Work At Home Adventures

Your target audience consists of the people and businesses that are most likely to need and want what you have to sell.  Before you create a marketing plan for your business, it is critical that you define your target audience and create an ideal client profile so you can attract this audience with your marketing. Once you have identified your target audience and ideal clients you will find it so much easier to design your marketing plan around their identity and their needs.

Some of the questions you may want to ask when defining your ideal client are listed below. Not all questions will be applicable to your ideal client, so pick and choose the questions based on your needs.

* What is his or her age?
* What is his or her gender?
* What is his or her marital status and do they have children?
* Where do they live?
* What is his or her income?
* What is his or her educational level?
* What is his or her hobbies?
* Is this person involved in any organized sport?
* Does this person own a business?
* In what industry is his or her business?
* Is his or her business located in their home?
* How big is his or her business?
* What is his or her annual revenue?
* How long have they been in business?
* Who is his or her ideal client and do you know how to reach them?
* What tasks and issues does this person hate to deal with?
* What problems does this person have?
* How can you solve these problems?
* Will this person pay for what you offer?
* Has this person worked with someone like you before?
* Where can you find him or her?
* Does this person belong to any organization such as a trade association or volunteer group?
* Do they read any industry or entertainment publications?

Once you have answered the questions and created the ideal client profile, then you incorporate this information into your website and other marketing materials. You’ll waste less time looking for clients, and when you find them they will be more likely to hire you. Ideal clients will inspire you, make you feel confident, pay you what you’re worth, praise you, and refer other clients to you without being asked.

Another way of defining your ideal client is to look at past and present clients. Which of these clients did you enjoy working with the most? Pull those client files and list their characteristics based on the questions above. To help you concentrate on which marketing methods worked best in the past, client attraction mentor Fabienne Fredrickson, recommends you ask how your favorite clients found you.

Perhaps the most important benefit of this process is that you will be empowered to fire clients who drive you to distraction, and you will not waste time trying to get an unsuitable client to sign a contract with you! You deserve to work with clients who bring out the best in you—so don’t be shy, and get started on finding your ideal client!

© 2010 Davis Virtual Assistance. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.

Now, I would like you to discover the benefits of having a marketing assistant to help you profile your ideal client, and then help you determine how to find them. For more information on this and other marketing services offered by Bonnie Jo Davis, visit http://www.your-marketing-assistant.com.

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With first-chapter allusions to martial arts, “flow,” “mind like water,” and other concepts borrowed from the East (and usually mangled), you’d almost think this self-helper from David Allen should have been called Zen and the Art of Schedule Maintenance. Not quite. Yes, Getting Things Done offers a complete system for downloading all those free-floating gotta-do’s clogging your brain into a sophisticated framework of files and action lists–all purportedly t (more…)

If you’ve ever run across the old joke that “fish” should actually be spelled “ghoti” (“gh” as in “tough,” “o” as in “women” and “ti” as in “nation”), then you won’t be surprised to know that many companies put this quirk of the English language to work by concocting an alternate spelling of a key word for their name. This associates their organization with a certain quality while standing out with a unique-looking name.

Examples of creatively spelled names that sound like a real word include:

# Acxiom

# Cinergy Health Chempetitive

# Enalasys

# Engauge

# Flikr

# Genesys

However, the perils of this strategy are many. First, sometimes not everyone understands the original word, as with “axiom” and “synergy.” In that case, the intended implication of the company name gets even more lost with the creative spelling.

Second, many of the creative spellings are extremely hard to remember accurately. I’m quite sure I could never remember how to spell Enalasys, even if I remembered that it sounded like “analysis” and started with an “E.” There are two additional spelling changes in that eight-letter name. Note that on the Internet, someone who gets your company’s spelling only partially right will not find your web site and may not be able to get email through to your employees.

Third, these names can be difficult to pronounce when seeing them “cold.” This point gets overlooked because a popular site like Flikr has many people talking about it, and once you’ve heard there’s a photo-sharing site called “flicker,” you readily understand that that’s how the name is said. But just from looking at the name, you might equally want to pronounce it as “Fly-ker” – or just be struck silent at the unfamiliar sequence of “k-r” at the end of the name. Likewise, I’m not sure from the spelling whether “Genesys” is supposed to be pronounced like the English word “genesis” or like the separate parts – “Jean-sis” (which emphasizes the component word “gene”).

Fourth, creatively spelled names with a double meaning like Chempetitive (sounds like “competitive” but suggests chemicals) or Engauge (sounds like “engage” but suggests measurement as in “gauge”) do not easily pass the telephone test. Their significance doesn’t come across to the ear. That is, someone hearing “Competitive” wouldn’t suspect the connection to chemicals – or the correct spelling.

And fifth, when you have a creatively spelled name, it becomes tiresome to spell it out every single time you say it to a new vendor or potential client. Take it from someone blessed with the last name of Yudkin!

If you’re a visual person, thinking mainly of how a company name might look on signage and a logo, you might value these names highly because of their distinctive eye appeal. However, it would be a mistake to forget about all the business situations in which communication happens primarily by ear.

With a sizeable marketing budget, you can overcome these disadvantages to a certain extent, drilling the correct spelling and punctuation into the minds of the public. After all, most people got it that AT&T’s wireless company was pronounced “singular” but spelled with a “C.” But if you have a limited marketing budget, it’s best to select a new company name that can be understood right off correctly by both the eye and the ear.

About The Author:

Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that brainstorms creative business names, product names and tag lines for clients. For a systematic process of coming up with an appealing and effective name or tag line, download a free copy of “19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line” at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm