Disjointed messages sent to the wrong prospects will quickly kill your marketing efforts. When you are trying to be everything to everyone, it does not allow you to make a difference or stand out; it’s nearly impossible to define your ideal target market.

You must relate to your ideal clients and target market with everything you do! Once you complete your logo, select your colors, finalize your USP and everything else that defines your brand, your marketing will be targeted towards a very specific group of prospects. Every time the right prospect lands on your website or social media links, they will understand exactly what your expertise is all about.

Below are six steps to staying on target in your business

Step #1: Always be marketing.

If you launch your expert business with a lot of marketing issues around your brand and target market, it’s going to be challenging to get new clients who value your work.

Sometimes a few slight adjustments in your marketing can open up a lot more doors of opportunity for you. For example, my client Denise was already a successful color therapist expert when she started working with me. She has very high-level corporate clients and her business was already running well, for the most part. All I did was tweak some of her existing marketing and clean up what she already had so that she could be more on target. Together we looked at every word of her website and every image, then adjusted the pieces that needed change. Now her marketing gains her more ideal clients with ease since she’s more on target.

Step #2: Get serious about your business.

An expert is serious about playing a bigger game in business and in life. Everything you do needs to be perfectly aligned to target only ideal clients who pay you well for your services. Below are some examples of this.

Example #1: Whether you’re speaking for free or a fee, you must have the goal of making money from your presentation. It will be your main goal.

Example #2: Every marketing piece should have a strong call to action that leads them to do business with you in some way. Experts run their business like a real business, not a hobby.

Step #3: Develop systems that save you time.

As an expert, you must learn to get really focused on your business at all times.

Clients often ask me, “How are you able to respond to all of your clients so quickly? How do you get it all done?” I’m extremely focused and have developed systems for customer service and follow up. Clients love it when you follow up, especially after the sale.

Develop a working system that allows you to save time for the important parts of running your business. For example, one of the ways I save time is by never answering the telephone, unless I have a scheduled appointment. The telephone is such a time-waster unless it’s a planned and focused call. Every call has a timeline and agenda to follow. I respond to my clients the majority of time via email unless we have a personalized mentoring call scheduled.

My personal clients are even trained on how to respond to me via email by asking one question or one focused topic per email. This helps save us both time and allows for fast response. My telephone service is set up on a system that sends me an instant email with the recorded voice message in an attached file. I can click on the message from my computer or my cell phone and decide if the call needs to be returned by me or my assistant. If my assistant can handle the call, I simply forward the email to her to follow up. This way, every call or email that comes into my office is followed up on within 24 hours or less.

You must develop systems that save you time and run your business productively. You clients should never have to hear the excuse that you were too busy. Many experts work from a home office and have a virtual assistant or staff who handle much of the follow-up work. I have two assistants:one for personal client call follow-up and another for my online support and back office.

Step #4: Get productive.

Spending time doing unproductive things is one of the biggest time-wasters of all time.

I always say that if you want to achieve your goals, “Focus on three things every day that you can do that will help you get to your main goal.” When you focus on doing things that grow your business instead of working on details that you can delegate to someone else, you can achieve your goals much faster.

Experts need to be organized or hire someone else to get them organized. This is especially important as the business grows. There is never an excuse not to follow up.

Step #5: Stay focused on your goals.

There’s that word again… FOCUS! You must have very clear goals on what you want to teach others, and just stay focused on that all the time. Systems in your business will help you stay focused, too, as well as selecting the right clients to work with. For example, if you decide to work with the wrong type of client just because you can make money from them, it may cost you twice as much in time in the long run. Every time you take on an unfocused client or a client who’s a pain to deal with, you undervalue your services and waste your time.

Highly paid experts know when to say YES to only the most ideal clients and opportunities, especially if they offer personalized coaching or consulting services. When you reach this level as an expert, you feel more confident in your direction and it’s easier to say NO to the wrong prospect.

Step #6: Ask for help so you can stay on target.

If you need help getting the right prospects, you need to ask for help. You can’t be an expert at everything and you can’t go it alone. With that being said, you don’t have to have years of experience to launch your expert business. You can begin with a few great clients who believe in you and then learn the rest from other experts as you grow your business.

Not knowing how to do something has never held me back from launching a new business – and it shouldn’t stop you either!

Your area of expertise has got to be narrowed down to a field that you feel very comfortable with and that you can also grow with. Go deep into the subject matter of expertise that you know and stay on course so that you don’t offer something outside of your expertise. For example, my expertise is in marketing for small to mid-size business owners, entrepreneurs, and experts. Yet, I have expanded that into branding and business strategy. Both of these are what I’m really good at and are the critical elements required to develop an effective business plan.