How to Find Your Single Target Market

Transcription

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Yuri with you. Super excited to have another special guest on today’s show. Her name is Megan Mill, and again as always, we’re going to go deep into what Megan needs help with most in her business right now. So Megan, welcome to the podcast and can you tell our listeners and viewers a bit more about who you are and we’ll take it from there.

Introducing Megan And The Market She Is Looking To Serve

Megan Mill:                        Hello, I’m Megan. Online, I go by Dr Megan. I am the prednisone pharmacist. So I’m not your typical person on this show because I’m a pharmacist. I’m not sure if anyone else has ever been a pharmacist on here before, but I recently launched my business, helping people struggling with side effects from prednisone and I’m hoping to find the perfect client and find the best way to help those people.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. All right, so over the next 20, 25 minutes or so, we want to kind of narrow in and dial in on that perfect client. Would that be, would that make the most sense for you?

Megan Mill:                        Yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yep? Okay, cool. So just want to make sure that you can see this blank screen thingamajig on your screen there. Can you see that?

Megan Mill:                        Yeah, I can see that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay, perfect. So I’m just going to draw some stuff out and we’ll map this out. Okay, so prednisone is… I only know prednisone from my dogs having to use it a couple of years ago from back surgery. So for all of our listeners and viewers, it’s a type of corticosteroid that reduces inflammation. Is that right or?

Megan Mill:                        Yes, exactly. It is used for lots of different health conditions and it is a miracle, but it’s also miserable for people to take it because it has so many side effects.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay, cool. So when we look at your perfect client… So as you probably know and all of our viewers and listeners know, it’s really like the most important first starting point for any business is to narrow down on a single target market, right? So if we look at the entire world as being this big circle, we want to narrow down right into the middle there because when you do that, you obviously speak to them in a much more specific fashion. They feel understood and heard and that improves the whole process from here on forth. So who would be using prednisone? Just give me some examples of people that might be on prednisone.

Identifying Who Your Target Audience Is

Megan Mill:                        So a lot of people are taking prednisone for rheumatoid arthritis. That’s one of the main conditions and then pretty much any other inflammatory condition, reactive condition transplants, what’s amazing about prednisone is how many things it can help, but that’s also the hardest part about me finding my perfect client is because I don’t know how to reach them all through marketing or through messaging or advertising. That’s my hardest thing.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So it could be rheumatoid arthritis. It could be colitis even. It could be anything that has inflammation involved in that. So someone’s on prednisone and let’s just use rheumatoid arthritis as an example. So if someone’s who has rheumatoid arthritis, they’ve been prescribed prednisone from the doctor, are they, and not every one of them, but probably a good majority of them are probably thinking to themselves what? Like, “I don’t want to be on this medication or there’s got to be a safer, more natural way?” or what is the conversation happening in their minds?

Megan Mill:                        Yeah, I think pretty much everyone on prednisone wishes they didn’t have to be on it. It’s just a really great band aid to get you through your pain, through your immediate concern of what could be killing you, but it’s miserable to be taking it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right, so let’s do this. So it’s really important when we look at, there’s three components to conversions, marketing, however you want to think of it. I’ve talked about this numerous times on the show. So I’m just going to really quickly recap. I call this the triad of influence. Number one is the market, second is message and third is magic which is essentially your offer. So here we’re really going to be spending our time talking about the market, right? Because the market and you can’t craft a message unless you know who you’re speaking to. So just to bit of context for everyone and for yourself.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So if we look at, so part of the market when you look at it, there’s three activators under market. One of them is a single target market who knows that they have a major pain or problem. So they have to be aware of that, right? So persons aware that they have rheumatoid arthritis in this example and they understand that. Now what are the frustrations? So frustrations are things that people are experiencing now, the things that keep them up at night, the things that they’re top of mind worried about. What are those frustrations? Let’s list three of them.

Identifying The Pain Points of Your Target Market

Megan Mill:                        So first is, you mentioned keeping you up at night. This drug definitely causes insomnia for a lot of people. That’s the number one tweeted side effect.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay, what else?

Megan Mill:                        Weight gain. Prednisone is probably one of the top drugs that makes you gain weight.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And let’s do one more.

Megan Mill:                        And it changes your personality. It interferes with your ability to say no in your brain. That spot where you can say, “Oh, I won’t eat that cookie because I don’t want to gain weight.” It’s interfering with their ability to, like their executive functioning.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So frustration is something that’s currently happening. If those frustrations continue, they turn into fears, right? And fears are kind of the culmination of those frustrations over time. So what are those frustrating, if we look at one or two fears that let’s say two, three, four, five years down the road could become a reality as a result of these frustrations, what might those be?

Megan Mill:                        Let’s see. So obviously I could’ve started with the frustrations is the hunger cravings and then the fears would be excessive weight gain and not being able to lose it because not only is the drug making you gain weight, but with your health condition, you’re struggling to be able to exercise or have the energy to cook healthfully.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure, and so excessive weight gain, what does that mean for these people? What’s the problem or fear around that?

Megan Mill:                        The social implications or it worsening their condition because if you’re having joint problems and you have more weight than that is more pain. So that and then this drug is also the number one cause of osteoporosis and so that wasn’t on the frustrations because you can’t feel it. You can’t feel the bone loss. It just happens and suddenly you’re going to break your bones and shrink your spine and be shorter and pain, all that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s always good, right? Get it all.

Megan Mill:                        Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So it’s almost like birth control, right? Not birth control, I was thinking of, oh my goodness, hormone replacement therapy, HRT, right? So for some women, obviously it might be beneficial, but if they’ve got a history of breast cancer issues in the family, then it becomes and obviously it’s related to preventing osteoporosis or whatever. So there’s all sorts of things tied in with this stuff. So what we’re essentially doing here is we’re mapping out of the profile of this avatar. Now I want to just kind of take a step back for a second because this really the single, singling out a single target market comes down to really a couple of simple questions.

Three Key Questions To Ask About Your Target Market

Yuri Elkaim:                         Number one is do they have a major pain or problem? The answer to this obviously is yes in this case, right? Number two is are they aware of it? Number three, who can you help to the greatest degree? So if you like, let’s say I were to say to you, “Megan, if I give you 10 clients, a 100 clients, however many clients with this condition, if you cannot give them a breakthrough transformation, you will be beheaded.” So with that kind of thinking, who would be the best client for you to work with? What condition or does it matter?

Megan Mill:                        I think it does matter because some conditions they’re stuck in bed. They can’t do anything. So their ability to act on any of my advice is limited. So it would have to be somebody with a less impairing condition, but I mean it’s obviously bad enough where they have to take this drug. So I guess that really does help me clarify. I want the healthiest sick people.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And it’s a catch 22 because wherever there’s pain and urgency and there’s usually going to be higher conversion, so a higher degree of action. If someone has a bruise, no big deal. If they have a broken leg, we’re taking action on that right away, right? So, but it’s also as you mentioned, it’s important to think about this person needs to be in a certain degree of pain or have a problem that’s serious enough for them to act on, but they also have to have the wherewithal to act on it and not everyone will, right? So with that said, so if we looked at like fibromyalgia, would that be another category of people?

Megan Mill:                        They don’t usually get desperate enough to go on prednisone. I don’t even know if it would help necessarily fibromyalgia, but that’s the right strategy. I think people who have something really limiting but isn’t keeping them in bed.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So rheumatoid arthritis.

Megan Mill:                        Asthma, COPD, those breathing problems and then lots of kidney problems. So they’re not dying in bed, but their kidneys are going to fail if they don’t take this.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well I’ve got asthma. I actually just went to my doctor yesterday to get a renewal on my prescription because during the summer, especially now, there’s more construction on our area. I’ve noticed that my asthma is a little bit worse than it used to be. I don’t really use my puffer that much, but just as a nice to have, but it’s funny because I asked my doctor, I’m like, “Other than a puffer, what other natural means are there to improve lung function?” and she’s like, “Honestly, other than avoiding smoking stuff, there’s not much you can do.” Thankfully I was never on prednisone, but if I were I would definitely be seeking it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Even if I’m on a Ventolin, I’m already thinking about like “What can I do to not have to be on that?” So avoiding irritants and so forth. Anyways, so the key here is really you could be working with any of these people, right? RA, asthma, COPD, colitis and honestly what it comes down to is just choosing one, right? That’s as simple as it needs to be. If you know you can help them, that’s very important and then second is who obviously can you get the best result for? Who Will you enjoy working with? And then it’s just a matter of choosing a line. So a really simple way of doing this, so if we took rheumatoid arthritis… Well let me ask you. Out of, off the top of your head, if we were to say, so let’s just kind of use three categories, so three possible clients. Which would be the conditions? And then I’ll just show you how to choose them.

Megan Mill:                        So rheumatoid arthritis obviously would be a good choice and then the reason, so I never made this clarification, reason I care so much about this is not just because I’m a pharmacist. It’s also because I had to take it and it was awful and so I had to take it for a bleeding disorder called ITP. So I think that would be the next one for me.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s a breathing disorder you said?

Megan Mill:                        A bleeding as in blood. Then probably, after this it’s really hard to choose because there’s so many.

Megan Mill:                        Lupus, lupus.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Lupus?

Megan Mill:                        Mm-hm.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So let’s start with this. So people, how many people prevalence wise have ITP? Is it fairly common or?

Megan Mill:                        It’s pretty rare. It’s like one in 10,000.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And if someone has it, they’re aware that they have it?

Megan Mill:                        Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So Lupus, is it more common, less common?

Megan Mill:                        I’m actually not sure of the prevalence of Lupus, but I would assume it’s more common than ITP.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And then rheumatoid arthritis probably is more common than both.

Megan Mill:                        The most common.

How To Find Your Audience On Facebook

Yuri Elkaim:                         So part of this is, no matter who you want to serve, you can certainly find them, right? So part of the thinking here is that if you want it to and we strongly recommend using Facebook because Facebook has a billion users and I promise you a few of them will have any of these conditions. So the opportunity is, let’s say Facebook has a billion people on the platform. You’re going to put a message in front of a general population and you’re going to have to somehow have them raise their hand like, “Yes, I have this condition,” and that becomes a little bit tricky in terms of have you run Facebook ads before, Megan?

Megan Mill:                        Yeah, I started a page about in February and I’ve been running just my organic stuff. I boost it and so that’s mostly my experience. So I haven’t created things just to be an ad necessarily.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. So I mean the good news is you could, so we have clients who target RA, right? So they work with rheumatoid arthritis patients and you would for instance say “I’m going to send out a…” Is it typically men or women that have RA or is it pretty much doesn’t matter?

Megan Mill:                        Almost all of these conditions are prevalently women.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So what you would do in this case is you would say, “I’m going to target,” let’s just use the example of RA, “I’m going to set up an ad with a very specific message that talks very specifically about rheumatoid arthritis.” It’s going to be shown to women between what, like 40 and 65 maybe? Is that typically the age? So women in the US or Canada, 40 to 65 who have, well we can’t, we don’t know. They’re not going to say, Facebook doesn’t have the data on rheumatoid arthritis. Right? So that’s where you have to be, you have to know how to do things properly here because you’re putting a message in front of women generally 40 to 65 and then you’re using the message to get them to raise their hands.

Megan Mill:                        Okay, so there’s not a great way within Facebook to limit it to just people with RA, but-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Because there’s no pages, if you think of people with rheumatoid arthritis, what are they going to like? What are they going to be interested in, right? What types of authorities might they be following? What brands are they frequenting? What types of products are they consuming? There’s ways of finding those audiences, but it’s not like if we’re, for our ads, our ads will say, “Show this ad to people who have chiropractic as a job title,” as an example, but Facebook doesn’t say, “There are 1000 people who are interested in rheumatoid arthritis.” There’s no pages unless there’s an association. There’s the American Diabetes Association. People who have diabetes are more likely to possibly like that page. So there might be something like that for Lupus or RA, et cetera. So those are some of the ways you can find these people on Facebook.

Yuri Elkaim:                         But the key is the only way to find those people is again, narrowing down your message to such a point where the persons who went through their newsfeed and they’re like, “Wow that’s, how does this person know? That’s exactly what she just said there. That is exactly what I’m experiencing.” Right? And now they have a message that’s put in front of them that speaks to them. It’s very empathetic in the sense that they feel understood and now that’s how you get them to kind of come into your world and take the next step with you. So the reason we look at these possibilities here is, could you find people with ITP? 100%. Could you find people with Lupus? 100%. Could you find people with RA or colitis or anything else? 100%. Do we know what that’s going to cost you to acquire a lead or a client? We don’t know until you actually start writing this stuff.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So I think anytime you have a personal story related to a condition, that’s helpful, right? If you’ve gone through ITP, there’s obviously a very strong bond there or connection and I think it’s all obviously a lot easier to share a story around. Even if you don’t have RA, you can talk about how you maybe have had clients who you’ve helped with that or how you had ITP, which is very similar to other conditions. So really what it comes down to is you just say, “Okay, you’re ready.” Put a red on one of these three. If I were to say, “Okay, we’re going to just nix out one of these three. Based on just what we’ve talked about so far, which one would you say let’s just get rid of?”

Megan Mill:                        Well, with prednisone, people might be on it a long time or they might be on it on a short time. Like people with asthma, it’s usually four to six weeks or something and then they’re done and so that’s more likely with ITP, that it’s a short term thing and so they might not be, I might not catch them in time to really make an impact.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So we’ll put a red on ITP?

Megan Mill:                        Mm-hm.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So between Lupus and RA, is there any kind of emotional charge that you feel more pulled towards?

Megan Mill:                        I think I’m more pulled towards RA. I’ve got family members with it, so that means more to me.

Getting That Perfect Client Dialed In

Yuri Elkaim:                         So that’s it. That’s, I mean worst case scenario, here’s what you do. You take out the one that you know is not going to make sense and you flip a coin with the other two, right? Assuming everything else is equal, you can help them, you can find them, et cetera and that’s just like, it’s as simple as that. It’s like you say, “I am going to be the person, the expert who helps people with RA get off prednisone so that they can achieve a healthier outcome without the side effects, et cetera.” How does that feel to you?

Megan Mill:                        That feels empowering. I feel like I, I know I was floundering. How do I target everyone and I don’t need to target everyone. I can just target one person.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Exactly and I can promise you, you could build a multiple million dollar coaching business just with rheumatoid arthritis and you’ll actually have a better chance of doing it so then if you try to be everyone, like everything to everyone, right? Now the other way you could do this and I’m not going to suggest that you do this, but sometimes depending on the size of the market, you could say, “I am like the pred-” kind of your introduction. You help people who are on prednisone get off of prednisone. So the target market could be the fact that anyone who’s on this medication could be the target market. What we’re doing here is we’re going one level deeper. We’re saying if you have rheumatoid arthritis and you’re on this medication or likely on this medication, which I think is going to be more powerful because now you’re speaking not just to the fact that they’re on the medication, but they’re also, you’re specific to the condition, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         So the beautiful thing about this is that you can very quickly become the mayor of this town. You can be the dominant player or authority for people with rheumatoid arthritis who are on prednisone, right? And then if you wanted eventually down the road, you can always go one step up. So what happens, what I’ve noticed a lot in the coaching space, in the business coaching space is there are people who I’ll just talk with the health and wellness space, they start off as a health and wellness business coach and then they find it easier for some reason to help just, they’re like, “You know what? I’m tired of serving health and wellness people because of X, Y, and Z. I know that my stuff can also help other businesses.” So they move from just helping health and wellness now to anyone with a business and ideally business coaches, because in their mind they think that maybe they have more money or they can get more ROI.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So they move from being very specific to a level higher where there’s more of an audience and I don’t always think that’s the best, but I think in your case the long play would actually make sense as you start off as RA prednisone, you become the authority in that space and if you ever wanted to scale beyond that, it becomes the next logical step to become the prednisone expert, not just in RA now but also in Lupus, also in colitis, also in this other stuff because people know you as the person who just helps people on prednisone, but that’s more of a long-term plan. Does that make sense?

Megan Mill:                        Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Master to the art of the RA part of it and then expand.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yep, exactly. It’s like think of if you’re drilling for oil, you would start off with one oil well. You get that going, right? It’s chugging oil. It’s doing its thing. You have it working, systemize, everything’s great. You know like, “You know what? Now I want to serve a slightly different market, but related.” Now you have that all systemized, it’s doing its thing. You can stay there or you can open up another oil well and start drilling there as well, but it’s important that you have that foundation initially in that one target market and then it becomes easier to expand over time.

Megan Mill:                        That makes sense.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Is that helpful?

Megan Mill:                        Mm-hm.

Megan’s A-Ha’s And Biggest Takeaway

Yuri Elkaim:                         So what have you found most useful from our discussion here?

Megan Mill:                        I definitely found the clarity has been the most important thing. Just really ruling things out. That it’s okay to cut out. I mean, prednisone can be used for over a hundred different conditions and it’s okay that I’m not talking to the 99. I am talking to the one.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally, and that’s one of the biggest challenges that people in our space have is that we want to help everyone, right? Because you probably can help a lot of different people, but it doesn’t mean you should and that’s one of the biggest messages I want all of our listeners and viewers to remember is that as a health or fitness wellness expert, just because you have amazing protocols that can help a lot of different people, it doesn’t mean you should and it becomes very challenging to marketing your business, especially online if you’re the generalist and it’s very, very challenging to do so. So go specific. The riches are in the niches as they say. So Megan, what is going to be your first action step based on our conversation here?

Megan Mill:                        I think I’m going to… I’ve already got a lot of training as far as rheumatoid arthritis goes, but I think I’m going to jump into the rheumatoid arthritis support groups and just get to know them. Just find out really who they are and what their needs are so that I understand prednisone, but I’ve never had RA. So how does that feel?

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s a really good move and honestly your marketing, everything in your marketing comes down to these four boxes: wants, aspirations, frustrations and fears. If you see the conversations happening and you understand these people and you say, “Okay, well this is a frustration these people are dealing with,” that becomes the foundation of your marketing. Everything becomes so much easier when you can communicate. “Listen, I understand what it’s like to not be able to sleep anymore, what that does to you and it compromises your ability to work or function,” or whatever those things are. Just take notes of those wants and aspers. So wants are things. So a frustration is basically the flip of a want.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So if they’re dealing with insomnia or weight gain, what is the thing that they want now as they’re dealing with that frustration? So they want to sleep better for instance, right? That’d be a want. That would be the opposite of insomnia and when you, this is really the starting place. So once you’ve identified your perfect client or your single target market, this is the foundation of everything else you do. Because nothing, you should not, I don’t think any business has the right to put anything out there until they deeply understand these four boxes, but when you do you understand them, you’ll have people saying to themselves, “Megan is in my head. She knows exactly what I’m going through,” and when that happens, you basically create a category of one and you have nothing to worry about.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So I think that’s awesome. Cool. So I would just troll the groups, see what’s going on, see what people are saying, and just start to fill in the wants, aspirations, frustrations, and fears and then everything from the messaging standpoint down here starts to come into play with a lot of that kindling for your marketing fire. So was that good?

Megan Mill:                        That was very helpful.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome, awesome. Well, Megan, thanks so much for your time. This is always a lot of fun for me because I really have no idea what’s going to happen, but it’s always fun to give you more clarity and direction to move forward out of this. If you guys are watching, listening to this, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, remember to subscribe to the podcast over on iTunes and thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll see you guys in the next episode.