Know your target market (and stick with that)

I have just returned from yet another regional holiday bazaar, where I have spent two days of my life talking to everyone I can about how fabulous my product is, and being met with a lot of “great idea” and “how cute” comments, but little actual sales. At the end of each show I pack up, feeling like my product is ridiculous, that I am doomed to fail, and wondering why I wasted my money and time yet again. Then I remember where I live.
In order to fully understand this to you, let me explain my product. I sell aquaBling; a chic water bottle accessory designed to promote health, eco-conscious living, and personal style for women. The women who love my product live in cities, have health club memberships, and work in corporate America. They are busy, trend-driven, fun women who love to have the latest and greatest of everything. There are millions of women just like that in America. Just not where I live. I live in rural South Dakota, with women who drink tap water. Women who live on farms. Women who wear sweatshirts with Christmas ornaments or quilted cats and Easy Spirits. Not my customer.
I’m not originally from the Midwest. I was born and raised in Nevada. I am city through and through. However, I have lived in South Dakota for the last decade or so. My husband (a born and bred Midwesterner) will often tease me and tell me he married an import. It’s true. I am. You can see that from the moment you look at me.
Don’t get me wrong...I love living in South Dakota. It is a fabulous place to raise a family. I know all of my neighbors. We only live a couple of hours from the family farm, and my kids are being raised with some outstanding values. But it is not good for business.
There are not a lot of women with product businesses where I live, so I am constantly bombarded with calls and e-mails about attending this holiday fair or that women’s expo, each one with their own (sometimes quite pricey) booth fees. When I first started the business, I felt that I needed to attend each and every one of these in order to get my name out and make sales. But rarely did I do better than break even. Plus, I had just wasted an entire weekend talking to the wrong people. I have started saying “no” more and more, but I occasionally still feel guilted into trying a regional show. And, it’s still the same. Nobody cares that my product has been in this or that magazine, that I have been featured in numerous national television and newspaper segments. They’re still not buying it.
So...in January I’m headed out to California, where I know they love me, and I know I will pack up at the end with an entirely different feeling. Like my product is fun, like my product is fabulous, like I’m successful. Because that’s where my target market is.
Because they’re buying it.