Mark Blomeley

One thing we hear in business as business owners all the time is “who is your target market”. If you’ve asked this question sometimes to other business owners, what is the response you generally get? You usually get something like “Men and Women over 30” or “small and medium companies”. I sincerely believe that the biggest issue and the biggest area that business owners slip up is not clearly defining or understanding their primary target market. In fact just the other day I asked an internet marketing newbie what his target market was, the answer “Home Business Owners, Entrepreneurs and anyone interested in Internet Marketing”

When you start to really think about and evaluate the marketing that you do as a business owner it’s very easy to slip into the trap of newspaper advertising or other forms of paid advertising and basically wanting to get the most out of your advertising. So what do you do? You create an advertisement that is potentially going to open the door to different markets, and you end up not appealing to anyone in particular. The result? Less effective advertising because you’re not appealing to the needs, wants and desires of anyone.

Again, I’ve been there and done that! I’ve run ads in local newspapers that have cost thousands of dollars (I hate to think how much money I have blown doing this) with very few leads to show for it and a horrible return on investment! Looking back I entirely put this down to broad focused marketing and not knowing my target market well enough.

When it comes to marketing it’s not so much the defining of the target market, because that is really the easy part, the hard part is doing the research and actually finding out what the target market wants! Often what you think they want is very different to what they actually want. If you go into marketing thinking you know what they want and start to advertise you put your dollars up to chance. Make sure you do your research and start understanding and eventually thinking like your target market, this will make your marketing appealing.

A client I used to train in my fitness business, was a very successful landscaper, so I asked him what his target market was and how he got his clients. Turns out his target market was “Outdoor landscaping for Doctor’s gardens” and his marketing was almost entirely word of mouth. That’s pretty incredibly don’t you think? Plus he has as much work as he wants, never had to worry about where his next job comes from.

If you think about this story above it makes complete sense. He has clearly defined who his target market is, he’s very good at what he does so delivers a very good service, then his target market talks and recommends him whenever they hear of another doctor that needs to renovate or build a new garden.

The tendency of when you are new to business is that you sit back and say ok, I’m going to try to get clients from anywhere and anyone; you just need to get critical mass before you worry about target marketing. Sure you might reach critical mass however your clientele may not necessarily be your target market, therefore word of mouth advertising is not going to be working perhaps as well as it should be.

There is a lot to be learnt by the story of my client above, if you can have a clearly defined target market like him, then you know what they are thinking, what they are looking for and how to interact and be valuable to them. Ultimately you become very appealing to your target market, additionally you can target your advertising a lot more specifically and you’ll be amazed at how successful you can be.

It’s easy to pass off a niche as too small (I would have thought my clients was) but this small niche could just be your ticket to an incredible business. I’m not saying that you can’t take clients on outside of your niche because you will appeal to people outside your niche to, but to simply target your advertising that way, because ultimately you can be everything to everyone.

For more information please feel free to check out previous posts or check out my 7 Step Sales System for Explosive Growth.

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Recently I was asked the question, “Who and what should I follow/learn to achieve my financial goals online”. What an incredibly hard question to answer don’t you think? Before I actually answer that question I want to digress slightly and bring up something I said in a previous post.

In my experience, there is such a thing as over learning, which I believe occurs when you learn at the expense of action. Don’t get me wrong, continual learning and personal development is extremely important and ultimately it’s something which I believe you should concentrate on for a fixed amount of time daily, but just like learning is important, action is just as important, actually more important.

You see the problem that a lot of budding internet entrepreneurs experience is they get so caught up in the great stuff that they are learning that they forget or just don’t implement 90% of what they learn. In the early stages of my internet marketing career, this is exactly what I experienced, too much learning, and not enough doing. As a result I do know a lot but my business is not as developed as it should be.

So I challenge you every time you do learn something, to go back and evaluate how much of that you have actually implemented, or better yet, how have you implemented as part of your day to day internet marketing activities. Ultimately if you can do something day in, day out your success is going to be tremendous, because the more action you take the more benefits you will reap.

So then, where do you start? Honestly there are so many different aspects and niches to internet marketing that this is a difficult question to answer. My experience is in the service industry and home based business industry, so I’ll give you my blue print if I were to start again.

1) Copywriting: This is easily the most beneficial skill to learn, whether it’s writing autoresponder messages or website content, this skill is an absolute must. The best course for this hands down is the copywriters’ guild course by Tim Erway. This isn’t just copy writing, this is sales funnels, website tweaking etc. Very handy course to have in your arsenal!

2) Word Press: Make sure your website/central hub is made from wordpress, go to wordpress.org, learn how to install this, how to use this. If you need bits and pieces to be tweaked (i.e. headers etc), you can easily find a cheap outsourcer to do it. The key thing here is that you know how to install it, use it and change it. This skill is a must!

3) Traffic Generation: Once you have your website set up and autoresponders set up, you need traffic; this is something you need to learn and to be honest there are so many people with different traffic generation strategies that you can learn. The key is to learn one or two and perfect them to the point you are generating at least 20 leads per day. Mike Dillard has some great courses in traffic generation definitely for PPC, also Mike Klingler has a really good social media course and there are a bunch of other really good traffic generation courses. If you want specifics feel free to leave a comment on my blog.

I believe that if you focus on learning these 3 areas above that you can launch into your internet marketing business effectively and successfully. Don’t try to branch out too much until you are effective with one or two strategies.

Essentially that’s how you get leads, if you want a system to be able to make sales over the phone or from your websites, then check out my 7 Step Sales System for Explosive Growth (sign up on the right of the page). This has been specifically adapted from a sales system that I use for my traditional business that has been proven to convert at 70 – 90%.

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In terms of books, it is hard to deny that the four hour work week has had and is having a major impact on young budding entrepreneurs and why wouldn’t it? Heck I would almost think that the Four Hour Work Week was targeted specifically target to Generation Y. I must admit that it was one book that definitely caught my attention, and I believe that there is a lot that can be taken away from The Four Hour Work Week; however it can also be argued that the four hour work week also has its limitations.

Tim Ferris certainly does provide a unique positive perspective into how you can potentially to live life and how a business can work for you and I certainly believe that this is one of the greatest benefits that the book portrays. Most small business owners definitely spend far too much in their business and not working on their business and this is where the book definitely would assist any small business owner.

Tim also brings up some very important and valid points when it comes to customers, customer management and time management in the book. Actually scheduling what tasks need to get done and allocating the relevant time is incredibly important. So often we work for the sake of working when in reality we can get more done in a shorter space of time, this is what the book is encouraging. Additionally customers that soak up time, energy and almost more importantly morale can hinder your business efforts, so sometimes it’s simply better to set them free and fire them!

It could be argued that the book makes building a business and becoming part of the “New Rich” seem easy, when in reality it can be an incredibly hard and painstaking process. Additionally a lot of businesses will not suit to be geared towards working just four hours per week, or in particular going down the track of outsourcing. One thing that should be remembered here is that when Tim Ferris decided to join the new rich and work 4 hours per week, his business situation was ideal. He had a business that was already turning over $40,000 plus per month and it was an online business.

Whatever your view is regarding the 4-Hour Work Week and how you interpret the information within the book is going to determine how much you get out of it. Obviously the book is not how to create a business it’s about how you can potentially streamline your business life to get the most out of all the other aspects of your life. Which I think is a great concept.

Ultimately I believe the people who can benefit most out of the book are entrepreneurs with existing businesses who ultimately “know their business”. In other words they know and are comfortable with their product/service, have systems in place or at least know what day to day activities need to be carried out and ultimately know what activities grow their business.

There are still aspects of the book that are helpful and inspiring to budding entrepreneurs, but there are many more relevant books you should read and follow prior to aspiring to the four hour work week. Why? Well from my personal experience (and this is obviously entirely different to Tim Ferris) is that in order to remove yourself from a business you a need a very clear direction, have some stability within the business (i.e. critical customer mass) and to know your business operations. Achieving that can take at least 6 to 12 months for traditional businesses to achieve (potentially less for online businesses). Ultimately product businesses are going to be easier for the owner to achieve the four hour work week than service businesses, because a vast majority of the time the owner is the product and it takes time to change that.

I do highly recommend this book to business people and entrepreneurs as the concepts are fantastic but definitely consider your personal situation prior to trying to jump in and achieve the 4 Hour Work Week in the next two months. Ultimately the 4 Hour Work Week is possible, however as with anything plan your work then work your plan.

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