However, I thought that a recent radio interview that I had may help, and so do have a listen to this (by clicking on the button below) and feel free to leave any questions or thoughts below.

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In Part One of this article I discussed why it is important to understand who your market is and why trying to market your product or service to everyone is a huge mistake to make.

Part Two will now go into more detail as to how you can do this quickly and easily, as well as identifying what you should and should not do in order to maximise your success.

When assessing who your ideal potential customers are, you may well already have a reasonable idea based upon the existing customers that you have. If you keep a database or list of your current customers, you should start thinking about grouping them logically based upon current factors – it may be based upon income or age perhaps? This is an ideal way to start and it will get you thinking in the right direction for the future.

Use What You Already Have

Once you have been through your list of current clients, you can then begin to think about future clients and how you can start targeting them. You will of course already have an insight into what your target audience is, based upon the customers that you already have. You simply have to go out there and find more of the same.

And once again, all it takes is a little work and effort on your part, but the results can be astonishingly successful when you do this correctly, so a little effort can go a long way. I cannot emphasise enough that the money and effort that you’ll be saving in the long run will more than outweigh the initial effort that you have to put in to this.

If one of the demographics you wanted to target was income, do you think you and your team could target the more wealthy areas in your town or city? Of course you could.

You Can Probably Start Doing This Today

All this requires in its most basic form is that you or someone from your team drives around in order to establish where the wealth could be, so big houses and luxury cars could be your first reference point. If you’re more than familiar with the town or city that you operate in, and the surrounding areas in the locality, you probably have a good idea already as to where you could begin targeting.

You can also do a lot worse that by using mailing lists too, as these can be very effective for identifying a target market. In the UK (where I am based), there are several decent companies who provide this service, and they allow you to drill down to your target audience based on certain criteria and parametres.

Once you have established some geographical areas (or whichever criteria you have chosen) to target, you need to find the appropriate means to contact them. You could use direct mail which can be very, very effective and bring a good ROI (Return On Investment) if implemented correctly.

Do Not Fall Into This Trap

Success also comes from not just trying once and then giving up because the uptake the first time around was not what you’d hoped. Certainly in the direct mail arena there are creative strategies that involve your prospect receiving four, five or more mailings and so the first mailing is merely the first piece of a larger puzzle.

At this point you may start looking at your business in a slightly different way. You might be assessing and evaluating what the benefits of your products or services are to your customers, rather than focusing on the features. This process will also enable you to eventually create an unstoppable USP, and together with your focus on your business’s benefits to its clients, you can now market your business with a message that has the correct and desired impact

You have also now found your ideal, target market by looking at your current clientele, as well as the aspirations of perhaps where your business would like to be in the future, or indeed where it should be, and this will have you streets ahead of your competition.

I am constantly stressing the important of profit and today I’ll give you some different strategies that you can use in order to create improved profits.

Some of the basic concepts are:

1. Increasing the prices of the products and services that you sell
2. Sell more during each transaction – up sell, down sell or cross sell
3. Monitor cash flow via payments terms – both in and out
4. Ensure you track every marketing strategy for effectiveness and ROI

Number one is often something that business owners fully believe that they CANNOT do. They seem to believe that increasing prices, particularly at the moment is commercial suicide.

WRONG!

Clearly there needs to be a valid reason for doing this and so it is all in the positioning. You need to build up the value proposition so that your clients appreciate that prices are going up, but that they are getting back an appreciable improvement in return.

I discuss this in more detail in my book, and will elaborate on this is a future post, but you’ll be surprised at just how easy it is to increase your prices if it is done correctly.

Your Customers Like You, So Give Them More Reason To Do So

Bundling products and services together is a proven and effective way to increase the transaction value for each client (although of course it will not work for every client), and the best bit is – its FREE.

If you were able to up sell, down sell or cross sell to only ten per cent of your current clients, just imagine the effect that would have on your bottom line. And as these are already clients of yours, it has cost you ZERO marketing cost to gain more revenue.

The Life Blood Of Any Business

Ensuring that your cash flow of your business is healthy is absolutely critical to the success of it.

And this means watching what comes in, as well as what goes out. How many of your clients are on 90 day terms? Even if you got them down to 60 days this would have a positive effect on your business.

And its the same with payments going out. Can you negotiate increasing any 30 day terms to 60 days? Once again, the difference that this can make is huge.

What You Track You Can Improve – Or Bin!

How many of you are actually tracking every ounce of marketing that you do?

The sad reality is that in the vast majority of cases that I come across, I get a blank look from the business owner when I mention this.

The analogy that I use to represent what they’re doing is ‘throwing mud at a wall’ as this is quite literally what is happening.

Most businesses have NO idea what is working and what is not, but they just continue to run the same campaigns that they always have.

If you track what Return On Investment (ROI) you;re getting from each marketing method, you can then aim to improve it, maintain it, or get rid of it.

As some very famous Meerkats are currently saying on TV …. SIMPLES!

Why? Because a creative advertisement or direct mailing has the ability to cut through the clutter of the hundreds of messages that we receive (directly or indirectly) each day.

So, how can you apply a degree of creative advertising to help your business become more visible and in turn, improve your ROI (Return On Investment)?

Be Different

Well the first thing you should be doing is be different. Here’s an experiment that you can do right now which will prove my point. If you look in our Yellow Pages under the section where your business is listed, you’ll see advertisements galore.

And if you do not advertise in the Yellow Pages, still have a look and see what I am talking about, as this is a critical issue for being found amongst the crowd.

Now can you see any that really stand out, other than the fact that they are a bigger advertisement than all the rest?

I’ll bet there aren’t many, if any.

Granted there are different sizes, some are colour and some are black and white, some are square, or rectangular or circle shaped.

But do any really have a compelling message, or catch your eye because they are really different?

This is one way in which you can instantly stand out amongst your competitors.

Now I am not talking about doing anything crazy, but I do think that you should put away any preconceptions that you may have about doing something a bit different, even a touch unconventional in many people’s eyes.

The fact is, this works and works extremely well. Its gets you noticed and gets people contacting you.

We have so much boredom in our lives these days, that being and looking and appearing to be different really do work.

Do you know who Churchill is, or the Compare The Marketing Meerkat, or the annoying Go Compare tennor singer.

I’m sure you do. Memorable aren’t they? Different aren’t they?

This works.

Well, conventional marketing is how I would classify the majority of what we see throughout our day. This could be online via Facebook, Twitter or whilst we’re doing a search using Google, Yahoo! or Bing.

It could also be while we walk down the street, listen to the radio or watch television. We’re surrounded by marketing messages – at last count from one of the studies I saw we’re subjected to more than 1,400 each and every day!

Conventional marketing is marketing that is standard, not particularly memorable and ordinary. This is the kind of marketing that we see the most of, essentially because many companies look at their competitors or other industries and run with what they feel is a ’safe’ option.

Safe equals ‘me too’ advertising, which equals no differentiation for your business.

This then begs the question WHY should someone choose to do business with you?

This is why creative marketing works, as it cuts through the clutter. It may be an advertisement in the newspaper or the Yellow Pages. It may be a website or a television advert.

The response I often get from business owners is “It won’t work for my target audience” – normally because “they’re too sophisticated” or some similar reason.

WHAT???

This is simply not true. Someone who I have studied for a few years now has a proven method that has worked in almost 100 different industries, ranging from retail outlets to mail order companies, and from law firms to chiropractors and dentists.

This stuff works!

I’ll go in to more detail in my next post, as something that I thought would only cover a page or so looks like its going to develop into a bit of a monster, so stay tuned.

This proves to be a security threat to you, but ironically, many a time we are the ones who actually invite spyware and malware into our computers. In fact, there are some programs that become useless when spyware and malware are removed from them.

Today, there are many antivirus protection software available on the market that help control spyware and malware on the computer. Use them in addition to these few tips to be free from spyware and malware.

1.    One important tip is to be careful when downloading. Freeware and shareware programs have to be downloaded from reputable sites while music sharing sites have to be avoided.

2.    When downloading any software, make sure you read the EULA; the End User License Agreement before downloading.This is a legal agreement that you make with the software vendor. If you agree to its terms before reading it thoroughly, you may end up agreeing to install spyware to your computer.

3.    If you are sent attachments by unknown people, don’t open them. Open attachments that are sent by people you know as image files can carry malware in them.

4.    Another tip to remember is not only to get antivirus or Spyware and Adware detection software, but also to scan the computer regularly.

5.    And when using browsers, use Firefox or IE7 as they are safer when to other browsers. Make sure you let automatic Windows updates take place on your computer. This way you get the latest patches and security fixes installed as soon as possible in your computer.

Follow these tips for a protected system that also detects and removes malware that enters your system.

Phishing (pronounced as “fishing”) is defined as the act of sending an email to a recipient under the guise of coming from an established, legitimate business.  The intent of the phisher is to scam the email recipient into surrendering private details, and to ultimately steal your identity and/or your money.

Phishing can be quite damaging for individuals, but even more so for businesses who are depending on profit for the daily necessities of running the business.  And to make matters worse, it isn’t as easy to recognize a phishing email as you might think.  At first glance, the email looks like it comes from a legitimate company.  The “From” field of the e-mail may have the .com in the sender’s address.  The clickable link even appears to take you to the company’s website.  In fact, it is a fake look-alike website built to replicate the legitimate one.

Many of these scammers are professional criminals.  They have spent a great deal of time and energy creating emails and websites that look authentic.  Users need to carefully review all emails that request personal information.  When reviewing your email, remember that the “From” field can easily be changed by the sender.  While it may appear that it is coming from a .com that you do legitimate business with, this is part of the deception.  The phisher will even copy logos or images from the official websites to use in their emails.  Finally, they also try to include a clickable link that the recipient can conveniently click on to update their personal information.

An excellent way to check the legitimacy of the link is to point at the link with your mouse – but don’t click.  If you look at the bottom left-hand side of your screen, the actual website address you will be directed to will show up for you to view.  This is a very quick and easy way to know if you are being directed to a legitimate site or not.  However – look at the link carefully.  Sometimes phishers will make their fraudulent website’s link name even appear very similar to the legitimate website’s link name – so look at the link very carefully.

Better yet – follow the golden rule.  Never click on links within the text of an e-mail, and simply delete the email immediately.   If you believe that it might have been a legitimate notice, simply open a browser and go to the website of the company that sent you the email.  Log into your account and check for yourself.  This is the only way to be absolutely certain that you are logging into the actual website – and not a fraudulent site created by a criminal who is intent on obtaining your private information.

Information Security

Make sure that you have the latest and greatest virus software installed on your computer - and your subscription is valid.  Virus software is worthless unless you have the latest updates…because the virus threats that are out there change on a daily basis.  Professional hackers are out there constantly trolling the internet for unsecured computers to access financial information, install spyware or keyloggers, or somehow otherwise access your data.  Software such as Norton Internet Security will block any traffic that your computer has not requested.  McAfee and other Virus software providers have similar products that work just as well.

Install it, and pay the small fee that will offer you an entire year of free updates and solid protection from the threats that exist out there on the open internet.  Also, regularly run programs like SpyBot and AdAware that search for and clean your computer of spyware, adware, and malware.  These are all versions of virus-like software that have some malicious intent, such as monitoring your internet usage, logging your keyboard use, or something else.  It isn’t likely that you have any terrible software like that – most of the software out there like this only look for marketing information to determine ad displays when you visit a site.  However – there are some malicious applications and it’s much better to play it safe and protect your critical computer system and business data.

Protect your Data

Finally – constantly ensure that you have a backed up copy of all of your business data.  Correspondence, financial data, schedules, project work, and other files related to your business, when lost, can critically impact the success or failure of your business.  Protect it! 

 First - take a weekly full backup of all of your data files to a thumbdrive, or burn it to a rewriteable CD.  Personally I like thumbdrives, because it is extremely convenient – and depending which computer I’m on, I simply “sync” the data on the thumbdrive to a mirror directory on the computer I’m at.  In other words, when I’m on my desktop, I recopy all thumbdrive files to my desktop computer.  When I’m finished my work on that computer, I copy all of the files back to my thumbdrive.  Later, when I get on my laptop, I copy all thumdrive files to my laptop, do my work, then copy all of the files back to the thumbdrive.

 This way - there actually three backups.  So if either the thumbdrive, laptop, or desktop fails because of a virus or hardware problem, then I still have two copies of all of my data.  This is a redundant system that provides two levels of protection.

An additional form of protection is to use software like Acronis True Image, or Norton Ghost.  All of these software packages will take a “ghost” image of your computer for a full backup.  This means that not only are your data files stored away – but your entire computer’s image is backed up to cd.  This ”image” includes everything – your desktop, user settings, installed software, registry settings.   So if your computer ever crashes after a lightning strike and you lose your hard drive – you can simply buy a new hard drive, install your backed-up ghost image back onto it, and it’s like your computer never died.  Everything is still there - including every last shortcut you placed on your desktop, and every little piece of software you ever installed on your computer.

Information Security is a critical piece of protecting your online business from real crisis.  Take the time and invest the necessary resources to insure that all of your important data is secure and well protected.  There will come a time when you are very happy, and relieved, that you did.