the solo-preneur – YOU are the brand. so your target market needs to resonate with YOU. You aren’t your logo or tag line. Who is drawn to you? Birds of a feather.

Q. There’s something I’m still not yet clear on : You say that “with few exceptions, your target market is you.” You answered above. Are you saying that this is not at all revealed in your hands? In other words, the exception would not be found in my hands (i.e.. I should work with Executives in mid-large size corporations), but to do so would simply be a personal preference?

A. In my experience, it typically IS found in the hands. Your Life Purpose narrows things down quite a bit. After your Life Purpose is determined, we review the finger zones to find you niche, your specialty. Then there is action required on your part – for example, what I suggested at the beginning of this email. When we get into this on the live calls, I’ll have more information to answer you. At this point, there isn’t enough information available to answer this. Please bring your hand information and questions to the niche/target market call, which is call #2.

Q. re: Business Niche, you do say you’ll cover Business Niche in greater depth on a call, but I’m confused by this handout. I have no idea how to proceed to determine my business niche.

A. We will be going over this handout on the live call. It was for you to review and begin thinking about. This program is a group program so I’m going to ask you to be patient and trust me on this. Your questions will be answered. You will need the information from your hand analysis session and the live calls to get the most value from the program. I deeply appreciate your enthusiasm!

Q. There are some lines on my fingers that didn’t show up on my hand/ finger prints. Is it best to be guided by my actual fingers vs. the print?

A. Please use BOTH! The hand prints will give your certified hand analyst what she needs in order to provide you with your foundational information to get the most out of this program. That being said, always trust your own judgment. If you see something in your hands that your reader didn’t see or the prints didn’t show, count it. It’s there for a reason. “If it’s in your hands, it’s in your life.”

Q. Why isn’t there a Table of Contents for the CD’s? What’s on each one? Right now I’d like to know more about determining my business niche and would listen to a CD, except I have no idea which one might cover business niche! There’s no Table of Contents in the transcripts either. If I want to learn more about determining Business Niche, I am going to have to spend a great deal of time just to find it before I can begin to learn more.

A. Great question. There are no table of contents intentionally. This program moves sequentially, so the CDs need to be listened to IN ORDER (or the transcripts read in order). It was based upon a live event that I had recorded. In the past, I would sometimes lose people’s interest if they could jump around. In some programs, like my “How To Read Your Own Hands” Program, that works just fine. The Business Niche material is actually a BONUS for the home-study program and will be covered more in-depth on the live calls. It was touched on briefly at the live event. It’s BONUS material, so you’ll need to hang in for the live calls. There’s a method to my madness, so I’m going to ask you to trust me on this one. I may have even suggested on one of the audios to jump around and explore, but ultimately, you’ll get the most out of it by going in sequence so you don’t miss an important step. (That being said, I will take it under consideration for the 2.0 version of this program. You’re probably not the only one who would like more structure. Thanks for the input!)

Q. It took two weeks from the time I bought the course before I received the materials to make hand/finger prints. Since I was most excited about the opportunity to have my hands read, I found that wait frustrating (and I still haven’t heard from your office about scheduling my reading). I wonder, since it is so light weight, if you might better serve your clients by sending that kit out, Priority Mail, immediately following a purchase?

A. Thanks for this question. It was a problem with our fulfillment house. The printing kits were supposed to be included WITH the other program materials, which they told us they had printed up in advance – and then we found out they printed the WRONG home-study program. Then they printed the correct program (RUSH of course!) and FORGOT the printing kits! Their error, but a real delay on our end. We always ship immediately unless there are technical issues beyond our control. Unfortunately, things don’t always go like clock-work, despite repeated correspondence, reminders and coordination with the fulfillment house. I’ve seen this happen with many other reputable online vendors as well. I’ll tell you – it makes me want to tear my hair out when it happens but I had to stay calm. What could we do? This had never happened before… arrggghhhhh…

As for SCHEDULING your session, your prints come to our main office and then are distributed to one of our trained hand analysts. They schedule with you as soon as they receive your prints. We don’t schedule any sessions until the reader has the client’s prints in her possession. If you have not yet been scheduled, please contact Kelly at Kelly@handanalyst.com ASAP and we will expedite this for you.

Thanks for your great questions! Talk to you Wednesday on the first LIVE group coaching call! Bring your questions… even if they are ‘off topic’ I will answer them.