The Small Business Show

Finding Your Ideal Target Audience | Tim Fitzpatrick

June 02, 2021 Swire Ho #thepromoguy Season 2 Episode 47
The Small Business Show
Finding Your Ideal Target Audience | Tim Fitzpatrick
Show Notes Transcript


Why is it important to know your target market and audience?

Our guest for this episode of The Small Business Show is Tim Fitzpatrick, President at Rialto Marketing .  He pointed out that businesses don't have unlimited budgets for marketing, so instead of marketing to "everyone", businesses need to be focused.  It allows much better direction and higher chances of reaching the best prospects. 

Identify the profitable clients

We need to look at our current client base and find out which of our clients and projects are more profitable. A business is not going to stay in business if we are not working with profitable clients. Once they are identified we can start looking at the demographics & psychographics.


Connecting with your ideal clients

As a business owner make sure to invest time in at least 3 different areas to get in front of the ideal clients, such as joining trade associations, attending networking events, social media campaigns or news articles which the ideal clients will be reading. 


Finding Your Ideal Target Audience and the 90 Day Marketing Plan

According to Tim, here are the 6 questions to answer:

  1. Who is your target market?
  2. What is your goal?
  3. What is your budget & resources?
  4. What is your current marketing plan?
  5. What to focus on in the next 90 days?
  6. Tracking metrics

Here is a special link Tim provide for The Small Business Show, to learn more about The 90 Day Marketing Plan


GUEST INFO:


Contact for Tim Fitzpatrick

 đź‘‰ Website : https://www.rialtomarketing.com/ 

👉Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpfitzpatrick

👉 Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/timfitzco/ 

👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rialtomarketing/

👉Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rialtomarketing

 

 The Small Business Show is the official podcast for Garuda Promo and Branding Solutions. For more info

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the smart business show. Join us as we have candid conversations with entrepreneurs and experts in the industries to uncover their wisdom and strategies. We're running a successful business. The small possess show is the official podcast off Garuda, promo, and brand new submissions. Let's get started.

Speaker 2:

Hello everyone. You're listening to the small business show. I'm your host. Swire holds the promo guy. It's my favorite topic today. I'm going to learn more about finding my target market and then how do I identify in ideal client? My guest today is teams' Fitzpatrick. He's the president of Rialto marketing. How are you doing Tim? I'm

Speaker 3:

Doing great. Swire. Thanks so much for having me, man,

Speaker 2:

Before diving into our conversation. Would you mind to tell the listener a little bit about what you do and you know, how you'd like to help people about finding the target marketing?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So, um, I I'm marketer, my company is Rialto marketing and we, um, we help service businesses, simplify marketing so that they can grow with less stress. And we do that by helping them create an, implement a plan to communicate the right message to the right people. And you know, that's what marketing is all about. And we just find so many people are just battling information overload when it comes to marketing, there's just so many different channels and tactics, and there's no shortage of gurus telling people, Hey, you need to be here, here. And people are just overwhelmed. They don't. And because of that, they don't have a plan to, to get their marketing out there and their message in front of the right people. So, um, I just think it's so easy to over-complicate marketing and it doesn't, it doesn't need to be that way. So we help people with that and just help simplify marketing.

Speaker 2:

So I'm sure that you have had conversation where a business will come to you and ask for help. And when you ask them, you know, who do you target? You know, they will probably give you an answer. Everyone is our target. You know, our product is so great. Our services is excellent. Everyone would want to buy it. So we want to target everybody. What would be your answer to that question?

Speaker 3:

The, the, the challenge there, right, is if it's everybody right, or it's too, it's too broad. And as small business owners, we don't have unlimited budgets. And when you don't have a huge budget, it's really hard to go very broad with your message. We need to focus. And when we focus, it gives us much better direction and a much higher likelihood of reaching the best people that we can work with. So we've really got to hone in and it's, most people are far too broad. You know, I work with small business owners. Well, that's great, but that's huge. You know, it has, there has to be more so that you can really identify who those best people are because everybody in the small business sector is not an ideal client for your business or for mine. Right. I think we've all made that mistake where we worked with somebody and we were like, oh my gosh, that was, that was a disaster for whatever reason. Right? Might've, might've been our fault. Might've been, might've been there as, might've been a little bit of both, but for whatever reason, that just was didn't gel. And we need to look at those experiences to really determine who are our ideal clients. It can't be broad. You know, I give an example all the time of Amazon. You know, we look at Amazon today and go, oh my gosh, they do business with like everybody, but they didn't start out that way. Amazon was a online book, reseller. That's what they nailed that niche. After they nailed that niche, then they started to expand, but they didn't do that until they actually nailed that niche. And now they have, you know, they're all, they're all over the place, but they also have, they have divisions, separate divisions, and they have tons of money to, to fund that. Most of us aren't in that position. So we have to focus and everything from a marketing standpoint centers, it starts with your target market. If you don't know who your target market is, you are going to constantly struggle and spin your wheels.

Speaker 2:

Would you say we could even narrow our focus? Let's say we identify fire target market. So with our resources we poly can do, do them. All right. You know, to the way that we like to, would you even ask them to focus on maybe one to two, when you have a certain success on those market and then extend your expand to the other market? Would that be the approach?

Speaker 3:

I recommend that businesses at least to start, don't have more than one to three ideal client types. Okay. So how do you, how do you actually identify who those people, who those ideal clients are? Um, there's, there's an exercise that we can, we can run through. If you have an existing business, right? You've had some success. You've worked with clients, you've got current clients, you have past clients. I think the easiest place to start is with those current and those past clients. And I want you to ask yourself three questions. One is who do we enjoy working with? Why the, how do we want to work with people that make our life difficult? Right? So let's identify those clients that we've just loved working with. Then let's look at those clients that are profitable. We're not going to stay in business if we're not working with profitable clients. So we have to identify who those profitable clients are. And the third is who, who do we get our best results for? Who do we do great work for? So when we ask ourself those three questions, we have a subgroup of current and past clients that we answered positively to those questions. So we have a group of people that we love working with that are profitable, that we do great work for. We get great results. That is that's the group that you want to start to dig a little bit deeper to identify your potential ideal client types. Because if we can work with people like that, man, we're going to be happy. We're going to be making money. We're going to be getting great results for clients, which means they're going to want to continue to work with us. They're going to refer us, right? So let's start there. And what we can do with that group is now we can start to look at the demographics, the numbers, right? That help us identify what these people are like age. You know, it depends on the demographics are going to depend on whether you're in business to business or business to consumer market, but it could be age range. It could be where they live, how, how expensive their houses, you know, certain areas, it could be industry types could be their title, their job title, their position, right? Those are all examples of demographics, but it helps us start to understand who these people are. The psychographics are about what their, what their, what their feelings are, what their, what common problems do they have? What results are they looking for? What benefits do they want to see? All of those things help us really start to get in their head. Right? And when we can start to look at the demographics and the psychographics, inevitably, what happens is one to three ideal client types come out of that. That's where, that's where you start. The other thing that I also tell people to do, if you're really struggling with this too, is look at the clients that you've worked with that were not ideal clients, right? You didn't like working with them. You, they weren't profitable. You didn't get great results for them. Look at those people and look at the commonalities there. Your ideal clients are probably going to be the exact opposite of that, right? So those are really, those are two really good places to start to hone in on who your ideal clients are.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I love that example, you know, and not a way that I will suggest people to consider is, you know, look at your, uh, accounting software, right. You know, look at your top 10 client in terms of revenue ourselves, you know, bring in like, who are they? Can you, you know, obviously you have to learn as much as you can about those top 10 clients, your shirt, top hat[inaudible] or, you know, like you said, uh, they do they have the same job title or are they at the same maybe age, gender, or, you know, the number off that, the type of business they're in, if there's similar. So then you can start building your list. You know, maybe you can say my top two and three have this semiology, but then they also, these extra ones that we have. So then you can actually keep on, on your own file, a your ideal client, you can list all their things. If you know that you check off maybe three to five, then you know that these are the type of clients you might want to pursue better than, you know, like you said, the other ones that you don't like to work with for whatever, the reason maybe it's because the profit, or maybe it's just the communication or the type of requests that they might have. So you can have two lists, one that you really like, and one, you might not like as much.

Speaker 3:

Yup. And that's once you know who you're trying to attract, then you can start to identify where they are. And those are places where you might want to be. Right. Yeah. Let's

Speaker 2:

Do much of that. You know? So let's say we identify, you know, uh, do a client and a market. So how do we know where they are? And we try to, I was trying to be there to attract them. What would you suggest?

Speaker 3:

So once you understand who those one to three ideal client types are, then what you can do is start to put together a list of where they are. One of my mentors said success starts with a list and it always stuck with me. So let's take an example. Let's say that one of my ideal client types is, are our chiropractors. Okay? I did this for a workshop that I did awhile back. I spent. So I said, look, let's pretend I'm trying to attract chiropractors. And I jumped online and I started thinking about what types of, what types of influencers do chiropractors follow? What websites do they frequent? What email list do they subscribe to? Are there associations that they belong to? Um, are there Facebook groups or LinkedIn groups that they're a part of? Are there forums that they, that they belong to? Are there chiropractic forums of some kind, um, offline? What, you know, do they go to specific events? Do they get chiropractic, you know, publications, magazines of any kind, all of those things, all of those ideas are places they could, that they could potentially be Swire. Within 10, 15 minutes. I had a full page of places that they could be, and that was in 15 minutes, right? If I would've spent an hour, I could have had a much longer list, but I found, you know, a chiropractic association, I found two podcasts that were geared towards chiropractors. I found two or three publications that chiropractors get. I found some Facebook groups. Um, it wasn't difficult. And I don't, I don't really target chiropractors. Right. I just went into this blind and I found there was probably 15 to 20 different, um, places on that list. Now that I, that list. Now that doesn't mean that you're going to go everywhere on that list. Right. Because that's just, you may just bite off more than you can chew. But now that you have a list, now you can start to go, okay. Which, which of these places should I be start with? And you just, you choose the ones that you can start with based on the time you have and the budget that you have and you, those are the places you can go to get your message in front of those people you intend to attract. So if I have three ideal client types, um, I may have three different lists. Just depends on how diverse, how varied those ideal client types are. But, you know, I have, we have a client right now. Who's a CPA. She, she goes, her ideal clients are dentists and veterinarians. So those are fairly distinct. But, um, they do still have, they still have similar issues when it comes to accounting, but the places she goes to get in front of those people are different. Right? But so she has two different lists. That's how it works.

Speaker 2:

I liked that you actually suggest that, you know, find ways that you're comfortable with, or you have the time to do because a lot of people just go everywhere, right? They, they go as far as identify who their ideal clients are and they just Swanton. And then they actually overwhelming, they kind of lost focus there. So maybe, you know, if you're in person type networking, now we started to open up. You can go to networking events for your ideal clients, or maybe you are online type person. Then you can do different online marketing, you know, to what's your ideal client. Maybe they only respond by mail. Then, you know, maybe you do a mailing campaign. So it's just, you know, fit into what you're comfortable doing with. Maybe you might know a little bit about those strategy or have worked with a team that are specialized in certain criteria. So, um, I, I like your idea. You, you don't have to say, you know, go against, go, go with them, everything you have, you actually still want to pick the best strategy that you wanted to talk to these people.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. You need to make sure that you have the time to invest in these different areas that you're going to go to get in front of people. You know, like you mentioned association, you know, networking, maybe I, and maybe I joined the chiropractor chiropractic association or American association of chiropractors. Right. My local chapter. Um, you can't just go there once. It that's not gonna work. Right. So you gotta, I think you're better off initially going narrow and deep and give it enough time because you know, if you're going to really embed yourself in the association, you've got to, you got to go there and show up over and over and over again, because guess what? Most of the other people that show up, they show up once and they're like, ah, it didn't work. I didn't get any business. Well, geez. They don't even, they just met you. Right. You haven't given them time to know like, and trust you. You got to continually show up over and over again and slowly build those relationships before you can make the call of whether this is working or not.

Speaker 2:

I know that we have been talking about the why the how, and then even go as far as you know, where to find them and target them. And I know that you have a 90 day marketing plan. Would you share with us a little bit more about what it is? Is it, is it after you identified their ideal client, then you start the marketing plan.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So the way I look at the marketing fundamentals, you've got target market. You have your messaging, what you say to those people, how you communicate the value that you offer, and then you have your plan. So target market comes first, your Mo your messaging comes second. And then you create your plan of how you're going to get that message in front of those people. I love a 90 day marketing plan because our businesses are constantly evolving and our marketing needs to evolve with it. 90 days is a long enough period of time to start to see whether you're gaining traction, but it's short enough where you can start to make course corrections. And you just do these 90 day sprints, you know, Swire, I mean, you know, beginning of last year, if, if, if you had spent thousands of dollars on a marketing plan, that was a year or two years, most people, you know, come March because of the pandemic, th the thing would have been burned or would have gone up on a shelf because they had to shift. So 90 day sprints is what I like. And it keeps it simple. Longer-term marketing plans tend to be very complicated or more complicated. And when things are complicated, it's just people don't, most people don't implement and execute well, let's keep it simple. So in the 90 day plan that we use and recommend are six steps. One is who's your target market. I want at a minimum. I want a paragraph for each of your ideal clients. This is just a good way to keep top of mind who you intend to attract. The second step is what's your goal. What's my goal for the next 90 days, it should be specific measurable. It's going to be time-bound because this is a 90 day plan, but maybe I intend to bring on five new clients in the next 90 days, we need to have an idea of where we're headed and what direction we want to go. Third is what's our budget and what are our resources? Do we have$500 a month? Do we have$5,000 a month to spend Ian from a resources standpoint? Is it my time as the business owner? How much time do I have to invest in our marketing each, each week? And or do I have staff that can invest time? And we also need to look at when we have staff time that's being invested. What are their capabilities? You know, just because I have hours a week, if I suck at social media and I don't like it, well, then I probably shouldn't be doing it. Right. So all we're doing in this third step is just, it gives us an idea of what we have to work with so that we can identify how much we can bite off in our, in our marketing plan, because we don't want to bite off more than we can chew in the fourth step, where we need to identify where we're starting from. What's our current marketing plan. And I know when I say this, why are most, a lot of people may not have a plan. That's okay. I just want you to get to get down on paper, what you've done and what you continue to do from a marketing standpoint. This is, this is giving us a baseline or a reference point because we can't identify what we need to do to get to where we want to go until we know where we're starting from. It's no different than my GPS. If I tell it, I want to go to Denver international airport, if I don't tell it where I'm starting from, it's not getting me there. Right? So this four step has just given us a baseline. Then in the fifth step, what are we going to focus on in the next 90 days? This gives us our priorities and our marching orders of what we're going to focus on in our marketing for the next 90 days. This helps us eliminate all that distraction so that, you know, when the next latest guru comes across and says, oh my God, Swire, you gotta be on clubhouse. Now, uh, you can go, you know what, maybe, but I need to, I know what my marching orders are right now. I'm going to take that idea and put that on my list of things to, to evaluate. But until I get these things done, I'm not focusing on something else. I need to get these things done first. And then the fifth, the sixth step is what metrics are you going to track? The metrics help you identify whether the actions you're taking are starting to bear fruit, right? Whether they're working or not. And when we look at marketing metrics, Swire, there are so many metrics out there. There are so many vanity metrics to metrics that really don't mean a thing. How many people are on your email list? How many people follow you on Facebook? To me, none of that stuff matters. If you are not generating leads and turning those leads into customers. So I like to tell people to start simple start, if you, if you're not tracking how many leads you're generating and what percentage of those leads convert to customers start there, because that is so empowering. When you know that, Hey, I need five leads to generate a customer or three leads to generate a customer. Man, that's super empowering. And now you can start to go, okay, well, we need to generate three leads or five leads to get a customer. What, how, what are we going to do to generate those five leads start would start basic. And then you can start to get more advanced with your metrics, but I would recommend only tracking those top one or two metrics that are going to help you identify whether what you're doing is starting to have having a fact. And then if you want to expand and get a little bit more sophisticated later than you can, but don't, over-complicate this in the beginning, if you don't know how many leads you're generating and how many are converting to customers, start by tracking that.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think that's a really good six steps. You know, I, I'm going to relisten to this episode and poli, you know, there's a lot of things that we can learn from identifying the planning and to the actual execution. And especially like, you know, uh, what you said about, you know, tracking the least, you know, bottom line, right? You want more cells, you are more, uh, be more profitable. So, uh, if you, by hitting those metrics can make you get more leads or generate more sales, or you, uh, that's all you need to focus on. Maybe there are other fancy terms, fancy acronyms that could mean something right. To certain type of individual, but then for you, this is what you're focused on. And then, you know, for the 90 day that's, you know?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And at the end of the 90 days, you look at what worked, what didn't make updates to your plan. And then you start your next 90 day sprint it's it's wash, rinse, and repeat over and over again.

Speaker 2:

I know what we just talked about. And it kinda like, uh, you know, like, um, nutrition or fitness advice where you commit to this for 90 days, you were success. But I know when listen or listen to something like that, uh, they will say, are there any things that will help me better? You know, people would like to call it a hack, right? Uh, with the strategies that you have other specific tools or other, uh, things that you use, you're seeing in the trend in marketing do that might be better than others if we have.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So here's what I'll tell you. I, if, if you're listening to this or watching this and you don't have a good handle on Europe, your target market, your ideal clients and your messaging, you know what you say to them? If, if you don't have those things in place, you've got to start there because anything that I or anybody else tells you to do from a tactic standpoint, if you don't have those things in place, those tactics are not gonna work well. You're, you're gonna waste time and you're gonna waste money. So if you don't have the fundamentals in place, go back to the fundamentals first. Okay. And I will tell you right now, Swire, there are very few prospects and clients that I talked to that don't need at least some work in those two elements. Very few, get those in place. Then you can start to get more tactical. And the next most logical place start after you get those fundamentals in place. And you have your plan. If your, if your website is not where it needs to be, if the messaging isn't right, if you don't have good calls to action, right? We, you need to tell people what you want them to do. If your website is not where it needs to be, that is the next place to start. Because everything that we do from a marketing standpoint is going to drive people back to that website. So, you know, it's those fundamentals lay the foundation. The next wall that you're building is your website. And then from there, you can start to expand into other marketing channels and tactics. Um, some of the other low hanging fruit and look, none of this is super trendy Swire, but I don't think it has to be trendy to work well. And there's so many people that skip these things. Once you've got those fundamentals in place and your websites where it needs to be, are you taking advantage of email marketing to nurture prospects and to stay top of mind with prospects and clients, if you are not gonna do it, man, your email list is one of the few marketing assets that you own not rent. Right? When we look at social media or paid advertising, we're renting those channels and there's nothing wrong with that. But I think we want to use channels that we rent to build the assets that we own. We own our website. We own our email list, right? Let's take the time to start building those things. From there. Some of the other low hanging fruit, I see online reviews. Online reviews are huge, especially for local businesses, but even businesses like mine. I mean, review people don't work with coaches or consultants unless they know like, and trust them reviews are a huge, huge way of helping establish that trust and that credibility. If you don't have a system in place to consistently ask for reviews, make it easy for people to give you reviews. And then in turn re you respond to those reviews. You got to put that in place. So I know this is not super trendy, but man, this stuff works. And if you don't have those things in place, um, I'm not really sure you belong jumping into trends before you get some of those fundamentals they're down.

Speaker 2:

I love that. I love that. You know, really going back, you know, identifying the target marketing, just doing, you know, especially like something you own, then something you rent, you know, because if you stop paying those ads, it's gone, you don't do that anymore. You know, uh, you know, if you want to do it, yeah. Pay more money, but then something you own, then you could think about different ways to create different campaign. I'll call it to target those ideal client. And uh, assuming that in the beginning, you have to know who they are, because if you're not knowing who your ideal clients are, you cannot create a message that is right for that. Because if you send me and Tim a message, it not might not be resonate with that because we like different things. We like, uh, we, we might read, uh, different articles. So, you know, so knowing who they are is the key before you actually reach out to them.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you can't, you can't create messaging to attract your ideal clients until you understand them, right. With your messaging. You want to enter the conversation that they're having in their head, as it relates to what you do, right? You want them to see that and go, oh my gosh, Tim's talking to me. Or Swire is talking to me, was Swire in that meeting that we had last week. And we're talking about this exact same thing. That's what we want to have happen, but we can't, we can't even get to that place until we really understand who the heck these people are that we intend to attract.

Speaker 2:

Great. You're generous enough. Do you actually create a link for the small piece that shows I'm going to include that in the show notes here for, but for viewer and listener who wanted to learn more about what you do, what would be the best way to contact you? Tim?

Speaker 3:

The best place to go is our website, which is realtime marketing.com. That's R I a O T O marketing.com. If you go to the link that's, wire's got for you in the show notes, there's some free resources there to help you get some of these fundamentals in place that we talked about. There's customer insights survey, there's the marketing plan we use. There's the messaging framework we use. There's all kinds of great stuff there that will help you. So please take advantage of that. If you get stuck and you need help push them through some of your marketing roadblocks, just click to get a free consultation button on our site. And I would be happy to chat with you if you want to connect with me personally, LinkedIn honestly is the best place to do it. Just search me up at Tim Fitzpatrick. Um, it's I believe my, uh, URL is, uh, linkedin.com forward slash in forward slash Tim P as in Paul Fitzpatrick. And I'll be happy to connect with you there as well.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for coming on today, Tim. I love the content that we have this morning. Awesome.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for the opportunity, Swire and uh, hope your audience, uh, get some value from the conversation. Thanks. Take care.