As a result of his business coaching programme, he's learnt about direct response marketing.  That's marketing where you go out to generate sales directly from your advertising, rather than just trying to build your brand.

The first stage of the process is to identify your target market.  It's a topic I frequently write about because over 90% of companies simply don't do this at all and it is critical to your results.

You've probably heard the saying that birds of a feather flock together and this is true for your customers too.  A month or so ago we started collecting names and addresses of existing customers to build a customer database.

The beauty of building a customer database is that you can keep in touch with people who have already bought from you. But, you can also find out who their neighbours are and promote to them too.

If Bertie promotes his coffee shop to the streets and areas that his existing clients come from, he'll be talking to a far more receptive audience than than just blasting out a general advert to the whole town or city.

This is one incredibly simple way to identify your target market. Once you've done this it becomes a simple matter of tailoring a message to suit your audience.

If you try this out, make sure to include some kind of offer in your advertising so you can measure how effectively your advertising campaign works.