Marketing is often explained using the 3 M’s principle:

• Market
• Message
• Media

The idea is that if you understand your target market, you can articulate a message that resonates, and if you can build a profile of your clients, you can choose the correct media to effectively reach them. You won’t build the big and successful business your dreamt of when you started out, if you waste time and money communicating with anyone other than those that are ideally suited to buy your product or service. Location, demographics and affluence all play a part in creating a profile. Once you know and understand your market you can begin to address it effectively and specifically. In your business, you might have more than one target market, and that’s OK. You do need to be able to know that your target market is specific, identifiable and contactable. Now you can start to get your message to them through various appropriate channels, and that includes as visitors to ECX groups. There’s one further step you can make, suitable particularly if you operate in the business-to-business (b2b) arena. If you know the:

• realistic distance from your office that you can service clients;
• sorts of businesses you want to work with in terms of sectors; and
• size of business that is your ‘sweet-spot’

then you are in a fantastic position to work-up your ‘wish-list’ of future clients. Imagine the feeling when businesses from your wish-list started to become clients based on your work to attract them. Here’s how to do it:

• Write the wish-list of business names (quantity is up to you)
• Who is/are the decision maker(s) in the business
• Use the internet/telephone to find out if you’re unsure

Assuming this is done in a spreadsheet you can now start to FOCUS your energy and marketing towards the people on your list. One of the hardest things to do is to engineer an opportunity to meet your key decision makers. This is where you are lucky. ECX provides you with the ideal platform by legitimising your approach, inviting them to a future group meeting as a visitor. Assuming you have 50 companies and 50 names on your spreadsheet, you have a ready-made method to invite two visitors to every meeting for a whole year. Think of the benefits, not only to you, but to the other groups if we were able to start to harness a little bit of this potential…