Market narrow. Serve wide.
Four words, and most business owners do the opposite. It's costing them their best customers, and they never find out why.
Have a look at your last ten posts. Picture the gym owner posting weight loss on Monday, powerlifting on Tuesday, mums and babies on Wednesday. The accountant talking to startups one day and eight-figure groups the next. The builder showing a loft conversion, a commercial fit-out and then a bathroom. Who is each of them for?
If you can't say who you're for in one sentence, your ideal customers can't either. And when they can't, they don't call.
The For Sale board test
When someone is about to put their house on the market, something strange happens. Suddenly they notice every For Sale board on every street. They can't help it.
And they decide quickly. They call the agent whose boards keep appearing on houses like theirs: same size, same style, same value. Whether that agent is any better hardly matters. They look like the obvious choice.
The agent with a board on everything (the studio flat, the barn conversion, the retirement bungalow, the four-bed detached) might be perfectly good. They're nobody's obvious first call.
Your potential customers run exactly this test on you. Every time they see your business, they're asking whether it's for someone like them. If your message changes every day, the answer keeps coming back no.
Get it right and you get fewer tyre-kickers and better customers. Specialists can charge more than generalists. Referrals get more relevant, because people know exactly who to send you. And you stop competing on price. When someone sees you as the obvious choice for their situation, the conversation moves from what you cost to when you can start.
"But I don't want to turn anyone away"
You won't. Who you market to and who you sell to are two separate decisions.
Your public message targets your sweet spot: the customers you make the best margin on, get the best results for and really enjoy serving. That's what goes on the boards.
Everyone else still sees your marketing, and some get in touch anyway. Good. When they do, have somewhere to put them: a smaller package, a standard option, an entry-level version of what you do. Nobody gets turned away. The boards just weren't aimed at them.
The estate agent who sells premium family homes will still sell your flat if you ask. They just don't advertise for it.
"Won't I bore people saying the same thing?"
You see every word your business puts out. Your customers see maybe one message in ten, sandwiched between three hundred other things fighting for their attention. What feels like exhausting repetition to you barely registers with them.
So the skill is variation on a theme. One message, lots of ways in. A customer story that shows the problem in action. A take that challenges how they think about it. A practical checklist. A question that stops the scroll. A local or industry reference that says "I mean people exactly like you". Five different posts, all answering the same question: who do you serve?
Start by writing down your sweet spot customer. "Small business owners" won't do. Think more like "trades businesses, three to ten employees, turning over £500k to £2m, drowning in admin and losing jobs to bigger competitors on price". That kind of specific.
Then decide on the one thing you want to be known for, where what that customer needs most meets what you do best. Look back over the last month of your marketing. How much of it speaks straight to that customer about that thing? If it's less than half, you've found your problem.
And keep the full range available, just quietly. Have somewhere for everyone who puts their hand up, whatever they need.
Next time you're about to post something, picture it as a For Sale board. Whose house is it standing outside? Your ideal customers are driving past every day, quietly deciding who they'd call.
