My light-bulb moment with a spider

By now, you are probably thinking that I am obsessed with spiders. If so, I admit that the struggle is real!

This time, though, amidst my disgust and cringing, a small spider actually taught me a lot:

The story unfolds…

It’s the holiday season and my sister has travelled from the mother city – Cape Town – to join us on a family vacation. We are all together, in one of our favorite places: the mountains!

If you have ever settled down for a while in the mountains, one thing is for sure – you would have encountered spiders.

Knowing this, I went to the restroom last night to shower and prepare for bed, but it was like I was walking into a trap – fully aware?!

And there it was… Dangling (creepy little thing) in the corner of the shower between the lightbulb and the wall. Though I knew I would find my eight-legged friend there, I still had some hope! This time could be different, couldn’t it?

…but it wasn’t.

Then it struck me!

Bugs, flying and crawling, were all drawn to the light like moths to a flame! This little guy was hanging there, fully aware that his food will be coming to him. He was hunting, or prospecting, as we would call it.

This in itself is the essence of marketing.

Put yourself in the middle of your targets journey.

Dangle near their favorite places.

Work smart, not hard.

Use the web at your disposal (social media/internet/website/social gatherings) and have them come to you.

But this wasn’t all my bittersweet friend taught me…

Every now and then, he would start moving toward me (away from the light) probably to further develop his little trap and then I would lightly blow at him. This made him run the other direction…

Luckily, this resulted in a win-win situation… He would run to the light (which is where his food was at) and I would have no spider near me. But, it could have been different.

Sometimes we are blown away from our clients by the winds of adversity, competition, or even confusion. Always evaluate if the results you are getting, are the results you planned to achieve. If not – it might be time to check where the light is 😉

Target Marketing – Get the ball on the green

This weekend, on Sunday to be exact, my partner-in-crime and I got our golf on.

I love golf.

For those of you who have never played golf, I know that watching it may seem excruciatingly boring. But when you hit your first ball, you will never feel like that again! It is that addictive.

If you know nothing else about golf, the one thing you would know is what a golf ball looks like. Most of us have seen a golf ball before and most of the time the ball is white. Well, for the first time since we started playing together, we played with different color balls: Mine was white and hers was pink.

I hope she won’t be mad at me for telling the whole world about this, but she really had a tough time this weekend. It wasn’t her day at all! Most of her shots went horribly skew…

Being in Africa – which is where I live – the grass is a light brownish color (we call it the bushveld), especially the rough. In my mind, that was excellent, a blessing in disguise even. She had a pink ball, so how hard would it be to find amongst brown grass?

Boy, was I wrong…

The grass is clearly brown, up close. However, when you scan the horizon, it is a rainbow of colors. You see pink everywhere!

Research your target audience

This got me thinking about the importance of proper market research. When you employ marketing to spread the word of your company, who are you hoping to reach?

This is a critical question! For a golfer to find the ball, it has to be on the fairway. In the same way, if you want your perfect clients to find your company you have to hide in plain sight. Be where they are heading.

That is why we refer to it as a target market.

Find the marketing team, who knows how to research your ideal prospect. Who knows how to hook and engage with them.

You don’t want someone who drops the ball in the rough; you want them to place you in your client’s line of sight.

Contact Mirror Marketing today – the grass is greener this side

What are your thoughts about targeting an audience?
Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear from you!