Verbatim Services

Here are a few more ideas for getting the most out of your advertising dollars.

Determine who you’re trying to reach. You know you have something valuable to offer. Who most needs your services?

Even the biggest of the mega-companies don’t waste advertising on consumers who are outside of their target market. Take a look at the age range, gender, and income level of the people who are most likely to take advantage of the services that you have to offer. What do they read, where do they live, what other kinds of businesses do they buy from?

You may be wondering how you’re ever going to find out this information. Thanks to the power of the internet, you have access to literally millions of sales leads at your fingertips. Companies such as infoUSA.com or salesgenie.com can, for a fee, provide you with business and consumer data that has been broken down into any number of categories. Other companies such as marketresearch.com can supply you with ready-made reports containing all kinds of business and consumer data.

Now if you’re like me and want to start on a smaller scale, you can do a very simple thing that may be more suitable to your needs. Start listening to people! Be genuinely interested in their needs, hopes, and desires. Learn what makes them choose one product over another. Ask them why they would or wouldn’t be interested in the service that you have to offer. Remember, your purpose here is not to sell them on something, so make sure they know that the pressure is off when you’re asking these questions. Make it a conversation instead of a survey. People like to know that their concerns are heard. It may be that they’ll start asking you questions, and end up buying from you just because you cared enough to listen to them. If that happens, that’s great, but selling is not really your goal here. Your goal is to get to know your market from the ground up which, at least for your small business, may be the most effective means of all.