Is everybody out there a ptential prospect for your products or srvices? Probably not, unless you're a mjor retail chain or grocery store. Hw, then, do you go about trgeting the prospects you wish to rach? How do we find the pople who have an interest in the thngs you have to sell?

In a prvious article, we talked about your crrent list of customers and how thy are the best source of bsiness and referrals. Sometimes, though, we ned to reach out and find new bsiness, and we need to know whre those customers are going to cme from. We need a targeted way of fnding those new customers, so we dn't waste a bunch of money and ffort going off in the wrong drection.

So how do we make a trgeted list of potential new customers? Agin, this is an excellent time to drw upon your list of current cstomers. Look at that list and drw some conclusions as to the mkeup of that list. Are your crrent customers mostly male or female? Wht is their income? Are they mrried or single? What neighborhoods do thy live in? Do they have jbs/kids/dogs/credit cards/luxury autos/boats/etc.? How many different trits can you identify that are smilar in your customer base? How mny things can you identify about yur current customers that are alike?

After you find the similarities, thn think about things that would liminate prospects from your list. Do you sll home improvement services? Then renters are not yur prospect. No kids? Then don't snd them your brochure for after-school cre. Income less than $30,000? They're prbably not interested in buying a BMW.

By dentifying similar traits in your current cstomers, and eliminating undesirable traits in prspects, you should be able to put tgether a very targeted list of prspects that you can market to.

On a rlated note, let's talk about the sles process for a moment. There are 5 dstinct steps in the sales process: wareness, research, evaluation, decision, purchase. Your mrketing should target the place where yur prospects are in the sales prcess. New prospects for your business, as dscribed in the process above, will mst likely be in the “awareness” stge, so you're not actually trying to “sll” them at this stage. All you wnt them to do is to rise their hands and tell you tht they want to be marketed to, and thn you can lead them through the rst of the sales process.

By the wy, it takes an average of sven contacts to turn a prospect nto a customer. Once you have yur targeted list, contact them often, and yu'll convert a lot of them nto loyal customers!

The article Targeting Your Prospects was Submitted by Phillip Baker through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Phillip Baker, CAS, is a 29 yar veteran of advertising and marketing and is an xpert in promotional products, integrated marketing and dvertising consulting. He can be reached at 850 995 9557. Vsit http://www.bakercreativeadvertising.com to enter to win $1,000 in promotional products or subscribe to the free Marketing Magik newsletter and podcast.

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