Audience Axis

Find Your Ideal Audiences

Get More of the Work You Want

Understanding your ideal audiences and engaging with them only goes so far if you're still doing work you don't enjoy for customers you don't really want.

Your insight into your ideal prospects and the problems you can solve for them also arms you with the tools to discourage the wrong prospects, generate a steady flow of productive referrals, and steer your business towards doing only the work you truly want to do.

5 Reasons to Do Less

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tough-choiceI get it.

You’re a multipotentialite. You’ve done tons of things in your long career, you’re great at pretty much ALL of them, and your audience needs every single one.

But you’ve heard me preach about the power of focus, and the importance of identifying a small number (like three or four) problems that you want to solve, and crafting all of your marketing and sales efforts around those problems.

And it’s just not adding up for you.

“But wait!”, you cry in anguish. “How can I choose just a few problems to focus on? Can’t I just help with all of them?”

No.

You can’t.

Not if you want your business to grow.

Do Less to Do More

This sounds counterintuitive to many small business owners, but to grow your business, you need to do less. And you won’t get there if your approach is, “I do tons of stuff, just let me know what you need and I’m probably going to be able to help you.”

Like it or not, you need to FOCUS. Here’s why choosing a few key problems to focus your marketing is so critical: [Read more…]

Ramp Up Your Referrals

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Help Them Help YouFor many small businesses, referrals (also referred to as “word of mouth”) are the single most productive source of new business.

Being referred by a friend, a family member or a customer costs a business far less than online advertising, and research has shown that a personal recommendation is far more influential than most of the things we use to drive interest and purchase among our prospects.

But the trick to building the business you want with the help of referrals isn’t just in generating the referrals themselves — it’s also in getting the right kind of prospects referred to you.

Referrals Rely on Trust

One of the reasons that referrals are so influential is that they bear a personal “seal of approval” — the referrer must trust that you’re a good fit for the person they’re sending you, and the person being referred trusts that exploring your offerings won’t be a waste of their time.

(This is particularly important with regard to pricing. Nobody feels good if they’re referred to someone they can’t afford, and you certainly won’t appreciate being sent prospects who clearly can’t pay what you’re worth.)

But how do you referrers know whether they’re sending you the right prospects? And how do those prospects being referred know whether it’s a recommendation worth pursuing? [Read more…]

Discouraging the Wrong Prospects

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Say No for blogFor all of the great prospects — the Good Fits — there are always those you don’t want as customers. These are the Bad Fits, and avoiding them should be an important goal for every small business owner.

Types of Bad Fits

Bad Fits aren’t bad people or bad companies — they’re just not right for YOU, for one reason or another.

Bad Fits typically fall into one of these categories:

Not Serious


Sometimes prospects don’t know what they want, and only discover it’s not what you offer after asking you a million questions. Sometimes they’re just digging for information with no intent to purchase from you. These prospects simply waste your time — and for most of us, that’s something in short supply anyway. [Read more…]

Achieve Your Own Goals

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Compass BlogYears ago, I was trying to get my (VERY LARGE) employer to let me shift my management role to a part-time job after the birth of my daughter.  The first response I got was, “We don’t do that here.”  After persisting in my efforts, I was called into my Director’s office for a “chat”.

“I’m concerned about the effect this change will have on your career here.  Don’t you want to be a Vice President someday?”

I couldn’t help it.  I laughed.  Guffawed, actually.

Why?  Because I DIDN’T want to be a Vice President. Because, even if my big mouth had stayed shut enough to get promoted to that level, I knew I’d be terrible at playing the political games required to succeed there. I didn’t want the politics, the 24-7 on-call status, the headaches. I wanted to do the work I enjoy, then go home and raise my kids.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to march to the beat of a different drummer in a big corporation. But that’s why we have our own businesses, right? So we can do what WE want?

Then why do so many of us follow a path going somewhere we don’t want to go?

We are barraged with messages about what success should look like for small business owners — and much of it, unfortunately, seems to suggest that the goal is to be a “small business” for as short a time as possible, on the way to being something much larger.

Over the years I’ve gotten a number of  suggestions about what I should be doing with my company to really “scale”. But many of them just didn’t align with what I wanted from my business.

I want to do a lot of the work I love, with people who value it and understand the critical importance of a connection with an ideal audience.

I want my work to support businesses I believe in.

I want to have enough flexibility in my schedule that I can get back to a client quickly when they need something, or take on a new project sooner rather than later. I don’t want to work myself to death, travel constantly, or sacrifice time with my family now for a big bank balance later.

I want to make enough money to be comfortable, put something away for retirement, and help my kids achieve their own dreams.

I want to help other small business owners find their own version of success.

But that’s just me.

Are you following your own compass?

Is your business built, from bottom to top, to support your goals?

Are the customers you’re serving the people you truly want to help?

We sacrifice a lot — risk a lot — to own our own businesses. If they’re not going to take us we want to be — wherever that is — what’s the point?

Have you thought about where you really want your business to go?

Behind Audience Axis

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Too many small businesses are failing.

OpenWhen I got out of college, I was an English major with no experience in business, excited about joining the awesome world of advertising. My first job was at a small advertising agency that closed its doors about two years later.

It confused me. Why had it closed? The people were great, the work they did was good — what went wrong? I really didn’t understand business, and I really didn’t understand what had happened.

So I decided to learn more about what makes small businesses tick, and what makes them fail. In 1990 I finished an MBA in entrepreneurship and marketing, and did some marketing work with small businesses.

I worked for another small agency, and then moved to a new town and worked in some VERY BIG companies. Dial. ConocoPhillips. BIG organizations, big brands, and big big budgets.

But I missed the work I’d done with small businesses.

I missed the energy, the willingness to experiment, and mostly the determination of small business owners. I missed their dedication to finding success because they HAVE to — their mortgage, their kids’ college opportunities, their families’ security and dreams depend on their companies flourishing.

I went to work for another agency, which was great while it lasted, but still wasn’t giving me what I really hoped to find.

So in 2009 I started Audience Audit, providing custom research to companies trying to understand the things that really matter to their customers and prospects.

Through Audience Audit I’ve been able to help organizations like Infusionsoft, Gap, Tufts University, AT&T and Jayco discover the perfect fit between the people they want to help, and the products and services they offer. I love the work I do, and the people I get to work with.

But. [Read more…]