How To Repel Customers

"I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you one for failure: trying to please everybody all the time." - Herbert Bayard Swope

In marketing, it's just as important to know who your business doesn't serve, as it does to know who you do. You simply can't be all things to all people. Just because someone has a heartbeat and a wallet doesn't mean they are a prospective customer. You need to be discerning about who your target market is - and sometimes, more importantly, who they are not.

This is where your marketing comes into play. Its goal is to act like a giant magnet, attracting your target market to you - and repelling the rest. Yes repelling. That might feel like a terrifying idea at first but think back to the last disaster customer you had in your business. Think how much grief they caused you. You do NOT want everyone as your customer.

Your marketing helps you sift and sort through all the prospective buyers in the marketplace. They take the first step, then the second, then the third and they keep moving along your sales funnel - so that by the time they actually call your office they are exceptionally well qualified and eager to do business.

Doesn't this make a welcome change from poor quality prospects, who have no real intention of buying, wasting your time? 

Take a look at this sign I saw in downtown Manhattan. Most businesses just have a boring “no soliciting” sign. This one is not only funny, but it’s a great example of repellant messaging that their customers also find hilarious.

In your marketing it’s important to specify who your services are not for - as well as who they are for. I do this in my book The Client Stampede.

A question for you: how can you incorporate this “repellant” messaging into your marketing?