Hi,

My name is Heather, and I've always considered myself a born entrepreneur. To be quite honest, I have never been able to stand the idea of working for a big company. I watched as my parents - both professionals - devoted their lives to large corporations and were rewarded with down sizing and stolen retirement accounts. I swore that wouldn't happen to me.

After finishing college with a degree in management, I spent 7 years as an assistant manager with a small line of Mexican restaurants. On my thirtieth birthday, I decided it was time to open my own restaurant. I took what I learned in the seven years as an assistant manager, all of my savings, a good credit history and opened my own restaurant.

It was located in a mature neighborhood that was primarily composed of middle-aged business owners and professionals...but business wasn't good.

I had not done any marketing for my previous employer. Naively, I thought customers would just find me! I quickly discovered that my business wasn't attracting a loyal clientele. I had some drop-in traffic, and an occasional flurry of traffic after running an advertisement or coupon campaign, but these promotions rarely resulted in repeat customers.

After a year, I was barely attracting enough new customers to pay expenses and only a few returned. I was adamant about the quality of the food and the cleanliness of the restaurant, so I just didn't know why people were not coming back.

After spending a lot of time doing research, I came across an inexpensive eBook that helped me gain tremendous insight from the sections on generations and life stages. After reading the sections, I realized that although my restaurant was located in a neighborhood composed primarily of middle-aged customers, my restaurant and marketing were designed more to appeal to a younger generation!

I realized that I had to make major changes, and had three options to choose from:

• move my restaurant,
  
  
• attract younger customers from another neighborhood,
  
  
• or design my restaurant and marketing to appeal better to the people near my restaurant.

I decided that the latter provided the best option.

Since then, I have really grown to understand how different age groups see life - and food! I quit marketing from my own perspective and started marketing to my target market. I learned their language and used it in my advertisements. I changed the restaurant and the menu to provide an atmosphere that appeals to them.

Now, just a year later, I don't have to do as much advertising. My advertisements and promotions bring me three times as many new customers and 20 percent of those new customers become loyal, repeat customers! I can honestly say that I am a perfect example of how small business owners can benefit by marketing directly to their best potential customers.

 

Hey,

I'm Dan, and I want to tell you about how I almost lost all my money in my business before I turned it around.

After graduating with a degree in business, I worked ten years in small companies before I got a position with a large corporation.

I advanced rather quickly with the corporation until I was promoted to personnel manager. Then the promotions just stopped. During my last decade with the corporation, I was passed over for two promotions that would have put me into a line position. Those promotions went to younger, less experienced, but more technically savvy men.

I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach and sunk into depression. Then the corporation offered an early retirement package in 2005. Fed up with corporate life, I took their golden handshake and started my own business, providing staffing services for other small businesses.

Because my home was already paid for, my children were out of the house and out of college, and my wife earns a professional income, I was able to invest my “handshake” money into my business.

Knowing that I needed help with marketing, I hired a local marketing agent. He recommended direct mail to small businesses owners and advertising in business-related magazines and the local newspapers. He charged me $40,000 for a year’s campaign that included:

• one direct mail campaign to 9,500 business owners in his geographic area,
• designing, printing, and mailing the direct-mail package,
• 3 advertisements in six different regional business-related magazines,
• 6 advertisements in the local newspaper, and
• designing the print advertisement to be used in all the publications.

I thought this was a fair price, but was disappointed when only 845 business owners reponded to the direct mail promotion. They asked for more information, and I spent another $423 communicating with them, and got 120 invitations to give presentations about my staffing service.

My presentation materials and the 120 visits cost me another $1500.  From the presentations, I got ten one-year contracts. The others decided against outsourcing their staffing, or went with another staffing company. So out of 9500 contacts, I got less than a .001 conversion rate. Not good, and not enough contracted business to cover my cash flow needs at that time.

I only got another five contracts from advertising in the magazines and newspaper. Those additional contracts enabled me to meet my cash flow needs for the first year, but not to hire the employees that I needed to run the business effectively.

I was overworked and let a few important details fall through the cracks, so at the end of their first contracts, I lost three to other staffing services and two, whose owners decided to save money and do it themselves. After a year, I was back to ten clients. I didn’t know how to proceed to get more clients. I didn’t have another $40,000 to invest in marketing, and my business couldn’t survive with only ten clients.

Frustrated and having spend almost all of my “handshake” money, I was about to give up when I ran into a former colleague, who worked in public relations for my former employer. While visiting over coffee, the friend told me about a column in Public Relations Quarterly that utilized a system to determine the best appeals for any targeted group of people.

When I got home, I did a Google search for Public Relations Quarterly, found the column, “Segmenting Publics,” did a search for it’s author, contacted her and bought her manuscript of all the articles from the column.

Her demographic research opened my eyes to many mistakes in my prior marketing. I selected less expensive marketing tactics and catered them better for my target market.

After making these changes and spending just another $7,500 to implement the tactics, my conversion rate increased from .001% to 3.7%. I acquired 20 new clients over the next year, was able to hire the help I needed. I only lost one of those 21 new clients at the end of their first contract.

With 30 clients now under contract, I'm able to easily cover my cash flow, and I've hired the extra employees I need to serve my clients well.  I've now remade what I lost in the first year and am well on my way to a stable cash-cow business.

I now spend my marketing resources more systematically, better reach and influence my target market, and get more bang for my marketing bucks. I was able to accomplish this marketing triumph because:

Chris here. I’m am Internet marketer, and after 18 months of spending all my time and lots of money trying to make my business a success, I’ve finally gotten it right.

When I started my business, I didn’t know anything. I bought shelves of ebooks and even spent $3,500 on a coaching program. But I still couldn’t get traffic and what little traffic I got didn’t convert.

I was researching and using key words, writing articles, posting to blogs, doing social book marking, joining forums, and getting backlinks, but my list still had only a couple hundred people, and I’d only made a couple of sales through Ebay – not a single sale at my site.

I tried PPC advertising three times. Each time I got few clicks and no sales so Google raised my price per click so much that I had to shut down the campaign.

I redesigned my site several times, read everything I could find on sales page copywriting, redesigned again, paid a coach to critique my site and sales page, and redesigned again. Still little traffic and no sales.

I was about ready to hang it up when I got a free run of a program and got a free target market report. I realized that I knew nothing about the people who searched for my keywords. I couldn’t even use the program because I didn’t know their age, gender, education level or anything.

But by opting in to use the program, I got on an email list and learned about an ebook that helped me to learn about the people who use my keywords.

I paid extra to get the author to identify them my searches by demographics. Then I was able to use the program and get a long list of appeals for them. I used the ebook to better understand the appeals, and rewrote and redesigned my sales page and site to better relate to them.

The results weren’t instant. It still took some time to start attracting more people to my site. But the information enabled me to:

• select blogs and forums where they congregate,
  
  
• write articles that better appeal to them,
  
  
• develop an ethical bribe that increased opt-ins to my mailing list,
  
  
• use their language in my emails, site content, and sales page, and
  
  
• use other media that they like.

And now I’m converting and making sales. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m still not making $1000s a month, but I am making $100s. After so long of making nothing, I’m excited about that, and I’m confident that my sales will continue to increase. Plus, I’ve already doubled my list.

I’m finally on the right track, and I couldn’t have done it without learning to better understand and relate to the people who search for my keywords.

Hello,

 

I’m Linda Morton, and I’ve developed a simple system to easily and quickly determine your best potential customers, to acquire a wealth of information about them, and to design marketing strategies and tactics catered to them.

It was my research that Heather, Dan and Chris discovered and found so helpful. All used my system to save their businesses.

Using my research and simple system, you can too.

And that’s not all. Using my system:

My system is based on a simple concept: You will sell more if you target your best potential customers. And then design all your marketing to cater to their needs.

If you’re trying to sell to everyone, you’re spending too much and selling too little.

Here's what some people, who have made fortunes in their businesses, say about targeting your market: