Maximizing ROI Strategies for Reaching Your Ideal Customer

Maximizing ROI: Strategies for Reaching Your Ideal Customer

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 109 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, we're chatting all about identifying your ideal customer and making sure that your dollars and cents go as far as humanly possible. Stay tuned. You're going to love this episode.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences.

And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 109 of the business development podcast.

Thank you so much for joining us today. Today, I want to talk all about who is your ideal customer? How do we identify and make sure that our efforts are going in the right direction? We are 100 percent going to get into that today. But before I start today's episode, I wanted to chat about some highlights.

First off, to everybody in Canada, happy belated family day. I hope you guys all took the day off on Monday and had an amazing time with your families, the people who mean the most to us in our lives. At the Kennedy household, we went skating, we did an awesome Canadian family skate. And our boys are just learning.

So it was really fun. We busted out some hockey sticks and went at it and it was a good time. And it was my very first family day with my, with my baby boy, with my son, Jett. And it was awesome. It's awesome. I love being a dad. I love being a parent and I'm happy that in Canada, we get a day to really celebrate that.

So I hope everybody had an amazing family day to each of my amazing. Rockstar experts out there. My rockstar listenership. I hope you guys had a great day with your families, which is why we do all this, right? We do all this work to enjoy our lives. And so it's important that every once in a while we're taking some time and enjoying it with the people that we love.

We had an absolutely amazing, amazing weekend. We crossed 130, 000 downloads on Sunday. And on top of that, we had our biggest day on the show yet. 1450 downloads on the dime in a single day, which I get at some point, we're going to look back and be like, Oh, 1450 downloads. But today it's still a big thing.

A year into the podcast, it's still. Pretty amazing. I still find it absolutely amazing that you guys are out there, that you guys tune in and that 1, 450 of you come and find us on a Sunday afternoon to listen to our podcast. It's absolutely amazing. I appreciate you guys so much. You know, to my listeners who This is your very first show, or if you've been with us from the very beginning, you guys are amazing.

I appreciate the heck out of you. This show would not exist without your support, without you telling your friends and family, without you recommending us, and I know you guys are doing that because I get the messages all the time, and I love getting the messages from you guys. So for those of you who have reached out to me on LinkedIn, who shot me a message, let me know how this podcast is helping you, helping your business, helping the business you work for.

It's absolutely Absolutely amazing. I appreciate it every time it makes my day every time and to any of you who want to connect with me on LinkedIn. I appreciate it. I love the messages. I love to be in relation with you. So feel free to reach out. Let me know how this thing is helping you. Let me know what we can do better and how we might be able to improve and help you in the future because that's who this show is ultimately about.

It's about you. It's how do we help you build your business? How do we make you the rock stars of tomorrow? And any little bit that I can contribute to that, I'm going to work to do because that's the goal, right? We're always here to educate and inspire. And if we can educate and inspire, we are doing the right thing.

Thank you to all of our amazing, amazing listeners. I wanted to I wanted to give a gigantic shout out to Robert Lajoie of the Business Development Bank of Canada for episode 108, What is the Business Development Bank of Canada part one. Robert, that was absolutely amazing. It was an honor to have you on the show to share your amazing journey with us.

Such a long journey with The Business Development Bank of Canada and such a great explanation of what is The Business Development Bank of Canada, which in Canada is something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs. Did not know. And now they do. And if you haven't had a chance to listen to that episode, go back one episode, 108, it was a great explanation and interview with Robert Lajoie about his journey with the business development bank of Canada and what they do, what they actually do, what they support.

And it's amazing. And we have a part two coming up next Sunday. So tune in with us next Sunday. To chat all about the Business Development Bank of Canada part two advisory services with Jason Garner, where they're really going to go in depth about the services that the Business Development Bank of Canada provides, and it's also awesome.

And if you liked part one, you're really going to like part two. So feel free to join in with us next Sunday. And before we get into today's episode, I also just wanted to mention once again. That we have a community questions section. So we are always looking for questions. And I know there's so many of you guys out there who have, you know, questions.

And guess what? They're not stupid. Your questions are absolutely valuable. And if you have a community question, mark my words, there are probably a thousand to 10, 000 other people that have the very same question. So don't be shy. Shoot us your community questions to podcast@capitalbd.ca or even preferred go to our website We now have a voicemail feature on the website I want to hear your voice and if you guys leave us a community question with your voice I will share it with your voice on the podcast when we're answering that question So feel free to leave us a community question The only thing is they're typically two minutes is the recording length that you have on the website So if it's a little longer Don't be afraid to just leave too, or heck, if you just love this podcast and you want to leave us a voicemail, my gosh, it would melt my heart.

Feel free to leave us a message on the podcast. I would love to hear from you. I listen to all of them. So feel free. Head on over to businessdevelopmentpodcast.ca or com and leave us a message. All right. Let's just get into it. We are talking today about identifying your ideal customers. The most important aspect of marketing is starting from a list of customers who can actually buy your product or service.

Sometimes the obvious choices at first do not end up being your best customers over time. It is important that we look by area Industry sub industry and position to make sure that we are getting the best opportunities and that we are not wasting our time in the wrong directions. My goal today with this episode is really just to help you go through the thought process of identifying the best customers for your business so that you are not wasting valuable time and valuable money in the wrong endeavors.

It's amazing how many companies are absolutely blowing their marketing budgets. By either not making sure that their advertising is going in the right directions, it's actually targeting the right people or that are just not implementing or thinking hard about who their customers actually are. Because if we can identify them, we are just going to amplify our ability to be effective.

And everything we do in business development is about being as effective as we can with the dollars and cents that we allocate to this position. And so that's why active marketing is so huge. That's why I advocate for it. So immensely on the show, not just because I do it, but because it is a targeted, effective effort as opposed to a broad scope effort, which both are required, but in different amounts.

And we talk about that all the time on the show, but let's just get into it. Let's go through this identifying process and see if we can't help you guys identify some better customers here as we move forward. So, number one, what problem does your product or service solve? We, we can only identify the right buyers of our product and service when we really identify what it is our product and service does.

And I know this sounds kind of stupid, but I bet you that your product or service has more than one application. And most of the time, We haven't identified all of the applications that our product or service solves. For instance, if you make a product or service that is for the oil and gas industry, whether you're in the United States or around the world, your product or service might work for industrial manufacturing as well.

It might work for You know, water treatment, it might work for chemical engineering. Like the reality is your product or service that you designed for one application might have five to 10 applications that it actually is effective in. And so if we can take the time and really think our way through this process, really identify every single.

Application of our product and service. I think you guys are going to find that your target lists or the industries that you serve is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And yeah, while it might take a little bit of outside the box thinking it can be very, very lucrative for you over time.

The funny thing is, is that. Most of the customers that we identify in the very beginning when we are identifying target lists don't end up being the best customers for the business over time. What I've found is that in every single organization that I've worked at, sometimes the best customers weren't even identified initially.

They became the best customers once we realized, holy crap, this product or service can work in multiple applications. And once we identified, oh, this might be the best application for it, you start to find that Your customers are the customers that you think that you were going to get end up being completely different from the initial customers that you thought you were going to target.

That's something that's really cool in business and it happens all the time. And that's why business has evolved because. The things and the customers that you think you serve, yeah, you might serve them, but you might find out that over time you serve a completely different list of customers. And so it's absolutely critical that we are keeping our minds open.

We are giving every single opportunity to every industry that we might be able to serve to make us more effective and to make you more lucrative over time. We have to identify Who has the problems that our product or service solves? And so you can do this, you know, in a room full of people. It's really great to do it in a group organization where you can sit down and have multiple heads in a room, multiple thoughts.

You know, don't be afraid to take a survey. Don't be afraid to bring in all of your employees on this and sit down and just say, Hey, this is what we think our product or service solves. Is there more to this? Is there more potentially that our product and service solves? And just have them submit suggestions, right?

Like a big thought collaboration on this and see how many voices you can get giving you ideas. Because like I said, over time, you might find that there are a lot more opportunities than you think. Now, the next thing that we need to consider is Okay, we've identified what our product and service solves.

What else is solving this problem? It's important that when we hop into a space with a solution to a problem, that we also know about the other solutions to a problem. I think a lot of organizations also fall flat on this, and they don't actually understand what they are competing against. If you do not know what you are competing against, how do you know that your product or service is the best solution for said problem, right?

We want to make sure that whatever we are bringing to the market has a great market fit because competitive advantage and value proposition is very, very important from a marketing and business development standpoint. We really want to make sure that. We are advocating for one of the best solutions available.

And so we need to make sure that we truly understand how the problem is currently being solved so that we can explain why our product or service is a better fit than their current answer, right? And if you can't do this. You're going to be running up against a wall because you need to be able to explain why you invented your product or service or why your product or service is the best fit for said customer and why it might be a better fit than their current solutions, right?

There's nothing wrong with being number two. Number two eventually becomes number one everywhere. And so I always say like just getting your product or service in the door and being number two initially is okay. But you need to make sure that even if you're number two. That your solution has an advantage over number one.

So that eventually it makes sense just to bump you up to number one. And then obviously what's the important thing about being in number one, once you're in number one, number two is gunning for you and just like you were number number two and waiting for that opportunity to be number one, somebody else is also doing the same.

And so we need to make sure that even if we're in the number one space, we're constantly innovating. We're constantly figuring out ways to better solve that problem for our customer so that we can stay in that number one place. As long as humanly possible. And then obviously number three, with regards to this, we need to make sure what is your advantage and value proposition?

What is it? We need to make sure that we are identifying what our value proposition and advantage is over the incumbent service or product. Okay. We have to make sure that our product or service. Is the best possible option for our customers. And so we need to really identify before we are figuring out where we fit.

What is it that our product or service does? What is it about that product or service that makes it the best option for our customer over time, right? Everything we do. is about being the best possible option, delivering the most value for our customer, solving that problem better than anything else can.

That's where we want to be. And so it's really important that we, we understand the customer's problem. We understand what the current things are that are solving that problem for a customer. And we understand what is it about our product or service that does it better. Okay. Number two, we need to understand what industry does my product or service fit?

Once we understand what problem our product or service solves, this is where we have that kickoff point to figure out, okay, what are the industries available? What industries does my product or service fit into? Okay, so obviously, when we're trying to identify what industry does my product or service fit into, we need to first off single out the top players in the industry.

This is the easy job. 99 percent of business development people or marketing experts can identify by. Say the top 20 or the top 30 dogs in that space and like I said, these are great options But remember they also have lots of options Everybody's gunning for these players. So to to really single yourself out and be big in this space It's going to be really tough and sure I'm nothing wrong with that and we should absolutely gun for these and we do it all The time but remember your sweet spot May not be these big dogs, and so that's what we really need to identify is who are the industries that work for the big dogs who we also fit into.

I think that most of you are going to find that your sweet spot for your product or service is not with the biggest player in your industry. It's actually with the players who service the biggest player in the industry, they're the ones that have most of the time, maybe bit off a little more than they can chew, and they need that additional support to really meet those needs, right?

And so what I found at most industries that I've worked at, it's not the biggest players. In the pond that we're after, even though we do go after them and I advocate for it. And I absolutely think that you should do the long shots are always worth it, but we need to make sure that we are also targeting industries who we have a high likelihood of success at.

And that does tend to be the sub industries in that space, the supporting industries, and this can be a wide range of industry. That's what's really cool about this. Your opportunities just got way, way bigger because the supporting industry. There's going to be a ton of them. Like I said, if we can really diversify the types of industries that we can work with, it's only going to benefit you as you try to service all of these sub industries over time, right?

And so I think you're going to find, that with your product or service, you may find that over time, The people that you work with the most were never the people that you initially thought you would be working with. And it's really cool when it works out that way. Your best customers are likely not the customers that you identified right off the bat in that top 20 or top 30 list.

It's likely going to be one of those service industries or sub industries that services those big players that end up being your best customer over time. And so it's important that we are, we're keeping an open mind and we're open to looking at. Every area that our product or service can fit into. Not just maybe the main thing that you thought you designed your product or service for.

There's a very good chance that whatever your product or service is, has multiple applications in multiple industries. And so we need to make sure that we are identifying all of them ahead of time. And then we need to think about how can my value proposition be adapted to fit the sub industries, right?

Remember, when you initially created this product or service and you were pitching the value proposition, you probably designed it, like I said, for one of these top 20 or top 30 players, which is amazing. But remember that value proposition may not carry over to the sub industries that you are now targeting or that you now find yourself in, make sure that you are thinking about what your value proposition is for each sub industry.

And yes, this might mean that you have five to 10 or more value propositions. Okay. I know. I know I can see, I can see my BD people right now thinking, are you serious? Kelly? I had to come up with five to 10. Yeah, you might have to, because your value proposition is likely going to be different in every single industry that you serve.

And this is amazing. This is a gigantic opportunity for your company. Don't listen to me here and think, Oh my gosh, really? Think, Oh my gosh, I have that much opportunity because that is what the truth is. Your opportunity just expanded massively. And yeah, while that might mean that you need to make a new cut sheet for each industry to explain why your product or service fits for them, why it's a good option, you've just made considerably, considerably more money over time by adapting your pitch five or six times to fit various industry.

So value proposition. Make sure that we are thinking about how can we adapt our value propositions to fit these new sub industry opportunities. Number three, what areas do we compete best in? Okay, so once we've identified, you know, what it is we do, how that solves a problem, what companies and what industries we can work in, now we got to think what locations work best for us.

Okay, there's going to just be likely areas that you fit better in and I'm going to get into this. What areas do we compete best in? That is the question that you need to ask yourself now. Remember, you are never more competitive than where you are based. This does not matter whether you build products or whether you provide services.

You are never going to be more effective. Effective than your home base location. It just from a logistics standpoint, it's easier to provide products or services across the street from where you are than it is to go into the next city, next province, next state, and provide those services there. And while yes, the goal over time is definitely to be able to reach far and wide, remember you were never more competitive than where you are based.

So we always start there. We always start in a place where we can have the highest competitive advantage. And remember, we need to ask ourselves, what advantage do we have the further from this home base that we get? And you know, most companies, that advantage goes down the further that they are. Thank God we now live in a world where remote work is starting to become more prevalent.

But if you are shipping or providing In person services to various locations. It unfortunately does tend to mean that the further away from home base that you get, the less effective your competitive advantage becomes. Does it mean that you can't provide those services? No, you probably can still provide those services.

But remember, your customer is looking at you and they're looking at the other people in the area that can also provide those services. And in another state, in another province, Guess what? There's probably somebody there who can provide the same service or a close service at a better cost. And you guys know this.

I talk about this all the time. Whenever we are talking about value proposition, what are we talking about? We have to be able to either save our customers some money or make them money. And you have to be able to show how are you going to save them or make them money. Based on your competition in that space.

And it just gets harder and harder to do that. Unless you have a really epic competitive advantage, it gets harder and harder to do that. The further we get from our home basis. So, you know, obviously if you're a big company, what does that mean? It means that you can just set up another home base in a locale and still provide that service cost effectively.

Absolutely. But for the smaller companies, for the medium sized companies that maybe have a home base, that's a little further away. Think about that. Think about it. In your area, you are going to be the most effective. So, that is probably where you really want to at least start marketing very heavily and targeting very heavily because you are just going to be the best in that space, in that area.

The next question that we have to ask ourselves, if we are going to start getting further and further away, is can we be as effective remotely? Remember, we don't want to be expanding so far that we can no longer provide effective, great service to our customers, right? Nothing is going to kill your brand faster.

Then if you start to offer subpar services, the further away from your home base that you get, okay, it's absolutely critical that we can come to the conclusion, or at least that we're up front about our effectiveness to the customer. So they can make an educated choice with regards to hiring your organization or hiring somebody locally.

Obviously we want to win as much work as we can. You know, I mean, obviously we do we as business owners. As business development people, our goal is to win as much work as possible, but it's also absolutely critical that we are not putting our companies in a bad or a negative situation where they cannot deliver on the services that we have now sold.

Okay. It's absolutely critical that we are thinking about the long term success of our organization, of the organizations we work for, to make sure that we are not hurting, we are helping. And sometimes by selling services too far away, we are really negatively impacting the effectiveness of our organizations.

And frankly, We do not want to be painting ourselves in a bad light. We want to make sure that no matter what business we take on, that we can be incredibly effective in that space, that we can deliver what we promised. And then, heck, if we can over deliver, that we over deliver. Because it is always best to be over delivering instead of under delivering.

What's that old saying? Under promise, over deliver. Right? Under promise, over deliver. That is just as true today as it was back then. And we want to make sure that we are doing that. every single time. So let's make sure that as we are spreading out from that home base, that we are able to effectively service it and provide a cost effective, advantageous service or product to our customers.

And then the last question, as we start to expand further and further and further, is does our value proposition still hold up the further we get from our home base, okay? Remember, we created all of these value propositions, right? Heck, we might have created five or ten to service multiple industries. But, can you still provide that same level of value the further away from home base that you get?

And you know what? There are some organizations That the answer is yes, yes, the value proposition holds up just the same no matter where they go. This works really well for companies that can work remotely, right? The value proposition is the same no matter where they're at because of the way that their business is set up.

But if we are providing our services, our products across the nation, around the world, we need to make sure that. Our competitive advantage that value proposition it holds up it holds up as we go further and further and further so we need to make sure that we are evaluating the effectiveness of our services the further we get to make sure that we are still providing a value proposition that a customer can actually get behind, can get benefit from because let's get real. You're not going to win propositions if they are not beneficial for your customer. And so we need to make sure that we are identifying that our value proposition holds up no matter how far we get from home and to know your boundaries, to know your limits, to know where you're the most effective.

And then you can implement expansion tactics to make you more effective in those areas later. But initially. We need to know where we are the most effective and devote our efforts to those areas first.

Number four, we need to then identify who buys our product or service. Remember, none of this matters.

If you cannot identify the main buyer of your product or service, right? My gosh, this is where, this is where we struggle. I think in a lot of marketing situations, and I don't know if it's about struggling as much as it's about marketing companies. They want to market your product or service, and they want to get you exposure, but sometimes targeting and finding the right person for that exposure is not easy, so they go with a broad scope.

This is where like a passive marketing strategy comes in, with commercials, or with targeted ads, or, targeted ads are getting better, sure, but, you know what I'm saying, whether we're doing like a LinkedIn social marketing campaign, Whether we're doing radio ads, whether we're doing TV, whether we're doing any type of passive marketing strategy, these are broad strategies, right?

These are, these are targeting a lot of people, hoping that you get it in front of the right buyer. But with some legwork up front, we can identify the right buyer and then make sure that we are targeting to them directly, right? We want to make sure that. As much of our marketing efforts, whether that be passive strategies, active strategies, is getting to the right person because none of it matters if we cannot get it in front of the right person.

Once we identify this correct person, make sure that we are targeting these decision makers with all advertising efforts. Okay. All of them, active marketing, passive marketing, make sure that we are getting these in front of the decision makers, whether that be the CEO, whether that be the supply chain manager, whether that be an operations director, whether that be a facility manager, right?

We need to make sure that we are getting all of our targeting to the right people, because none of it matters if we are targeting the wrong person. And think about this. You may not think about this often. But remember, every single time that you targeted the wrong person, you still paid for that. You still paid for that in your passive marketing campaign, in your active marketing campaign.

Every single time somebody reached out to the wrong person in an organization, that was a lost or wasted dollar. It was a lost or wasted dollar and I hate to say it, but that's why an active marketing process or a targeted marketing process where we do that legwork up front, where we identify the right buyers at an organization ahead of the marketing strategy is putting more money in your pocket and active marketing strategy is the best way to do this because we are actively targeting the right people were doing that legwork up front and then we are hitting them directly in the most effective way possible using real people.

It's just making you more effective and it's a more cost effective strategy over time to get better results. It is definitely your lowest cost per customer acquisition is with an active marketing process, right? We want to make sure that we are providing you the best value possible. By getting in front of the right people by targeting them and by effectively marketing to the right decision maker who can actually buy your product or service.

And number five, evaluate your advertising spend and make sure that your efforts are targeting the right people and industry. So for each of you listening today who has active and passive marketing strategies, today is a great day to sit down with your marketing team, your sales team, your business development team and say, Hey, let's just evaluate what we're doing.

Can you guys lay out where our advertising spend is going, who it's targeting, and how do we know that we are getting the most for our dollars and cents? And if we come to the realization that maybe some of these are not targeting the right people, how can we better use these funds to target the right people?

Every dollar we spend is a spent dollar, whether we spend it towards the right people or whether we spend it towards the wrong people. And while we all want to say that all advertising is good advertising, this simply isn't true. It simply isn't true. Unless you have unlimited dollars and cents, which I can tell you I don't, which I'm pretty confident that your organization doesn't, we need to make sure that every single dollar we spend is going to the right efforts.

It's going to the right people, the right companies. And so today is a great day to evaluate your advertising spend, both on the active marketing side and the passive marketing side, and make sure that we are targeting the right people in the right industry. And that if we are not. We're no longer wasting our money on the wrong use cases.

One of the things I wanted to ask you guys as well, I know a lot of you are attending expos, right? But when was the last time that you thought about who might be attending that expo? I think we all hope that the right people that are buying our products and services attend the expos, but I think you would be surprised that a lot of the time it's only a small minority of people attending the expos who could actually buy your products and service.

And you're spending a fortune attending these expos. I know some of you guys are spending upwards of 30, 000 to attend an expo. Next time before you attend that expo, I want you to really ask yourselves. Are my buyers actually going to be there in a large number? Because if the answer is no, unless you were selling a small fortune with each product or service you sell, you were probably not going to recoup that money.

And you need to ask yourselves, once again, are my advertising dollars going to the right thing? Thing. And so we need to make sure no matter what it is, whether it's an expo, whether it's an advertising campaign, whether it's an active marketing process, a business development process, are we targeting the right people and getting the most for our money?

Because let's get real guys. Costs are not getting cheaper. They're getting more expensive and that doesn't matter whether it's your advertising, your personnel costs, you name it. You guys know it. These costs are going up and up and up and up and up. And I don't know about you, but I can't afford to waste my money.

And I don't think you can either. And so let's make sure that every advertising dollar we spend is going to the right people is getting you in front of the right people. Are our passive marketing strategies working? If not. We need to evaluate it. Are our active marketing strategies working? If not, we need to have a meeting with our team and see how we can improve them.

Okay? We can't be wasting our advertising dollars because we only have so many of them and they are the most important spend in our entire organization if we want growth. And so, we need to make sure that we are utilizing a good mix of active and passive marketing strategies that get to the right people in a cost effective way.

And that brings us to the end of episode 109. Thank you so much for joining us. I just wanted to give a quick shout out here to the amazing sponsors of the business development podcast. I want to single out Rodney Lover of atWork Office Furniture, Colin Harms of Hypervac Technologies and Vince Phillips of Foresight for IT.

These guys are amazing. They have been with us for a long time, especially atWork Office Furniture and Hypervac. They've been with us from the very beginning. And shows like this can't grow without support of sponsors and sponsorship advertising. And so I also want to just give a shout out to our listeners.

Thank you so much for taking the time. I know none of us like listening to ads, but it is ads that help us to grow this show over time. So thank you for giving your ears for our sponsors. Thank you to our sponsors for choosing to sponsor with the Business Development Podcast, and we could not do this show without your consistent support.

So thank you so much for getting behind us. And then shout outs for the week. Robert Lajoie, John Costello, Jordan Morgan, Al Gensitskiy, Ted Box. Lori Nickel, Ross Huartt, Chris Taylor, Andrew Wren, Nathan Kolbaba, Jory Evans, Colin Harms, Rodney Lover, Vince Phillips, Richard Bendetto Jr., Fahad Khan, Yasushi Ohki, Ben Hekethorn, Carmen Leibel, and Marie Soprovich.

Thank you for your consistent support and kind messages. Until next time, this has been the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you. On the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation. And business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.