Marketing is often perceived as an overwhelming, complicated discipline. But at its core, marketing can be simplified: it is about building a picture for your audience of your solution to their problem. To cut through the noise and achieve genuine growth, businesses must stop scattering their resources and start focusing on precise, measurable goals. This starts with answering one fundamental question: What is your number?
Defining the Target
“What is your number?” refers to the exact count of customers you need to acquire to succeed. The required number varies dramatically based on the scale and nature of your operation. If you run a large corporation, your goal might indeed be millions of customers. For a small organization providing tailoring or highly specialized services over many years, perhaps thousands of clients are necessary.
However, for most businesses, the reality is far more manageable. You often don’t need thousands; you might only need hundreds. In some niche scenarios, you might only require tens of clients. Consider an architect, for example, who might only need 10 clients a year—or perhaps even slightly less than that—to run a successful business.
The Strategic Shift Driven by Precision
Knowing your number is the crucial pivot point that allows you to determine what your entire marketing structure looks like. Once you have this definitive figure, you instantly gain clarity on your actions. When you know what you need to do, you can craft a marketing strategy that genuinely works for you.
This precision saves immense time, money, and effort. If your requirement is only to reach 50 or 100 people, the concept of “spraying and praying on social media” becomes utterly pointless. Similarly, if your target is small and defined, investing in widespread campaigns like putting ads “all across the country using Google ads” is wasteful. You only need to reach that specific pool of 100 people.
Effective marketing, as championed by Refinery23, doesn’t rely on a preferred channel, tool, or methodology; it relies on doing what works for the business. This means keeping things simple, executing “a few things well,” and consistently iterating.
Aligning Strategy to Capacity
The process of finding and acting on your number must be integrated into your overarching business strategy. Refinery23 emphasizes looking at your entire business to develop a plan. This involves deep strategic thinking:
- What problems are you truly solving?
- Who has these problems, and do they actually need your solutions?
- Where are they, and most importantly, what will resonate with them?
A successful marketing strategy helps translate the overall business strategy into a plan that is effective. Services such as marketing strategy development or fractional marketing officer assistance are designed to provide CMO-level guidance to ensure great implementation. Whether through workshops, masterclasses, or ongoing 1-1 support, the focus remains on building skills and capacity so businesses can take their marketing in-house and grow “totally under your control”.
Ultimately, knowing your number transforms your marketing from a series of hopeful, expensive actions into a focused, targeted campaign. It helps align your messaging and solutions to the right audience. By achieving coherence between your business goals and marketing efforts, you move toward a powerful vision: a more independent society. Businesses that do things well gain more autonomy, fostering greater resilience and adaptability to change.
Therefore, stop guessing. Take control. Know your number.
Leave a Reply