What Does Your Marketplace Look Like?

Photo by malias courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

I once asked a retail coaching client of mine, “Who’s your target market?” She looked at me, blank faced, then said, “Well, people like me. People who like the things I like.”

This was the first and last time I ever asked anyone this question. Now, I ask, “Who are your right people?” {Props to Havi Brooks at The Fluent Self for suggesting just the right phrase.}

Your right people deserve a better term than ‘target market.’

Of all the phrases in the marketing dictionary, ‘target market’ is my least favorite. It’s cold and clinical and feels nothing like where I am in my head or heart when I want to connect with my right people. How about you?

So let’s frame this up differently.

‘Marketing’ itself may sound like a cold word, but really what you’re doing is taking your ideas, your love, and your customer brand experience to market in a setting designed for such an activity.

What setting, you might ask? Use your imagination. It’ll help you tap into the sixth sense you need to develop about your right people. You can dream up a physical place or space that embodies the unspoken, intangible, even untapped-into characteristics of your right people’s mini universe.

Maybe your imaginary marketplace is lush with fragrant flowers, original art on canvas, succulent fruits, and frosted cupcakes. Sounds like a good time, right?

Nope? Not your bag?

Maybe yours is a modern urban loft retrofitted with every type of techie-lovin’ convenience, where slickly suited, fast-talking people trade ideas energetically before spinning off to their next meeting. Sound like you?

Let’s think of your marketing as a verb, not a noun.

Marketing isn’t some cold, dull “thing” you must add to your To Do list.

It’s grabbing your favorite market bag, slinging it over your shoulder, putting on comfortable shoes, and heading out for a few hours of market-ing.

Market-ing is about finding sympatico between sellers with integrity who have genuinely good stuff to offer and the right interested people who are in want of that good stuff. {Notice I said in want of, not in need of. That’s an important difference. Think about that.}

It’s about putting your right people at ease and creating an environment that encourages them to stay a while, browse, contemplate, evaluate, make comparisons, ask questions. Maybe even fall in love. Or become addicted. Choose your poison.

So the idea of a marketplace is pretty useful when thinking about your right people.

It makes the whole idea of marketing feel a lot friendlier. A lot more you-and-me. Like we’re meeting up in the real, tangible world although we may be conversing online only.

This exercise is really helpful for people who have online-only businesses.

But you can apply this to a mostly-offline business, too. For instance, if you’ve got a shop, think about where your right people tend to congregate in the real world when they’re not in your shop. Imagine yourself there with them, chatting them up and becoming one of them. You’ll find yourself feeling a lot more comfortable once you’re back in your store, trying to help your customer choose which candle her daughter-in-law’s mother would be least likely to reject. After all, you’ve seen your right person at her gym. Or at the park where she takes her kids. Or at the hookah shop. {Don’t look at me! I don’t know where your imaginary marketplace is!}

My marketplace is a rockin’ little café.

It has striped awnings, Euro-style stencils on clean, modern storefront windows, and a colorful, motley mix of browsers passing by: folks with tattoos and shaved heads, boho lovelies holding hands with rucksack-toting boys, dogs with happy red tongues flapping, artists and thinkers and dancers and writers and creatives. It’s a sunny day, temps in the high 60s. When it rains we put up our hoods and pull out our umbrellas. We’re in it for the joy of it and we like being in the thick of it.

It has great lighting — lots of natural light and some accent lighting for ambience. It plays all the right songs {you know — Mia Carruthers and the Retros, Rilo Kiley, Pomplamoose, Erykah Badu — that kind of thing}. It has a case full of shamefully decadent desserts — wicked good lemon bars and mint chocolate chip cheesecake — and generous wood tables with cushy booth seating for those who are staying a while.

And an outdoor area, like in the avenues des Paris {where I’ve never been, despite having owned a French-y shop}. Uh-huh. A table or two with an umbrella for those of us who want more than just SPF 50.

And my people. Oh, my people.

My people are nice. Genuinely nice. {This doesn’t have to — and probably shouldn’t — mean perky.} I tend to call nice people “cool.”

And they’re smart. Sort of quiet, usually.

What does your marketplace look like?

Who else is there besides you? What are they doing? How do they go there to feel? How do they want others to see them? How do they want to see themselves? What do they need? What do they want?

Now make this practical.

Next time you’re creating content for your right people — whether that means writing a blog post, designing an ad, working on your website, or creating a YouTube video to invite people to your next offline event — try visualizing yourself standing in your marketplace among them.

You’re you, they’re them, and you’re going to be a match. Very cool.

Try this out and tell me how it feels. And while you’re at it, I’d love to hear all about your marketplace.

Want to learn more about cultivating a sixth sense for your right people? Subscribe to Inklings, my weekly-ish e-newsletter, and get a free 10-part e-course on Creating a Truly Irresistible Niche. It’s all in there. Look for the sign-up form in the righthand sidebar.

And don’t forget to introduce yourself and enter my little contest. I’m awarding $10 for coffee-or-whatnot to the commenter with the most compelling tat-worthy dream. Read the post. It’ll all make sense.