Who’s your ideal client?

This is a question I usually ask every single person who signs up to one of my CEO breakthrough calls. More often than not the reply is: “Well, I can help a lot of different people with my service so I don’t need one.”

And that’s where they’re wrong! Then the conversation takes an interesting turn. You could actually say this is when the light bulb moment happens.

‘Come One, Come All’ Isn’t the Answer

You can’t market to everyone. You may think big brands market to everyone when in fact they don’t. Every business has an ideal client and focuses on a distinct target market. They all have someone they’re trying to appeal and connect too.

So, here are 3 reasons why you can’t possibly get success by marketing to everyone especially when starting out!

1. Little fish, big pond.

   A complete cliche, but I’m saying it anyway because it’s true. When you’re just starting out in business (i.e., trying to get established and seen) you’re going to make your job of getting seen 10 times harder when you’re trying to target everyone.

   Essentially, you’re a little fish in a very large pond. In contrast, when you niche your business, you become a big fish in a much smaller pond. You can cut through the noise and actually get noticed. Big fish in a little pond — that’s where you want to be when you’re starting out.

2. No one knows what you do.

   If you look at anyone crushing it online right now you’ll notice that they’re very specific about what they do (i.e., big fish, little pond.). When you try to target everyone you end up with a marketing mess, your content will be all over the place with no real focus because you’re trying to engage with so many different people.

   As a result, nothing is going to connect with anyone which means no sales. People won’t understand what it is that you do or they won’t connect with any of your marketing messages. Either way, both scenarios will have the same result — no sales!

3. Simplicity is the key to success.

   Do you know how complicated you’re making it for yourself by trying to talk to everyone? You’ve set for yourself an impossible task. When you mass market, you’ll spend hours trying to think of blog posts, social media updates and new webinar titles. You will also spend hours trolling the internet looking for things to share that will be relevant to “everyone.”

   It’ll take you hours because you don’t actually know who it is you’re trying to speak to in the first place. You’ll have so many different pain points and things to include that you’ll end up with hardly anything done. You will make everything in business fifty times harder than it needs to be. Streamline the process and focus!

Success is as difficult as you make it. I’ve found that I (and my clients) get the best results from simplest of strategies. Being niche when you’re trying to establish your business in a market goes a long way to helping you keep things simple, but deadly effective.

This article has been edited and condensed.

Jane Willmott is a successful business consultant who works with online business owners worldwide, she works with them to help create strategies that enable them to rise up become the go to expert and have clients banging down the door to work with them, by achieving this her clients are then able to hit their big income goals and live out the life they dream of.Recently, Jane has decided to lift the lid on the strategy behind her clients 10k days and she’s created this free guide to do just that. Connect with @womensbusinessa on Twitter.

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