Trawling, Bait Fishing or Spearfishing: How Are You Catching Your Customers?

Three Ways to Catch a Customer

While I was writing about why your five-star reviews can cost you customers, one idea kept coming up that deserved a post of its own. It’s a simple way to think about how a business finds its customers, and it comes from fishing.

There are three ways to catch fish. You can trawl, dragging a huge net and keeping whatever ends up in it. You can bait fish, putting something tempting on a hook and taking whatever bites. Or you can spearfish, picking out the one fish you want and aiming for it.

Most small businesses I meet are doing one of the first two, often without realising it. Most of them would be better off with the third.

Trawling: Taking Any Customer

A trawler drags a big net through the water and hauls up everything in its path. Some of it is what the crew wanted. A lot of it isn’t. Fishermen call that bycatch, and most of it gets thrown back.

In marketing, trawling looks like this:

• Adverts aimed at “everyone in the area”
• Discounts and special offers to push up volume
• Leaflets through every door in town
• A website that tries to appeal to anyone who might possibly buy

It can bring in a lot of people, and when you’re starting out, that can feel like exactly what you need. But you pay to catch everything, including the customers who were never right for you. They’re the ones who haggle over price, need more hand-holding than you allowed for, leave the lukewarm review or cancel after a month. That’s your bycatch, and you pay for it in time, money and reputation.

Bait Fishing: Taking Whatever Bites

Bait fishing is quieter. You pick a spot, put on some bait, cast out and wait. You’ve made a few choices, but you don’t really decide which fish you catch. You take whatever bites.

This is how a lot of established small businesses work. Most of the work comes from word of mouth. The website describes what you do in general terms. You post on social media now and then. Enquiries come in, and you say yes to most of them, because work is work.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and it can keep a business going for years. Your bait does make a difference, too. Different baits attract different fish: carp anglers use boilies, while someone after roach might use maggots. In marketing, your bait is your message, your offer and where you put them, and together they shape who bites.

But most businesses never really choose their bait. They use whatever’s to hand, cast out and wait. So their customers are decided by whoever happens to come along. Some will be a perfect fit. Others will be the wrong fish that happened to be hungry that day. And because you didn’t choose them, it’s hard to grow in the direction you actually want.

Spearfishing: Choosing Your Customer and Aiming

A spearfisher works in a completely different way. They get in the water, look around, pick out the one fish they want and aim for it. They catch fewer fish, but almost everything they catch is exactly what they were after. There’s no bycatch.

In marketing, spearfishing means deciding who your ideal customer is before you do anything else, and then aiming everything at them:

• Your website speaks directly to that person, in their words, about their problems
• You say clearly who you’re for and who you’re not for
• You go where they are, rather than trying to be everywhere
• Your offer, prices and process are built around what they care about

Think of the builder who focuses on period property in the Cotswolds rather than “all building work”, the accountant who only works with hospitality businesses, or the web designer who builds sites for trades. They all turn work away. They’re also the ones who can charge properly, get referred by the right people and spend far less time on customers who were never going to be happy.

Why the Spear Feels Scary

If spearfishing works so well, why don’t more businesses do it? Because it means saying no, and saying no feels like turning money away.

When you narrow your focus, the pool of possible customers looks smaller. You worry about the enquiries you’ll miss. You remember that one great job that came out of nowhere.

But the opposite usually happens. When your marketing speaks clearly to one type of customer, those people feel understood and say yes more readily. Word of mouth gets sharper too, because people know exactly who to send your way. “You need to speak to Sarah, she does exactly that” is far more powerful than “Sarah does a bit of everything”.

And the people you turn away? As I wrote in the five-star reviews post, a prospect who walks away before the sale costs you nothing. A poor-fit customer who buys can cost you a great deal.

How to Pick Up the Spear

You don’t have to change everything overnight. Here’s where I’d start.

1. Look at your best customers. Pick the five or ten you’ve most enjoyed working with, who paid well and recommended you. What do they have in common? Think about the type of business, size, location and the problem they came to you with.
2. Look at your worst ones too. Which customers took the most time, complained the most or left early? What do they have in common? That’s your bycatch.
3. Describe your target in one sentence. For example: “Owner-run trades businesses with five to twenty staff who want more of the right enquiries.” If it won’t fit in one sentence, it isn’t sharp enough yet.
4. Rewrite your website for that person. Your headline, your services page and your case studies should all make that customer think “this is for me”.
5. Add a “who this isn’t for” line. It’s the quickest way to stop attracting the wrong fish.
6. Go where they are. If your ideal customers are on LinkedIn, at a particular networking group or reading a trade magazine, put your effort there rather than everywhere.
7. Tell the people who refer you. Let past customers and contacts know exactly who you’re looking for. It makes it much easier for them to send the right people your way.

When Trawling and Bait Fishing Still Make Sense

I’m not saying the net and the rod are always wrong. A new café or a village shop genuinely needs footfall, and broad local marketing works for that. A business that’s just starting out may need to fish for a while to find out which customers it serves best. And a bit of word of mouth from unexpected places will always be welcome.

The problem comes when a business trawls or bait fishes by default, without ever deciding who it actually wants. The bigger, more considered or more personal your service is, the more the spear pays off.

Do You Need Help?

Working out who your ideal customer is can be surprisingly hard from the inside, especially when you’ve been saying yes to everyone for years. If you’d like a hand, I’m happy to look at your website and marketing and help you work out where to aim. Book a free 15-minute chat. No pressure, no hard sell.

You might also like The Circles We Live In (And What They Teach Us About Marketing) and Client or Customer? Why the Word You Choose Shapes the Relationship You Get.

Conclusion

Trawling catches the most, but you pay for every bit of bycatch. Bait fishing is easier, but you take whatever bites. Spearfishing catches fewer, and almost everything you catch is worth having.

So decide which fish you’re after. Aim your website, your words and your effort at them, and let the others swim past.

The best customers rarely turn up by accident. They’re the ones you went looking for.