The past few weeks I’ve been rolling out the lessons in a new course, and one of the concepts we’re talking about early on is target markets — or as I like to call them, your ideal customer.

It’s important to define and clearly understand your target audience before you work on your marketing materials. If you don’t know who you’re aiming for, you’re almost guaranteed to miss.

Don’t be afraid to lose

When you market your business, you have to imagine you’re dumping the whole of humanity into a big sieve.

Everything you do – what you write, how you present it, and where you share your messages – gives the sieve a little shake.

Every time you shake the sieve, some people fall through. Those people aren’t your perfect customer.

The ones who remain in the sieve after you’ve shaken it are your perfect customer. Here’s the truth:

It’s easier to market your business after you’ve gone through the process of shaking the sieve for a while.

You’ll see that there are still plenty of people left — even after you’ve eliminated some of them — to have a viable business. And because you’ve eliminated those who aren’t a good fit, you can speak directly to those who are.

C’mon and shake it!

The problem is that people see a sieve full of lots of folks, and they don’t want to shake it. They don’t want to lose anyone.

They want to try to address the whole jumbled mess of humanity.

But when they do that, their messages aren’t clear, they’re not targeted, and they get lost in the shuffle of all the competing messages that are out there.

Their ideal customer doesn’t hear the message intended for them because it’s not targeted enough for them to recognize it.

So shake it, baby. Shake it real good!

Walk the walk, talk the talk

“Shaking the sieve” means communicating so that ideal customer recognizes themselves in what you say and how you say it.

Using targeted copywriting, careful color, typeface and formatting will shape every message you send out and help you reach the people your target audience.

In the process, though, don’t be afraid to lose the ones you’re not really interested in targeting. That’s going to happen, and it’s a good thing.

Don’t be afraid to give your audience a good shake.

Let some potential customers fall through the cracks and have faith that there will be plenty of people left. Your marketing job will be much easier because you eliminate the people who aren’t a good fit for your business and you keep the ones who need and want what you have to sell.