In my last article, I revealed to you that there are 30 fundamentals required to build a successful business.

And yet, in more than 22 years of coaching and consulting, I have never met a SINGLE business that had even one of these fundamentals in place… NOT ONE!!! It’s no wonder that the failure rate for small business is approximately 96% within their first 5 years.

Last time, I briefed you on the first of these critical fundamentals… the “market-dominating position.”

Simply put, this means that EVERY business must differentiate itself from all of its competitors. It must find some way to stand out from the crowd… to separate itself from all others. In other words, it must make itself “unique.”

I then gave you a real life example involving a chiropractor, and how he was just like every other chiropractor – he treated about a dozen different conditions such as back pain, neck pain, Fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, sciatica and so on. Unfortunately, ALL chiropractors are also trained in most of these conditions as well, so there was nothing unique or different about him.

We then set out to create a market-dominating position for him where he focused exclusively on helping Fibromyalgia sufferers. We created a small marketing campaign around this positioning, and in 4 days he generated 137 leads and closed 37 new patients at $2500 each. He invested just $1300 in his marketing and netted $92,500… a 7,100% ROI. That is the power of having a “market-dominating position.”

But let’s discuss the second critical fundamental small business owners must have… identifying their ideal client.

Most small business owners at least have a rough idea who their ideal client is, but only demographically. They tend to know the age ranges their product or service appeals to, the gender they attract, income level, marital status, education level and so on.

Unfortunately, the demographic profile is only about 25% of what they need to know about their ideal client.

The remaining 75% is made up of the “psychographic” profile of the ideal client. We often refer to this as identifying the “hot buttons” for the prospect that needs to buy what you sell. Take the chiropractor we just discussed. All chiropractors are licensed to treat more than a dozen conditions involving pain. So if you identify who it is that could use the services of a chiropractor, the simple answer is… EVERYONE!

Chiropractors treat men, women and children from age 3 months to 100 years old. That is NOT identifying an ideal client. But when the doctor specialized in Fibromyalgia, he was able to identify his ideal client as female, ages 35 to 55, disabled with pain and unable to stay in the workplace. Income level over $50,000 2ith 1 to 2 children.

Do you see how this dramatically narrows down the demographic profile for this chiropractor.

And now that we know who it is we’re looking to attract, we can begin to analyze the “psychographic” profile… or hot buttons for this specific prospect. In the case of Fibromyalgia, the number one hot button is misdiagnosis. Fibromyalgia is the most commonly misdiagnosed illness on the planet. When women find that out, their first concern is that they might not have it… and therefore, are suffering needlessly.

That was the main focus of the marketing message we created for the chiropractor that generated his 7,100% ROI on his marketing and advertising campaign.

When you properly identify your ideal client, you narrow your focus.

You get specific in your messaging and your targeting. You reduce your marketing costs and you can laser target your marketing venues. In short, you gain the ability to speak DIRECTLY to those prospects most likely to buy what you sell.

In future articles, I’ll continue to reveal these critical fundamentals, and how their application will greatly impact the businesses you coach… both professionally and financially.

So until next time,

Adrian Ulsh