When "opportunity" knocks, you don’t necessarily have to answer

It often seems to happen in the same way.

An “opportunity” presents itself, and you start thinking:

• We can go to this trade show on the cheap if we go in with these other companies
• Think of all these leads we’ll get from running this ad
• Let’s do this advertorial: we’ll be in really good company
• This directory has a circulation of millions
• If we pay for a webinar with this publication we’ll get tremendous attendance
• Etc…

Now, opportunities present themselves all the time, and trade shows, ads, webinars, etc. can provide excellent means to reach your audience. As long as those trade shows, ads, webinars, etc. are targeted at the right audience. And you say the right things to that audience.

There is a tendency - especially in small companies - to leap at “opportunities” with a contained (probably discounted) price and not a huge manpower investment, and with a big promise that this will yield great results, even though those opportunities may be a little off.

You want to do something, you have a certain amount in your budget, and you have a hope, deep in your heart of hearts, that this one thing may be the one thing that will catapult you into the big leagues.

I’ve seen it time and again. Hell, I’ve even done it (but not time and again).

Whenever one of my clients asks me what I think about one of these opportunities, I ask them the same question:

Is the audience being delivered the right audience for your products and services?

After all, we’ve probably just been through the exercise in which we laid out who that audience is in exquisite detail. If this isn’t the right audience, then this isn’t the right opportunity.

I don’t care if they’re giving you a discount, or will let you add your color logo for FREE! I don’t care if they guarantee that there will be thousands of feet trafficking by. I don’t care if there’ll be a gazillion eyeballs on your information. If they’re not the right feet and eyeballs, that discount means nothing. This is costing you. It’s costing you not just in the cash outlay, and the opportunity cost of your resources to work on it. It’s costing you because you’re taking your own personal eyeballs (and the brains behind them) off the prize. It’s distracting you from the real work of finding ways to get to your real audience.

I can almost, but not quite, guarantee you that no matter how off-the mark the audience is, you’ll get some inquiries. Some of them may actually turn into leads. Maybe, just maybe, one will turn into a customer.

Hey, it’s conceivable that a Fortune 100 CEO will see your ad for the enterprise techno-widget in People Magazine and tell the CIO that they should take a look. But it is not like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s like shooting a guppy in the middle of Lake Superior. There are better ways to catch a fish. And those ways start with figuring out what type of fish you want to catch, and then figuring out where they live and how to bait the hook.

But the  best response to the opportunities that really aren’t squarely aimed at your market should be “Go fish.”

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