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When you’re developing your marketing strategy and tools, obviously you have to consider your target audience — that specific person or company who will go absolutely ape over what you’ve got to offer. So, who is that ideal customer? You probably have a good idea, right?

Actually, I hear all the time from business owners who don’t.

A red flag goes up for me whenever I hear a businessperson describe his or her ideal customer as “Anyone who…” or “Everybody who might need…” or some other impossibly broad, faceless non-image. That red flag is telling me that this business has not isolated its target market. it’s playing to a crowd instead of an individual.

“But I don’t want to reduce my potential sales by narrowing my audience.” Trust me, if you don’t narrow your audience you can’t get sales, except through dumb luck. A finely honed marketing piece is optimized to reach out and touch one ideal prospective buyer, so you want to develop a clear mental image of that individual. If you were hunting, you wouldn’t just fire random blasts into the bushes (well, maybe you would, but your fellow hunters might take you aside for a little chat). You have to know what you’re aiming at before you can hit it.

Can’t picture your ideal customer? Try asking yourself this question: Who are you?

What unique mix of qualities — traits, strengths, weaknesses, experiences, and passions — do you possess? And out of that huge, faceless throng who might buy from you, which individuals would be most drawn to that particular mix? If you’re the owner/operator of your company, you can’t help but imprint your personality onto your business. Even if you regard your business is a totally separate entity, you’ll still find, if you apply these questions to your brand, that it has a distinctive personality to project to the world. Once you have a clear image of your corporate “face,” then it becomes simpler to imagine the faces of those individual prospects who will be most drawn to you. Best of all, once you can explain to your colleagues and business friends exactly who your target customer is, they’re much better prepared to recognize and refer Mr. or Ms. Perfect to you.

Ever read a marketing piece and exclaim, “Wow, they’re talking directly to me?” Remember that feeling, because that’s the feeling you want inspire. Talk to someone, not “everyone.”