Carve Out Your Target Market And Make Sales

get out your bow and arrow

get out your bow and arrow

(I am not going to get into the reasoning WHY you must do this – essentially if you fail to do so would be like standing on the moon blindfolded shooting a rocket launcher hoping to hit Pluto. It’s not happening, and neither is your business).

I am going to be tailoring this post more towards the blogosphere/internet marketing niches – but the general principles correlate to other faculties such as, traditional business and self-promotion.

There are numerous, (millions), of blogs going up out there with neither a plan nor a purpose. With this content here I hope to put an end to all the of that!

May you find some value in what you are about to read/study.

I wish you all the best launching your blog!

I will be laying the foundation for you to be able to go out there, carve a target market for yourself online, and then monetize that market – all in a fairly simple 4 step process.

First things first, I want to sum up the online space in a nutshell. What we do is:

• create an audience

• drive niche targeted traffic to an offer

• brand ourselves as authorities/build credibility in our niches

• cash paychecks.

I oversimplified the process, and each one of these points has many moving parts attached to it, plus it is not an overnight lottery ticket, although nothing worth having is…

creating an audience

(yes it is a skill, just like learning to play basketball is a skill or becoming a plumber is a skill)

What I am going to be covering is, in detail, the 4 main questions you need to be asking yourself when building content to carve out your target market. I am also going to be using some examples to help get your brain going as well…

My suggestion to you is to take out a pen and a notepad, go through these questions, either while you are reading along with me here, or go to a quiet place and work through them on your own.

Regardless of how you do it, you are going to want to put this on paper. **hint**

Stay away from using a computer for this

There is something magical about a physical pen and a physical piece of paper that sparks creativity. Let your mind go free when we are answering these questions.

I also want you to realize this isn’t cut and dry 1+1=2 sort of content – it is straight forward, but will take some creative process on your end. Meaning, I do not have ALL the answers for your particular business, simply because the subject matter is so vast.

However, I do the best of my ability to provide you a skeleton which you can work from in whatever your current niche.

So, what are the 4 questions you must ask yourself when carving out your target market to create an audience?

1. Who are they?

2. What do they want?

3. What do they do?

4. What is their problem?

When we answer all of these questions in full, we will be able to build content geared towards a specific/highly targeted set of people, thus creating “purchase readiness” with our prospects by lowering sales resistance and creating cooperation.

Let’s do it!

1.Who are they?

You need to know exactly WHO these people are, do not worry, finding this out is fairly simple just takes some creativity on our part – let me illustrate with an example, I will be running with this example for the remainder of the content:

Example: Let’s say you run a music shop, and are planning to build a blog geared towards musicians. (Let us get inside the head of a musician for a second)… We are then going to want to gear our content towards people who:

1. plays music.

2. like concerts.

3. teach music.

4. has alot of CDs.

5. downloads music, etc…

It is very simple

You must know the conversation going on in your audiences mind, then just enter the conversation.

Your homework for this step is to write down 31 qualities of who you are marketing for, just as I wrote down 5 qualities of a musician.

The toughest part is the first one, figuring out “who I want to market for,” especially if you are in the ‘make money space.’ simply because it is such a widespread niche. Here are a few examples to help you out:

• People who want to work from home.

• People looking for passive income.

• People wanting to retire.

Now if you are in the “make money space” – use your creativity in your mind and write down 31 kinds of people who would like to work from home, or are looking for a passive income, or wanting to retire.

2.What do they want?

If one of those is out of sink, you are not making the sale.

As marketers we must know EXACTLY what our audience wants, and provide it for them with value. This concept is pretty straight forward, but let’s take it back to the musician example.

Example: What does a musician want? (Let us get inside the head of a musician for a second)… We are then going to want to gear our content towards musicians who want:

1. Information on new instruments available.

2. Updates on upcoming concerts.

3. New methods of teaching music.

4. Where to buy/download the newest and freshest tunes.

5. Reviews on live shows within their local city.

Your homework assignment, is to write down 31 properties that your target market wants.

If you are in the ‘make money space online, what do people who want to retire early/work from home or create passive income want? Do they want to travel more? More time with their family? Be able to play more sports? Have the ability to cook? Do they want to lay on a beach all day…? Use your creativity and think of what they would want, and then gear your website content towards that!

3.What do they do?

But when you are able to visualize their world, you can offer them a solution… but I am getting ahead of myself.

Here are some example questions for the musician motif we’ve been running with:

1. Do they travel with their band?

2. Do they play the guitar as much as they would like to?

3. What is their profession outside of music?

4. How many guitars do they own, and do they want more?

5. Do they have the guitar of their dreams?

For the ‘make money space’ people – here are some bonus questions for you to get your mind turning – Are they a stay at home mom or dad? What do they do in their spare-time? What is their overall lifestyle like? What do they do for fun, and do they do it enough?

Now you may be asking yourself, how do I find out the answers to these questions? I will be touching on that in a subsequent blog, for it is another subject for later.

4. What are their problems?

Here we use what is called the Problem Agitation Solution Formula, and it goes like this, 3 easy steps:

1) We find out a problem someone has, and articulate that problem back to them.

2) You agitate that problem a little more by going deeper into it.

3) Then you are able to offer them the solution, and they are open and ready to make a buying decision.

(I just gave you the master key, use it wisely, it is the same formula Hitler used)

Let’s go over this entire process, after all 4 questions have been answered, using the musician.

Example: You now have a guitar player, who would like information on new instruments available on the market, and does not play the guitar of his dreams…

With that information, you now have a highly targeted, highly crafted audience you now can sell to.

How do you sell, simple – you implement the Problem Agitation Solution Formula.

First: you articulate back to him that he does not play the guitar of his dreams.

Secondly: you tell him how much it must suck to play the guitar he currently has.

Third: you explain how amazing the newest cutting edge guitar in your shop is, and you ask him to drop by to try it out so he can buy it, better yet you send him to your site where he can purchase it online right then and there.

conclusion

Although, it will only pay dividends for you if you assimilate and apply. Do your homework assignments, and craft for yourself a killer audience that will pull out their credit card at will for whatever it is that you are selling.

I want you to remember to use your own creativity, and keep in mind I was simply giving a birds eye sketch with the musician example which I made on the fly.

To my ‘make money online’ space people, what you just learned is the process all these “guru” bloggers go through to build their content.

Take it and run with it