Reaching Your Target Market with Your Personal Brand

To reach the right target market, you need to identify who its members are. Visualize yourself working with your ideal client, company, service, or scenario. For example, here are possible characteristics of an ideal client:

• Appreciates the work that I do

• Pays me well and pays in advance

• Loves the service that I provide

• Trusts my expertise and lets me serve him or her using my best judgment

• Refers other dream clients to me

• Promotes my work to everyone he or she talks to

Dreaming about the perfect situation gets you thinking about who would actually be the right target audience for you to put your time, energy, and effort into pursuing. You then conduct thorough research to locate the people you've envisioned.

Developing a positioning statement

A positioning statement is a tool used in business to identify how a brand will be positioned in the market. It puts into words what makes a brand important and differentiated so that it is noticed by those who need to know about it.

Here's how to develop your own statement:

1. Define your target audience.

   Who do you want to serve?

2. Figure out your frame of reference.

   What is your point of view? What category do you want to participate in?

3. Identify points of difference.

   What distinctive benefits do you bring to your target audience? How do you stand out from the competition?

4. Offer support.

   Support is the evidence that your positioning statement is true. You need credible proof that you are what you say you are.

5. State your promise or core benefit.

   Here, you pull the four previous pieces together to let your target audience know what the net benefit is to them.