Matching Your Target Market – A Lesson From Mexican Entrepreneurs
February 16, 2010
How to reach your peeps is just about always on my mind – it comes with the territory of being a marketing therapist. So here I was, two days ago, lounging around on the public beach in Puerto Vallarta. And I ended up, no big surprise, watching the vendors who sell up and down the beach. It is a great case study of how to figure out what to sell to a specific target market.
In the space of two hours we were visited by quite a number of beach vendors. Here’s a list of the items we were offered:
Cooked skewered shrimp, topped off by one of the limes hooked onto a separate skewer.
Heavy blankets in various colors that could be used on the beach or as a rug at home.
Brightly colored large pitchers that looked like ceramic but were actually wood.
Toys and gum from a basket.
Tuba-tuba, which is a chilled coconut drink served into a cup from a huge hollowed out double gourd.
Lace shawls.
All sorts of jewelry – silver, shells, beaded.
Elaborately carved cold fresh fruit, your choice, from a head-balanced platter.
Music from a 3-group band, complete with voice and instruments (including a bass fiddle)
Music from a two-person steel band percussion group, a 4-foot long instrument that unfolded and sat on a table, complete with sound system (battery operated).
Sunglasses
Bracelets hand-woven with your name on it
Straw hats
Large silver and mother of pearl fish which are jointed throughout the body so that the fish “swim” when wiggled.
I’m not quite sure this is everything, but the list covers most of the vendors we saw drifting by.
OK, let’s say that your job is to be a beach vendor on a warm Mexican beach. Some of your potential customers will be sitting in chairs under palapas, some will be already sitting in restaurants along the beach. Your job is to sell as much as you can from what you are offering. Can you name the top two things to sell? Can you name the bottom two things to sell? Remember that your target market is beach goers, some of whom are foreign, some of whom are locals, all of whom are on the beach, and some of whom are eating or drinking in restaurants. What are your picks for the two best things to sell to this market, and the two worst things?
Keep in mind, too, that you have to carry what you sell, walking in the sand, up and down the beach for miles and hours a day.
My two picks for the worst? The brightly colored large pitchers, which look like ceramic but are made of wood. They are awkward to carry, the vendor can’t actually carry more than about 4 at a time, and who on the beach wants one of these pitchers right then? Even if a potential customer was not on the beach, the pitchers are too large to easily carry home if you are a foreigner, and more than likely the locals don’t even use them as they don’t hold liquid. I think the guy who chose to sell the pitchers needs a few marketing lessons!
My second choice for the worst to sell, although a close race, is the steel band percussion. The instrument was huge to carry (requiring both persons) up and down the sand, hard to set up, and had to be hauled along with a fold-out table and the battery-operated sound system. That’s a lot to set up and take down for just one song, even if you had good luck selling the music to a lot of people. Plus, many people besides the one person who paid for the music can hear it, so you aren’t exactly going to sell music to the next person, are you? And frankly, most beach goers are busy sleeping, reading, riding the waves, or walking up and down the beach…..they don’t really have hearing live music on their minds.
My two choices for the best things to sell? Straw hats, because lots of beachgoers get to the beach thinking they won’t need a hat. But when they get there, they realize they do! The hats are relatively light to carry (I saw one vendor with a stack of about 50 straw hats on his head). As I watched him sell to someone on the sand, I realized he also had an upsell! He took leather braided bands out of his pocket and offered to add one to the hat for just a few more pesos. Smart guy – beach goers need hats, and they didn’t wear him out to carry.
My second choice for the best thing to sell is the cold, fresh fruit. It both gives a beach person something to eat and quenches thirst. It’s colorful and appetizing, and very noticable since most of the fresh fruit vendors carry the trays on their heads. It’s not expensive, it’s healthy, and even the kids seemed to like it. It’s probably one of the easiest things to carry on the beach, and the tray actually gives the vendor a little shade as he walks.
The point to this is that there are many things to consider when you are deciding what and how to sell to your target market. You do have to consider the pound of flesh it takes out of you, the costs you have in obtaining the product, and, of course, what you believe your market will want.
This doesn’t apply to the beach vendors as much as it does to you, but one way to quit guessing what your market wants is to ask them! Use a brief survey, talk to a subset of your prospects now and then, keep your ear to the ground. You’ll be more apt to design something that is wanted and needed than if you just put something on your back and start walking.
(c) Sue Painter
How To Set A Goal And Make It Stick
January 30, 2010
When I speak, I often engage the audience, working interactively. Why? Because I know that the more we engage all our senses (not just our ears) when we hear new material, the more it helps us to anchor that new material within us. I also know that anchored information will more likely be used when we return to our offices. Instructional designers call this “transfer of training.” Proving that what we teach is actually taken and used in someone’s work is the holy grail of professional training.
When you decide to set a new goal for yourself, how do you do it? Do you sit down and make a list? Do you write out an affirmation? Do you simply think to yourself one day while you’re in the car “I need to do thus-and-such” and set out to do it? Whatever your method, you can have a higher degree of sticking to your new goal if you include as many of your senses as you can to help you along.
There are several ways of doing this, and most of the methods I know work pretty well. One that is popular right now is called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT is often used to change our emotional reaction to a certain situation. For instance, if you get nervous speaking in front of people, you can learn to use EFT to say affirmations and tap yourself on specific points of the body. EFT is nicknamed “tapping” because you actually do tap yourself repeatedly at specific spots as you are saying the sentences you construct about your goal — the change you desire. I’ve used EFT more than once and if it is used consistently, it has worked for me. To learn more about EFT, you can contact my friend Annie Wills, at Full Circle Coaching.
I’m going to give you another way to involve your senses and make your new goal stick, though. It is often called VAK, which stands for Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic. I like VAK because it is another way to become an embodied entrepreneur. Simply put, that means that you are engaged in your work with your heart, soul, mind AND body – and you are sure to be quite successful if you can achieve that!
So, to set a goal and put the power of VAK behind it, here’s what you do:
- Write your goal down.
- Close your eyes, and ask yourself “what will you see that will let you know you’ve attained your goal?” Even better, you can give this question and the following ones to a friend and ask them to walk you through this and answer to her, out loud. Take a breath or two, and see what pictures you get, what you’ll see when your goal is met. You will probably get more than one vision. Open your eyes, and write each of them down.
- Again, close your eyes and ask yourself “what will people say to you once you’ve reached the goal?” After you’ve recorded your answer (or had your friend record it for you), try asking yourself “what will people say about you once you’ve reached your goal?” And finally, ask what you would say to yourself when your goal is reached. Record your answers, or have your friend do it for you.
- (This is my favorite part!) Now, close your eyes again. Ask yourself how you will feel when you’ve reached this new goal. Really take some time to let this sink in, and see what feelings arise in you. Once you have a good strong feeling going, ask yourself about the color, shape, texture, and even the temperature of that feeling. Finally, ask yourself where the feeling is located in your body. Record all your answers. Don’t rush yourself, give yourself time to really get into the feeling of reaching this goal.
- Finally, ask yourself what belief you could state about yourself that will help you get this goal. For instance, if you want to lose weight but always snack at night, could you create a belief about yourself that you are able to easily turn your attention from eating after 8:00 PM? Work on this replacing your current belief that it is “impossible not to eat” or “I must eat because I get too fatigued, too bored, or too scared not to eat at night.” In other words, replace your negative self-talk with a positive belief in yourself as someone who is capable of doing what you want to do.
- Be sure to ask yourself if you foresee any reason NOT to reach this goal. If you secretly think that being thinner will be bad in some way you will not reach your goal until you have put that belief to bed. We almost always have a secret reason that we don’t want to do what we say we want to do. I say I want to improve my auditory Spanish skills, but secretly I don’t want to put in the extra half hour a day to do that. So, of course, I don’t! Bring your secret reasons up into your consciousness, and you’ll go a long way to helping yourself get that goal.
The point here is to create a framework around you that helps support you in all your senses. If you have a goal to grow a rose garden, you can close your eyes and envision the layout, the sunshine, the colors, and the smells for sure. The more you can embody your goals, the more you’ll be able to make it stick. Let me know how it works for you.
Resolution: Increase Your Income in the New Year
December 28, 2008
Do yourself, your community, your family, and your business a big, fat favor. Resolve that in the New Year you will not once use the excuse of a bad economy for why your business is not making more money. Resolve that you will not waste time discussing with others what effect today’s economy might have on your business throughout the New Year. Resolve to turn the conversation away from “the economy sucks” when you are talking with other business owners. Resolve to analyze your business’s products and services, just as you should always be doing, and resolve to change what you need to change to meet the market. Resolve to ask your existing clients and customers what they most need from you now, and make it your business to provide exactly that, at the very highest quality and with a keen eye toward customer service. Resolve to discover at least three businesses with whom you can work collaboratively, in such a way that it builds both of you. Resolve to make 2009 a very, very good year.
Resolve to keep uppermost in your mind that energy follows thought. When you really get this concept you will understand that working in each moment to create your life as you want it is the highest and best use of your time. Resolve to keep on this track, and watch your business thrive!
It’s Your Business – Today’s Economy
November 12, 2008
Consumer Reports (www.consumerreports.org) did a poll the other day, which tells us that 76% of Americans will cut spending over this holiday season. This means that purchases, travel, parties, gifts, cards and all the related ways we spend at this time of year will be down quite a bit. The poll also points out that about 6% of us (that’s roughly 12 million) still owe credit card debt from last Christmas!
Consumers get savvy in tight times – that’s a fact you can take to the bank. What else will you be taking to the bank over the holiday season, though? As an entrepreneur, you have several advantages over large, lumbering, inflexible businesses. Use these advantages wisely, and you can thrive in the upcoming holiday season that everyone says will be tough.
- Stay close to your customers and listen very carefully to what they need. In tight times, people shift their spending somewhat to things they really need rather than fulfilling wants. I guarantee you have the opportunity to listen better than 90% of large businesses. Listen and learn – and create a program or a product that answers the needs you hear.
- Offer unique, personalized service that no big-box store can hope to match. Deliver, wrap, offer a wish list sign-up, send e-mail messages with “hints” to friends and family. Have more than one special event which you publicize well, with door prizes that make it worth the customer’s time to come by. Offer a small gift if your customer brings a friend. Have live music to set an open and relaxed mood – which offers a gig to a local pianist or other musicians who might be hurting. If you don’t have a store-front, point out that you can help with gift lists via e-commerce, which helps your customer save time and gas money. Collaborate with other entrepreneurs to put together packages and cross-market to each other’s customers.
- Offer your products and services in new ways. If you’re a coach, pull together an hour-long session focused on the New Year and offer it on a gift card. Use your e-zine to point out that friends and family want VALUE in gifts, which your expertise can provide. Offer services to people outside your normal target – advice to kids or elders, for example.
Ask for the referral – ask customers to pass along your name and the unique things you have to offer. Word of mouth advertising is the best you can get, and the cheapest, too!
Use the mantra “listen, create, respond” with every customer and every potential customer. Your willingness to be unique and creative will show and will naturally attract people to you. These tips and your own attitude will create a holiday season in which your business thrives.
Sue P.
Making Sunshine in the Midst of Rain
June 10, 2008
Who would have thought? My business partner in www.scrapbookspirit.com, Janet, is here with me in Mexico, where we arrived on Saturday with big plans to spend the week working on our business. On the agenda:
- Update our business purpose
- Rewrite our business plan
- Rewrite our marketing plan
- Create a draft for our upcoming Scrapbook Techniques book.
The fact is, we anticipated doing much of this while sitting around the swimming pool, watching the ocean and ordering beverages in tall glasses that come with long straws. Our hotel has WiFi on the grounds, and we both showed up with our laptops, ready to dig in and get a lot of work done. Our luggage bulged with samples we need to review for upcoming publications, nestled in with our bathing suits and sunscreen.
Well! We are in the midst of rain. Rain every day. Rain all day long. Rain that has socked in as if we were in Seattle or Vancouver or the Amazon rain forest. Grey clouds obliterate the horizon. I can’t tell where the ocean ends and the gray skies begin.
This puts me in mind of how it is for business owners. You can plan for one thing, and the environment changes around you faster than you can say “donde va el sol?” (Where did the sun go?) Great business owners note the change, adapt, and move on. Others notice (usually too late), and then spend precious time whining rather than adjusting. In the meanwhile, their opportunity to profit has gone down the rain spout and off into the gutter somewhere. Here’s a few hot tips:
- Environment changes constantly
- There is always opportunity in change
- Whining doesn’t lead you toward opportunity.
Not that I am Dr. Phil, but here’s a script to stop your whining and made sunshine out of rain “I worked so hard and planned so carefully to do _______________ in my business this month. Now I see there are changes that are in the way of that success. I’m disappointed, but I learned from my efforts and that experience will come in useful at some point. Upon careful observation, I see that I could now change and be profitable from creating ____________________. I absolutely do what is necessary for my business to thrive. Here’s my list for today’s work.”
Janet and I have rewritten our mission statement, restated every single business goal, accepted a brand new logo from our graphics person, cancelled an order with a supplier who is not working with us well, made plans for our first “Mexi-Scrap” Retreat, and created 4 new tips and techniques for our book. What we haven’t done is sit by the pool or watch the dolphins play. We haven’t ruined our laptops trying to sit by the pool no matter what. We haven’t slathered on the sunscreen when we don’t need it. And most of all, we haven’t whined. The beach is still beautiful, the palm trees are swaying, and we see that a drenched Mexico has its own beauty.