Want a solid strategy to acquire profitable customers? You’ve landed in the right place. This post discusses a strategic rethinking of marketing approaches aimed at retaining these first-class customers. Get your business on the road to success.
Here are five steps small business owners can take to build a more targeted marketing strategy focused on the top 20% of their customers.
1. Identify clients who inspire you
Every client is unique, but the best ones inspire us. As seasoned professionals, we all have experience working with different clients. Some people simply enjoy working with them. They appreciate the value we bring, value our advice, and build truly collaborative partnerships. They inspire us to do our best work.
Conversely, some clients pose more significant challenges. These challenges can lead to growth, but wouldn’t it be great to work primarily with clients who inspire us and contribute significantly to our bottom line?
Avoiding the “All Things for All” Trap
It turns out that companies often fall into the trap without realizing it. It’s more like a pitfall they stumble into rather than a trap they deliberately enter. That pitfall is what I like to call the “all to all” trap. Is it familiar?
Offering everything to everyone can lead to inconsistent engagement, value, and most importantly, inconsistent profitability.
Review your past and current customer roster to identify your ideal customer who inspires you the most. They are usually people who appreciate your value, respect your expertise, and engage with you in a supportive way. Make a list of these customers and write down their distinguishing characteristics.
2. Understand the Golden Triad
I’m here to tell you that there is a better way. Actually, there are strategic ways to avoid this trap. It starts with identifying your top 20% of customers, but it’s not just about sales. We’re looking at the bigger picture here: profitability, experience, and referrals. A golden trifecta, so to speak.
In my experience, the top 20% of clients are probably the top 20% who make a profit and refer others. So what do you need to know about them? Make a list…
- Which clients are the most profitable?
- Which clients consistently provide a positive work experience?
- Which customers frequently refer your business to other customers?
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This toolkit helps you develop a complete marketing strategy to attract your best customers. It’s a step-by-step approach aimed at enhancing marketing efforts, enhancing customer retention, increasing online visibility, and increasing ROI.
Your marketing strategy should be the backbone of your business, a roadmap that guides you toward your growth goals. By identifying your ideal customers, creating consistent branding, and tracking performance, you can start working smarter instead of working hard.
3. Dig deeper into their challenges and needs
Once you’ve identified your top customers, the next step is to understand them better. What challenges are they facing? What problems are they trying to solve? Why did they choose your business over your competitors? The answers to these questions can give you valuable insight into what attracts clients to your business.
4. Start fighting off the wrong clients
The advantage of this approach is that you can refine your marketing strategy. Not only will you attract more clients, you will attract the right clients. This simple change can quickly make your business more profitable, reduce the amount of work being pursued, and even help ward off bad business clients. Yes, that’s right. Sometimes it’s good to repel clients.
Trying to be everything to everyone confuses everyone, including you and your team. This fails to attract the right customers and makes it difficult for marketing to create predictable customer journeys. It’s hard to understand the behaviors that attract the right customers, and even harder to retain them and get referrals unless you’re working with the right people.
The bottom line is that working with the wrong client, or one that is not profitable or fails to deliver value because you priced it so low is not only frustrating, it costs more than it’s worth.
Once you have a clear understanding of what attracts your top clients, you need to refine your marketing message to attract more clients and repel the wrong ones. Your marketing message should communicate the unique value you offer that addresses the specific challenges and needs of your top clients. This doesn’t necessarily mean cutting off business, but rather focusing your energy and resources on attracting the best clients for your business.Following these 5 ruleshelps you attract the right clients to grow your business.
5. Develop a marketing plan and strategy
Please take the time to consider this as part of your marketing strategy. Identify your top 20% of customers. A simple but powerful exercise. This select group of clients will happily do more business with you – in fact, some may do 10x more business with you. These clients have great potential for growth and momentum compared to occasional one-off projects or random clients.
Use the insights gained in the steps above to formulate your marketing strategy. This strategy should aim to attract more of the top 20% of customers. Consider the marketing channels they use, the types of content they engage with, and the words and tone that resonate with them. Also, don’t forget to adjust your prices as needed to reflect the value you offer.
Please note that this process is iterative. As your business grows and evolves, so do your top 20% of clients. Review these steps regularly to ensure your marketing strategy is focused on attracting the most profitable and satisfied customers for your business.
We understand that creating a complete marketing plan can be a daunting task, but we can help. Download AI prompts to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy. Better yet, if you want us to take care of the strategic planning for you, book a call.
After all, your marketing strategy isn’t just about getting customers. It’s about attracting the right customers. And who is that right customer? These are the people who will drive your business forward, help you grow, and truly appreciate your work.
Stop being everything to everyone and start being everything to the right people.
