When my daughters want pigtails in their hair, they come to me because I’m more gentle and their hair gets tugged less.

When they want to play Lego, they go to their daddy because he’s the expert at building things with blocks.

I’m the one they ask for snacks, he’s the one they ask for piggy-back rides.

Kids learn very quickly how to get what they need and they learn which avenue to take to get it fastest.

It didn’t take too many times for Daddy to put the wrong sized dress on the children before they just quit asking him to help. I only made so many pathetic attempts at drawing things for them to start walking past me to go to Daddy when they wanted to make pictures.

Do you think your customers are any different?

This is why finding a niche is so important. So very, very important that it can never possibly be stressed enough.

Let’s consider a bakery for a minute. A bakery opens in a town that already has a bakery. Old bakery has been the only bakery for many miles, for many years. Their stuff is good, their prices are good. They deliver consistent quality. They sell all kinds of baked goods from bread and rolls to cookies and cakes. They sell preserves for you to put on your bread, and they have every different kind of pie you can imagine.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the bakery.

But then another bakery opens up in the same town.

Townspeople think it’s crazy – there’s never going to be enough business to support two bakeries!

But the new bakery is a very different operation than the old bakery.

This new bakery offers gluten-free products, diabetic-friendly desserts and it’s a peanut-free zone. They sell health-foods disguised as cookies, loaded with flax, raisins and other healthy things. Their jams and jellies are certified organic.

Even though there are two bakeries in town, they serve completely different customers. They each have their own niche.

Do you think either bakery would suffer from the others’ presence?

I’m thinking not.

People still wanting the gooey, sugary treats go where they’ve always gone. People wanting a healthier choice probably haven’t been frequenting the first bakery anyway so they try out the new place.

Do you make it very clear to your prospective customers what you do better than your competitors?

Do you even know what you do better than the competition. Do you know why your customers are choosing you?

If you do, are you highlighting that information in your copy?

Do your website visitors know why they should choose to work with you?

If you’re not seeing the type of conversion rates you’d like from the current marketing material you have out there (including your website), I challenge you to look at it with an open mind, as if you were a potential customer viewing it for the first time.

Do you have to sift through a bunch of dry information to find out the bottom line – why you’re better than the rest?

I ask you this because if you can’t find that information yourself, then how can you possibly expect someone who doesn’t know you to find it?

If you’re not really sure what that is, think back to my opening “pigtails” example. What are your current customers coming to you for most? Take a look at your most popular service and you can probably figure it out pretty quickly. Remember, you’re constantly evolving. What you do best now might be different than what you did best when you first started your business!

A “copy polish” (as I like to all it) will cost less money than you think and when you consider the ROI and the fact that you could possibly be losing scores of potential customers from the get-go right now, you can’t afford not to have your copy revised to make it clear as to why your customers should choose you.

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I participated in one of those silly little Facebook exercises a few weeks back. For my status, I posted something along the lines of, “Pick the one word you feel describes me best and post it below as a comment. Then I’ll do the same for you.”

I don’t normally participate in these things, but this one sounded fun. A lot of my Facebook friends posted words I wouldn’t think would top the list of ways to describe me like, “strong” and “inspiring.” I was expecting more “goofy”s and “nuts”s to be honest. These things were wonderful to hear, but one of my friends who I’ve known for years in real life and in the social networking Internet world, PEI real estate agent Carol O’Hanley, left my favorite reply.

The word she chose to describe me was “genuine.”

I can’t even tell you how much that meant to me, especially since Carol knows me in person and we bump into each other all day long in places like Facebook and Twitter. If she perceives me as being genuine, then I’ve accomplished my goal because the last thing I want is someone thinking I’m completely different in person than I am online.

When I started my copywriting business, I already knew exactly the type of clients I wanted to attract because I know what kind of writing I love to do and what kind of people I love writing for. I made the decision to become a freelance copywriter because writing makes me happier than doing anything else and I didn’t want to waste a single day as a writer working on projects that made me stressed out or cranky.

That’s why I market my personality. The content on my website is me. My branding is me. Facebook updates and Twitter one-liners come from me, I share what I’m feeling and what I’m doing even when they don’t make me sound professional 100% of the time. Because ya know what? I’m not professional 100% of the time. I take breaks throughout the day to play with my children and to bake cookies. I conduct myself professionally with my clients, but not to the point of being stuffy.

I guess I found the key to attracting my ideal clients is to be transparent.

My ideal clients will love that my websites are always decorated for the holidays – it’s my absolute favorite part of the Mann Made brand. The people who appreciate my Halloween pumpkin and spider web are the exact type of people I love working with. If someone thinks it’s foolish, that’s the perfect prequalifier for me.

When someone follows me on Twitter, they’ll know right away if they like me or not. They can get a sense from my 140 character tweets of whether or not they like my writing style. When they read through my website and blog posts or browse my portfolio, they’ll like it or they won’t. And I’m just fine with that either way.

If I were to hide the quirky, fun, creative side of my personality by agonizing over every personal Twitter update I made or holding off on the silly humor in my blog posts, I wouldn’t be being me. And being Jaime has worked out pretty well for me so far. I attract awesome clients. I stand out because my website is colorful, fresh and fun. I end up working with people who want to inject their own personality into their marketing because they realize that’s what attracted them to me.

If you wish you had clients with more of a sense of humor why not focus on attracting those types? If you only want to work with people who are serious and focused, work on attracting them.

Afterall, if you’re not being authentic, do you really think you’re doing anyone any favors?

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So, you might be wondering why my logo is adorned with balloons, presents  and a birthday cake. Just so happens, June is a big month for Mann Made Time. We’re celebrating two years in business and it’s my birthday month – one more year in my twenties…reason to celebrate, right?

After two years in business, I have really been able to find out which services I love the most and the ones I prefer to outsource to my team members. My biggest love is writing, and I’ve been lucky enough to be doing more and more of it for my awesome clients. I’m toning up my marketing message to attract more copywriting projects and that excites me.

When you first start your business, nailing down a target market and niche can seem very overwhelming and a lot of people don’t believe they should focus their marketing on any one place. In a sense, that’s a good idea. Offer a bunch of services (ONLY ones you’re great at) and then decide where your biggest strengths lay and which things you enjoy doing the most. Then carve out your niche and decide on a target market. If you started your business with a target market that you don’t feel the love for after some time has passed, change things up. There’s no rule saying that you have to target the same bunch forever. There’s no rule saying you can’t upgrade your skills and find yourself a niche you really love.

Your business is your business. You’ll get out of it what you put into it. If you’re doing work you love for people you truly enjoy working with you’ll be more motivated and success will come easier. You’re the boss. Do you look forward to the work you have on your plate when you wake up each morning? For a time, I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. Now, it’s like Dr. Phil says. If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. I feel privileged to provide the services people pay me well to do. It really doesn’t feel like work and what could be better than that?!

Oh. And happy birthday to me!!!

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I was watching the Food Network a couple of days ago (I watch the Food Network whenever the TV isn’t on Treehouse for the kidlets). The show was Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. In case you haven’t seen the show, which you probably haven’t if you’re not a Food Network freak like I am, I’ll give you a quick low down.

Host, Chef Gordon Ramsay, comes across as a mean British guy. He means well, and a lot of it’s probably for TV, but I wouldn’t want to do anything to make him angry with me – I’m non confrontational. Anyway…he has a couple of shows on the Food Network, but this series has him going in to a struggling restaurant and helping them to become successful. He overhauls the decor, the menu, shapes up the owners, servers and chefs. By the end of each episode, he has turned a restaurant from a failure to a success. It doesn’t sound overly entertaining, but he’s fun to watch – mostly because he says bad words and it sounds funny to me with a British accent.

Anyway, the episode I was watching had him in a family restaurant in England called Oscar’s. Oscar’s was run by an Irish woman and her son (who was fond of ‘the drink’ which ended up being much of the reason for the restaurant’s struggle) who were trying to rejuvenate their restaurant. When Chef Ramsay looked at their menu, he saw that they had a ‘bit of everything’ menu. He said (paraphrasing here) that instead of making a lot of different types of food, none of which are outstanding, they should focus on one style of cuisine and do it very well. Become known for it. Everyone knows where to go for the best steak, the best seafood, the best Italian food, and so on. Since they were an Irish family, it only made good sense for them to focus on traditional Irish cooking.

Business owners often struggle to select a target market, thinking that having a target market or a niche is going to eliminate a large number of potential clients. This is a mistake.

By selecting a target market, you can focus your marketing in one direction. By working within one specific industry, you can really hone your skills and become an expert.

In my virtual assistance business, I target the real estate industry because I enjoy the work, and I have a lot of experience working with real estate agents. I know how to manage a transaction, ensure a listing is being looked after and keep agents on top of their leads. Because I target the real estate industry, does that mean I can’t market to anyone else or take on clients that are not in real estate? Absolutely not! My client load right now seems to be half real estate and half other stuff. I really like the variety.

Anyway, where I’m going with this is that you should think about Gordon Ramsay’s advice. Specialize in something – become known for something – be remarkable at something. By narrowing down your target market, you will not be closing doors on the clients that you could have had…you will become known for the service you provide. You will gain referrals. You will save money by focusing your advertising spend. You will become more successful.

Targeted products always sell better than generic ones. Can you think of some examples?

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