Targeting Leads – The Lifeline to Finding Your Ideal Customers
Welcome to Episode 2 of “Lifecycle Marketing Made Easy,” a conversation with Clate Mask, CEO and co-founder of KEAP. In this new series, Ramon and Clate dive deeply into the topic of Lifecycle Marketing for small businesses, and in this episode, they focus on Targeting Leads.
As you may recall from the first episode, Lifecycle Marketing is a process of taking a brand new person into your business, a brand new prospect, bringing them through as a lead, to a client, to a raving fan. It has three parts, Collect Leads, Convert Clients, and Create Fans. Underneath Collect Leads, there are three aspects, Targeting, Attracting, and Capturing. That’s the entire cycle!
In this episode, Clate and Ramon discuss the concept of Targeting Leads.
“...every business owner out there probably has a customer that, at one point, was just causing so much havoc in the business that they either fired them or prayed for the customers to leave and go away. We've [all] had those experiences, right?”
Targeting Leads Attracts Your Ideal Customers
Sound familiar? Then you know firsthand the downsides of dealing with the wrong customers. Targeting the right leads for your business is the first step in attracting your ideal customers, and for small businesses with more limited resources and personnel, this is a must!
Again, Clate makes it super clear: “…when you serve ideal customers versus just any customer, profits go through the roof, the efficiency in the business skyrockets, your employee morale is so much better, you get referrals, you get reviews, you get repeat business, the whole business gets better if you get the right person in from the beginning.”
Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? And the good news is, it’s not that hard to figure out.
“...when you serve ideal customers versus just any customer, profits go through the roof..."
So how do you know who are your ideal customers? Quite simply, your ideal customers are the ones who pay you the most where your profit is the best. (And of course, it doesn’t hurt if you enjoy engaging with them along the way.) Once you identify who these customers are, you build a persona around them, basically a profile of all their main characteristics. These can include demographic information, geographic location or even psychological profiles. Once you can create this persona, with an understanding of their preferences and behaviors, you’ll be gearing your marketing towards them. Having the ability to automate this process is key in helping you build your business to the next level.
Now some of you out there might be saying, I have a small business, only about 10 customers. But if you have a solid contact list, anything over 100, then you are already sitting on the possibility of converting more people on that list to becoming active customers.
As Clate says, “Put a newsletter out there. But now what happens when they start to respond? Now you’ve got to keep straight who gets what and when with the follow-up. That’s why follow-up helps you grow. Automating the followup in a systematic way is the real secret to entrepreneurial success.”
Targeting Leads is the First Step to Success
How could anything so simple be so powerful? You might be surprised. Sometimes the best practices come down to simple, logical steps, consistently taken.
Hear more about Targeting Leads as the first critical step in Lifecycle Marketing by listening to Ramon Ray’s podcast of the second episode of “Lifecycle Marketing Made Easy,” a conversation with Clate Mask, CEO and