I Am Not My Client

By Bonnie Boots

Take a look at any workstation and you're likely to see a motto posted nearby. These wall signs help us keep important ideas in mind. "Think," says one sign. "Focus," says another.

Let me suggest a very important motto to add to your wall: "I are not my client."

What does that mean? It means, simply, that you are not your target market.

It's very important to keep this in mind whenever you're working on sales and promotional material, whether that's a printed brochure or a sales page on your web site. You are not your client. Your needs, your wants, your means and your limitations are not necessarily the same as those of your customers. You are not the person your promotion is meant to impact.

Business owners who forget this important motto are my worst clients. I'll map out an idea for a television commercial or show them sales copy that's been carefully calculated to speak to the customer they most want to attract, and they'll toss it aside, saying, "That would never sell me."

A sales page, brochure or advertisement has one important job-to speak in a clear and compelling voice to the person you're trying to attract. You are not that person.

A few years ago I was working on a television commercial for a restaurant owner. I showed her a storyboard that laid out the major scenes in the planned commercial and explained why the ad would affect her target market. "This just doesn't do it for me," she said. "If I saw this on TV, I wouldn't pay any attention to it."

I pointed out that she'd called me in to attract a new kind of customer to her restaurant, one that was younger and more affluent than her current crop of diners.

Her current advertising, I said, showed a gloomily dark dining room filled with senior diners. It was poorly lit so the food shots looked old and gray. And the plates in the food shots all contained soft foods like applesauce or creamed squash. Every aspect of that ad, I told her, spoke to elderly and not so affluent diners, and that was precisely what it had attracted.

What I did not point out was that the restaurant owner lived with her ill and very elderly parents. Most of her daily thoughts were focused on serving their needs. And she'd let that focus spill over into the decisions she made about her advertising. By making choices based on what "felt" right to her, she'd managed to fill her dining room with duplicates of her parents. And as a consequence, her vision of creating a youthful bustling, upscale bistro had drifted away.

This owner had forgotten that she and her family are not the targets of her promotional campaign. They're tastes, their wants, their needs, even their ages and their styles are, in many ways, the exact opposite of the customers she wants to attract.

The creation of an effective brochure, advertisement or internet sales page begins with a profile of the target market. You must have a particular type of customer in mind, gather some information about the wants, needs and abilities of that person, then make every decision based on what will appeal to them.

If, after doing some research, you discover that the only kind of customer you want to attract is someone exactly like you, by all means rely on your personal taste and instinct. But if your chosen target differs in meaningful ways, such as having a higher or lower income than you or having more or less education than you, take care. All your choices must be made with only that target in mind--the person your advertising is aimed at.

Business owners that make choices based merely on their own tastes make disastrous decisions. If they're having financial struggles, they underprice their products because they "know" no one would pay more. If they're young, they blast their web site visitors with loud, clanging music because they "know" everyone likes it. If they're male, they offer prizes like a man's Rolex watch because they "know" that's what everyone wants. If they're parents, they use their own children in their television ads because they "know" everyone finds them adorable and fascinating.

Creating promotional material is challenging because creation is done with the heart, and yet the decisions about that creation must be made with the brain. Put your heart into your promotional pieces and they will carry your enthusiasm and excitement about your own business to your potential customer. But remember that your brain must be equally involved, keeping the focus on the potential customer and not on you.

You, after all, are not your client.


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