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Started a business and having trouble narrowing down your audience?

This is a very typical problem that many business owners run into when starting a business of their own, especially one that is primarily online.

When you have the entire world as your audience, this task can be a bit daunting; to say the least.

Finding the right niche for your business can be tough, as it takes exploring to really understand the entire market to begin with.

Don’t worry, by the end of this article, you will have some new ideas on how to fuel your business and point it towards clients that want to find you.

Ask The Obvious Questions FIRST!

What does my business do? Let’s start with A Branding Company, to give you the best understanding of what we are trying to convey here.

When A Branding Company was started, we had the idea of building websites and doing everything that digital marketing companies did.

The problem lies in one word and one word alone: EVERYTHING.

You can’t do everything! We had trouble focusing our efforts down to one main area, which really stressed us out and made things way harder than they had to be.

This is one of the most daunting tasks in business creation, as there are so many different directions to go, you often can find yourself lost if not careful.

So, how did we remedy the issue of finding the right niche for our business?

What do we enjoy doing the most out of all these avenues we are pursuing? Website design.

Task one complete.

Not quite. Web design is essentially like saying “we build houses”. The next question you are going to get asked is, “what kind of houses do you build?”

To which you say… “good houses…?” Poor answer. Keep narrowing it down.

We decided to chase clients that would not have extensive websites, at first, so that we wouldn’t be bogged down by huge workloads and projects that required 20+ people, when we were only a small company of 2 people.

This helped us immensely and it came solely from asking a few tough questions that took a little while to come up with a good answer.

How Can YOU Be Different In This Niche?

What is it that makes your business different than every other one in this niche?

If you’re the only business in this niche and there’s adequate need from consumers, then well done- you can stop reading this and go on and continue printing money.

However, more times than not, there are competitors in your niche. You have to identify what it is about your business that makes you stand out from the rest.

Is it your subscription method? Lead time? Price? Quality? Interface?

Once you identify this, you have already climbed more than half of the mountain. You have found the niche you want to be in, as well as found the qualities that make you different from your competitors.

When A Branding Company started life, we had to be creative in how we stood out.

A lot of our business began by cutting costs way down and eating profits, in order to show people the work that we were capable of, in order to form relationships and get the referral train moving.

Through this, companies that had used other developers in the past, saw how our quality and attention to detail far surpassed the others.

This spreads like a wildfire and before long we had referral business asking to do jobs for them, solely based on our quality that had been mentioned by previous clients.

That is ONE of many ways to stand out. The biggest way to stand out is through your product, it just needs to be slightly different than your competitors.

Let me give you an example of this first hand:

On Amazon, you can look up two identical items, for example, a utensil holder (random, but stay with me).

Open two similar products, from two different companies, and go to the reviews. Compare them by reading the 1,2 and 3 star reviews in depth.

Now, in business, you take these poor reviews and you create a product that addresses the complaints of other customers on other products.

This is how you dominate a niche by being different. It is no different in web development, marketing, or business of any kind.

You just have to find out what it takes to be different. Often times the customers alone will tell you, if you just ASK.

It Soon Becomes A Matter of Driving Visitors To Your Site.

What do you mean by this?

Once you figure out what your niche is, how to be different from your competitors, you have to capture the attention of the audience you want to sell to.

You have to find the people who left the poor reviews and show them how your product or service is going to create value in their lives- thus causing them to use your business.

This part is the fun part, as it is really trial and error in many cases.

There are tons of ways to go about this, I will list a few below and go into detail:

Google and SEO:

One for sure way to grow your business and drive traffic is through the implementation of SEO. Stand out on Google, stand out on planet earth.

It’s really simple but the process can be hard if you don’t know what you are doing.

Many companies have steep budgets for this, but when you are just starting out, it is important to remember quality over quantity. See our article on SEO alternatives to drive traffic to your site.

Facebook and PPC Ads:

The cheap relative of the SEO tactic. If you have a product that you know is going to create value and just want an audience to see it, this is going to be the quickest method for you to try.

Targeted ads are a quick and relatively cost effective way at gathering new visitors and spreading word of your product through the social platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Word of Mouth:

A classic approach to marketing is the famous word of mouth method.

This is tried and true and always sure to be a success as long as you are truly putting your money (reputation) where your mouth is.

We started this way because it was the quickest and lowest cost method to getting our business up and running. We began having new clients Google us and help us to establish traction in the market.

It’s never a bad idea to go with this method as there is little to no risk involved.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that building a brand is a tough task. If it was easy, everyone would do it and everyone would succeed.

That said, these 3 main ideas are essential in your businesses success, as they will help you take a step back and see the challenge from a new, smaller, perspective.

Being able to clear your head and focus on smaller goals rather than large, seemingly unreachable goals, is essential to keeping yourself from reaching your mental capacity and burning out.

If you have any questions or want personal help on brand development or website creation, please reach out to us through our project planner or contact us page– we are always happy to help!

It’s no secret, finding clients is the hardest part to any business and everybody wants to know how to find clients.

Glowing start actually posted an article that explains how customers are the MOST important part to any business, because without them, there is no business!

Anyways… there are factors that can play a large role in your clientele capturing capabilities, such as product, location of your office, employees, etc.

But what if you don’t have these things or just want the basics on how to find clients?

No worries, we will discuss this in length below.

With that said, let’s break this topic down into 3 sections:

1. Knowing
2. Searching
3. Acquiring

1. How To Find Clients: Knowing

I think that it goes without saying; if you don’t know your business, you’re going to have a hard time succeeding in the first place, especially when it comes to the original question of how to find clients for your business.

But what does it mean to know your business?

It means knowing your business like you know information about something before you buy it; you do your research.

You have to understand your market and you have to understand your client.

What I mean by this is that you don’t know the kind of client you want to attract, you aren’t going to be able to attract anyone.

The internet, major cities and social media, are far too vast these days to simply search generically for people based upon a location or the fact that your business is in the same market of what you are searching for.

This is not a good way to find clients for your business.

Taking it a step further and knowing who your clients are, such as what they are searching for, their age, the part of the city they live in (targeted ads), etc. are all factors at knowing your clientele.

But to know them, is to know your business. It all circles around this concept of knowing the business that you’re in.

The best way I can help to make sense of this, is to put it into a real world example.

We have a client that works in the real estate business, we help him to market his homes after he renovates them.

The quality of work that he does is some of the best in his entire region, there are few companies that are able to be as detailed and high quality as he is, for the same price that he is.

This goes to the part where I mentioned “There are factors that can play a large role in your clientele capturing capabilities, such as product...”, our client we are talking about has the product down.

And it was working great for him, until the market got more and more saturated and he was having a harder time finding people to buy his homes over his competitors.

We looked at Google Trends and saw the upward popularity spike for the search term San Francisco Real Estate, which affirmed our ideas of a growing market and higher demand.

The days of my client being essentially a monopoly, were over. His niche was no longer his and to aid him through this newfound hardship, he was going to have to take more drastic marketing measures to find new clients to buy his homes.

It wasn’t that his competitors homes were nicer, or even in a better location; it’s that they were being marketed better and to the right people.

Our client knows his business, but that’s as far as it went, he didn’t have the slightest idea of who he wanted his clientele to be.

Seeing as he is a friend, my advice was to really focus on the area for the specific home: i.e., is it on the water, is it modern, is it 10 bedrooms or 20, what is the neighborhood like… you get the point.

Then, we started looking into keywords for those particular niches; ultra modern, ocean view Palo Alto, upcoming listings San Francisco, etc., until we were able to tell which terms were more popular.

Through making a lengthy list of keywords, all of which fit his location, his product and his price range, we could then start to understand how much interest there was: there was a lot.

Why was he still having trouble then?

Because that was only half of the “knowing” equation. The other half comes from knowing where these clients are.

He knew he wanted established families, as they were going to be more attracted to the specific neighborhood of this particular home, substantially more than a bachelor would be.

Right away we knew that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were not going to be where these clients were most easily found.

This is the other part of knowing.

Quick Recap:

Knowing is the first part of the process to finding clients for your business.

It is broken down into 2 main parts: knowing your businesses market and what kind of clients you want to attract, and also knowing where those clients are likely to be found.

Remember, if you don’t know what it is that you’re looking for, how will you ever find it?

2. How To Find Clients: Searching

Let’s say that you are in the market to buy a new car.

You already know what kind of vehicle you want; color, mileage, price, location, options, etc.

What now?

Search for it.

Mind blowing… I know.

When you search for it, you’re going to have tons of potential vehicles, since you know the parameters and almost all of them are going to match what it is that you want to buy.

So where to go from here?

This is going to be the part that intertwines with #3 on our list, in that the acquisition process and searching can often times go hand in hand.

Needless to say, you can’t acquire until you search.

So… back to the searching concept, you now have a list of hundreds of potential matches.

It’s time to dig into these results and find out more about the vehicle you want to buy.

This is no different than when you are starting a business and want to acquire clients.

Once you know the client that you want to work with, where they’re located, what industry they’re in, etc., you can begin to dig into the results and start seeing if they could be the match that you’re looking to find.

You’re search query for a possible client and whether they will be a match, is going to consist of items such as their budget, their business, location, level of trouble their having, type of work they want done, IF they want any work done, etc.

These are questions that you will come up with based upon your own specific business.

This is part of the search because you are looking for a specific result: in the case of a vehicle, it’s the car you end up buying. In business, it’s the client you end up working with.

The search isn’t over until you have found the match that you want to work with.

The hard work unfortunately, has just begun.

Now that you have found the client, you have to win them over. Sometimes they aren’t even looking for the service you’re selling, which is why you have to KNOW your business to begin with, or making it this far will amount to nothing once you get the prospect on the phone.

I can say though, that if you’ve made it this far, you already have so much going for you when you speak to this potential customer. We will touch on this in the acquisition process, which is next.

Quick Recap:

Searching is imperative when it comes to finding anything, as most of the time, what you’re looking for won’t just show up at your front door begging to be found (although, I wish it would… but what fun would that be?).

Searching goes beyond simply entering your parameters and clicking go. It is in depth research and finding out whether or not a match is going to truly be a match, it’s a search within a search, if you will.

3. How To Find Clients: Acquiring

Acquisition is the final piece to the puzzling question of “how to find clients”, as it is the closing sequence to locking in business.

We know that a true search brings us to the client we want to acquire, but that’s all it does. Our job is to explain to the client why we are of value to them and why they need us in their (business) lives.

As previously aforementioned, the search process takes care of some acquisition parts, as it really credits us and helps creating talking points that will show how we already know more than our competition, when speaking to potential clients.

When you do the search properly, you spend countless hours finding the clients you want, which gives you a wealth of information about the market and the person you are CALLING to acquire as a client!

Imagine that… getting a call from a business that has already taken the time to learn about you and your company and knows what you might be looking for, just based off of some search research that they did.

I would be impressed and so will the businesses you call.

We can tie all of these points together, as they all play off of one another.

I’ve already explained how the searching process, if done correctly, can provide tremendous value in the acquiring stage of how to find clients, but the knowing portion can as well.

Knowing your business and what you’re after (client wise), is going to provide value to the people that you wish to acquire as customers. It’s going to give you substantial credit over your competitors when you speak to potential clients, as you won’t beat around the bush and can say “this is why I called you… (then list your reasons from your searching and knowing your business/industry, that we went over earlier)”.

Conclusion

Breaking down the process of how to find clients, is essential to being successful at this topic in general. It is a big task and is often the hardest part of being a business owner.

Looking at it from a perspective of 3 simple steps, as opposed to one major task, will make your work load seem more management and less stressful.

You can and will succeed at the game of how to find clients for your business, as long as you follow these steps and really take your time throughout the process.

Once you get it down, it will become second nature and will be much less time consuming for you, as well as give you the ability to teach it to other people within your company and grow your business exponentially.

Yes you read the title correctly. You can grow your business fast, and only in 3 simple steps.

Want to know how?

Well just keep reading and when you’re done with this article, you will have 3 new ways to rapidly grow your business.

In my opinion, the hardest part of any business is being patient. You’re passionate about your brand and you want to see it grow quickly! Who can blame you for that?

Unfortunately, growth takes time and doesn’t happen overnight (in most cases).

With that said, what I am going to explain to you will drastically increase the time it takes for the growth process to begin.

Let’s start with the very basics here, and work our way into more complex ideas.

How do we define growth? Grow: become larger or greater over a period of time; increase.

Obviously this is a process. It isn’t instant.

In any process there is the factor of time.

The concept of time is what brings us to the first point:

1. Develop good habits early

Develop good habits? Yes.

Just like making your bed in the morning. Sit down and create a list of everything you want to accomplish within, say, the next 3 months.

Now, what is that going to take to get there? Magic?

No.

Persistence?

Yes.

Persistence is a form of magic that we use in the real world that many people can’t understand. It is developed through the creation of good habits, both in business and in life.

I want to make this very easy to understand and follow, so let’s pretend you are just starting out with your new business.

What kind of habits should you look to develop?

They are relatively similar across all fields, and although different for every individual, similar in nature across the entire spectrum.

You need to get in a routine.

I see so many small businesses or startup ideas burn out because a lack of foundation and habit.

They will go so hard in the first couple of weeks, but then they stop doing what they did at the beginning.

For example, if they are cranking out an article a day for their blog, this is great. This, paired with managing the site and creating new ideas and going after new customers, is how you build the business (as well as many other things which I speak on in other articles).

The problem is they stop.

Why do they stop?

They never made it a TRUE habit.

Another part of it is that they also burned themselves out because they let this idea of growth blind them.

One could say they became greedy and thought if they work super hard for two weeks they will see massive growth or a top rank on Google.

I WISH that is how it worked. But sadly, it takes time to see both of those things.

Back to creating this habit; people are incredibly lazy in today’s modern times, they want instant gratification but don’t want to necessarily put in the work to get there.

This frustrates many of us to see, but it also helps us in business because it thins out our competition.

We need to look at what it takes to make a habit, a true habit that lasts.

30 day rule. Commit to it.

According to lifehack.org you must commit to 30 days; 3-4 weeks essentially, to make a habit become automatic- what I call a true habit.

You do it without thinking about it anymore.

Block off a month to dedicate ___ time to this habit per day.

Once this is complete, the habit is formed and it takes no more mental energy to do anymore, as it is automatic.

Start Simple

If you are just starting out at this, don’t make your 30 day goal, or should I say habit that you want to learn, something that is hard.

Like doing 1000 pushups a day.

Or typing 3 multi-thousand word blog posts a day.

That’s insane! You will burn yourself out so quickly!

The point of this is to really drive home the concept of how to form a habit, which will eventually become a habit on it’s own and lead you to easily create more and more of these positive habits.

Hold Yourself Accountable

Go find a friend and have them hold you accountable.

If you’re trying to do this for business purposes, which I would imagine that you are, perhaps your business partner would be a good fit for this as it will benefit them as well, in the long run.

Form a Trigger

If you are planning to write one blog post a day, then make the habit formed through the use of a trigger.

If that is doing the post in one hour, from 10-11 every morning, with a cup of coffee in your superman slippers, then do that.

Just make it the same everyday, and then when 10am roles around, you already know what you are going to be doing.

Every successful business or businessperson, has a list of habits that have gotten them to where they are, through setting themselves apart from the crowd.

Let’s look at what is called the 2% mindset:

All of these outside the box concepts, are things that we all want. But only 2% of us go after.

In other words, they are not easy to obtain.

Until they become the norm, because of habits that you have created.

Take a look at this image to see what I mean:

You ultimately have to choose which path you want to take, as you can have it hard now, for ease later on.

Or choose ease now for pain later on.

This directly relates to business and specifically to habit forming, as you must develop positive habits early on that are going to take you where it is that you want to go.

Working hard and dedicating yourself to your goals and dreams, is not going to be easy. But you’re doing it for yourself rather than for someone else.

Quick recap on habit formation and how it correlates to your businesses success:

Remember, growth is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. 30 days is how long it takes to form a habit.

Habits must be chosen based on where you want to see your business go / goals that you have made.

You do this because it isn’t easy, and because (most) of your competition isn’t doing it. If they are, all you simply have to do, is do it a little better than they are.

2. Create a brand around a researched idea only

I have watched countless businesses try to get started on this really good name and idea that someone came up with. But there is no foundation to it or research to support that it will indeed, work.

Starting a business is hard enough. Do the research before hand don’t make it harder than it needs to be.

A website is a home for your products or services, so if you have a good name and overall “umbrella” idea, then what good is that going to do when you don’t even know if your idea can sell?

Have the prettiest website in the world with the best name for the product… but no buyers = no business.

Think of it like the multi-path chart in the picture earlier in the article, that illustrates 95% failure vs 5% success, and the routes associated with both of them.

You can come up with a name that works for a specific product or service, which will be fun and easy at first.

BUT. Big but here.

It is going to get hard in the long run when your momentum starts to slow, because all you have is a name and no real foundation or research to support the name and idea that you have.

Your idea might be great, but you need to KNOW that even if you don’t have the prettiest branding, you can still sell.

Google Keywords is going to be your best friend in this venture, as it will literally show you how popular certain ideas or phrases are, all over the world.

Above, we can see how hair products are a popular query in general. Most specifically, in Jamaica, under the topic of natural product.

So what does this mean?

It means that if you live in Jamaica, are planning on starting a business there in the natural hair products industry, you have a customer base.

It’s that easy. You just have to do it.

Which brings us to the last point.

3. Know where you want your business to go

You would think that this is pretty self explanatory, but often times is overlooked.

Why do you create a business?

Many people have an in depth answer that they can give to this simple question.

The problem lies in them forgetting to ask themselves this on a daily basis.

If you don’t know why you’re doing something, or what the direction you want it to go is, then how are you going to advance to the next level?

As a business owner, how can you lead anyone or anything, if you don’t have a destination (or even just a remote area) that you are trying to get to?

You can’t, because people will see right through it and you will watch your business fall apart.

Sounds harsh, but it is true.

This is so often forgotten about, as people get so caught up in the process of starting out, or dealing with orders, and just solving problems as they come, that they lose sight of where they are even trying to get to.

So often in the consulting business, we see companies that become to grossly unorganized because of a lack of direction.

Everything starts to pile up for them and it’s usually just because of a lack of organized goal setting, discipline, and no overall direction.

When starting a business, you will never know what is going to happen at the end of the day. If you did know that, you would likely go to wall street and make a killing.

With that said, you may not know what is going to happen at the end of the day, but you can create a road map that outlines what you want to happen and you work to ensure that you achieve as close to that outcome as possible.

You can do this on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly, yearly, etc. you name it. It’s essential to goal plan and set your sights on what you want to happen.

How will you ever get where you are going if you don’t have a destination to begin with?

You can make success a goal, or a certain financial achievement as a goal, but you won’t get there off dumb luck and guessing.

If you could, everyone would do it!

What I’m saying is that you need to put your goals and your dreams, your aspirations, onto paper or somewhere where you can look at them daily and work towards accomplishing.

Starting a business gives you enough to worry about, you don’t need to be wasting your mental bandwidth on remembering where you want to go.

Put it on paper and make it effortless, nothing more than simply glancing at it and knocking the next thing off the list that gets you that much closer to achieving the goal (for that time period).

Conclusion

There are many ways to run a business and everyone does it differently.

We can all agree with that.

However, if you take these 3 topics into consideration…

1. Develop Good Habits Early
2. Create a brand through research
3. Have a specific direction for your business

… you will absolutely see growth in many different forms.

There’s the saying “The harder I work, the luckier I get”

These 3 points will help to prove that saying true, as they force hard work and eliminate the ability to make excuses for yourself or get complacent.

As a business owner, no one cares more about your success than you do. They also don’t care if you fail (from the standpoint of yourself), so the only one who is truly going to kick you into gear and help your business see success, is yourself.

Work hard and apply these three methods to your daily routine, and I assure you that in a short bit of time, you will see great progress and growth in your business.