How a Narrow Target Audience Helps Your Dialogue Marketing

October 12, 2006 · Print This Article

[Note: Portions of this section are reprinted from my 13 June 2006 post on this topic. I'm reprinting it here, in slightly modified form, because it fits logically in this section of the book and because many of you are new readers unfamiliar with my earlier posts on some of these topics. In remaining sections of this book I will occasionally reprint earlier posts for the same reason, but I will not note it again.]

If you’ve completed Exercise 4.1.1, you may be wondering why I urged such specificity about your ideal client demographic. Or perhaps you skipped the exercise because you envision yourself a generalist serving as many people in your geographic area as you can find.

Many mediators try to do it all, trying to reach a broad market and doing a little bit in several different arenas. The reasoning, as I understand it, is that you don’t want to say no to someone who calls, since not a lot of people are calling. The fear, as I understand it, is that narrowing your target market will do you out of potential work.

This approach, while common among ADR professionals trying to build a practice, is inconsistent with much of the leading marketing advice available. While seemingly counter-intuitive, narrowing your market actually gives you greater opportunity for business success. Here’s why:

With a focused target market, you can speak with a clearer voice and more focus to the people you’re trying to reach. When you try to write for everyone (for instance, in brochures, website, letters), you end up speaking to no one in particular and your message becomes watered down.
With a narrow target market, you know where to find the people you’re trying to reach. If, for example, you’re targeting a rock musician market (I know a mediator who does), you’re probably going to find these folks in different places and through different venues than, say, environmental agencies and organizations.
If you cast your net too widely, you spread yourself and your dollars very thin trying to reach everyone.
You’ll have a much easier and more effective time engaging an audience in dialogue if you’re genuinely interested in and have invested time and energy learning about that audience.
You will convey greater passion when you focus on a narrow market in which you’re genuinely interested, rather than trying to convince everyone you have a compelling interest in them. Fakery, even well intended fakery, is detectable and won’t serve you well in the long run.

A narrow target market is a place to begin, not the place you have to be forever, if you have diverse interests. I mentioned earlier in the book that when I founded my practice in 1997, my single target market was institutions of higher education. While I don’t serve only higher education today (neither do I market to everyone), that work provided a strong foundation with a solid income from which to diversity several years later.

When I look around at the mediators I know who are making a real living wage (or better!) in this field, every single one of them has identified one or a few very specific target markets. They may offer multiple types of services in those markets (e.g., mediation, facilitation, training), but they’re clear about their audience. How clear are you?

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