Before you start promoting your expertise -- either on the web or in the “real world,” or both -- your first step should be to correctly identify your target market, or markets. These are the people you will want to reach through your promotional efforts. If you decide to hire a PR expert to help you, be sure that the words, “your target market,” are brought up in your very first meeting. If not, you might be talking with a consultant who believes in using “mass marketing” techniques, which will probably not be as effective as the more targeted approach, for marketing your expertise. (For more information on why I believe “mass marketing” PR techniques are not as effective for promoting experts, please see my introductory article, Why Communicate With Your Market Via the Web?.)
Why is it so crucial for you to identify your target market (or markets) upfront? Because, if you don’t; if you just start getting speaking engagements, writing articles and leaving comments on other people’s blogs, without giving much thought to who you are trying to reach, one of two things will happen (or not happen):
1) You’ll start getting all the wrong kinds of clients (the ones you marketed to, almost without thinking)!
or
2) You won’t get much of a response at all.
So, how do you figure out who your target market is? Even if you think you know the answer to this one, please continue reading. In my 20+ years as a public relations consultant, I can’t begin to tell you the numbers of clients and potential clients who spent years marketing to the wrong people. Some of them brought reams and reams of articles written about them that had been published in magazines and newspapers, as proof that “PR doesn't work.” But, when I questioned them about who their target market was, more often than not, they would answer: “anyone who can pay my fees.” That, they soon found out, was not a very good answer! In fact, it was probably the reason that they were getting so many “wrong” clients!
In fact, I remember one client, a financial planner, who began our first “get acquainted” meeting by telling me that his market was “rich people, executives, with a net worth of. . .” He couldn't have been more specific! By the end of our meeting, however, after answering my many questions about who he really enjoyed working with, he admitted, “Actually, I guess I don’t like very rich people much at all. My favorite people have less money, but have more of a real need to invest it wisely in order to survive.” We went on to promote him to the "right people," and he did very well. And, he told me, he was now earning “happy money.”
The more clearly you can picture who your ideal clients, readers, customers, and/or patients would be -- the more details you can give about them -- the better you’ll be able to reach them with your online and real-world PR efforts.
When I taught my continuing education class on “How to Promote Your Private Practice,” I would have my students create a fact-filled sentence about who their target market was. I told them that the more information their sentence contained, the better. But it had to contain the following elements: geographical, socioeconomic, gender, and age. So, one person might say, “My ideal client is a middle-class woman, age 35-50, living in Chicago.” Another might say, “My ideal clients are middle- and upper-income parents of college-age children, living in the Northern Indiana.” (In some instances, race would also be an important component -- for instance, in the case of one dermatologist I worked with, who concentrated her practice in treating skin conditions specific to African Americans.)
Some people have two or more target markets, especially if they tend to get referrals from specific professionals. For instance, a medical or legal specialist might get most of his or her referrals from generalists in the field.
Only after you have correctly figured out who your target market is (or markets are), can you begin to examine the best ways to reach them: via speaking engagements, media interviews, articles in professional publications; articles in regional or local publications; online articles; online interviews; audio interviews; or commenting on other people’s blogs. Most people will decide that a combination of these approaches will work best.
The challenge then becomes figuring out which of these approaches will be the most effective.
But it won’t make sense to even begin your promotional efforts if you haven’t carefully identified your target market(s).
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