04/06/2026
Originally, my business was going to be named "Great Ideas!" But that changed quickly when I went to register the dba at the county courthouse in January 2004. Here's why:
As I put my assumed name paperwork on the counter of the County Clerk's office, the clerk Linda Kozfkay said "Oh, Lisa, its okay, Joan already came in and registered the name the other day!" I was a little confused, because I was a solo entrepreneur. Then Linda looked at it again and said, "Oh, wait. Okay. Well, you may want to change the name, because Joan Naglekirk came in and registered "Clear Ideas" for a marketing business going into the K Printing building." We all got a good laugh out of the fact the two marketing businesses in a small town started almost the same time and had nearly the same name! So I went home and started brainstorming new ideas.
Ever since I was a little girl in our family business, my parents told me how vitally important it was to really know your customers, what & when they buy, what their lives were like, where they lived, their budget. In college, that was termed "Target Marketing", and had more to do with demographics than being able to list 3-4 women by name when trying to get my parents to buy an expensive sweater for the store. (I had to say who would buy the ones other than mine.) So I knew Target Marketing had to be in there somewhere.
Then I got thinking about a dartboard. Most people aim for the center bullseye for 50 points, but there are five places on the board with higher scores than that! If you're playing 301, you want to get the highest scores possible in the shortest amount of tosses, and aiming for triple 20 will get you there fastest.
Business is the same. There are so many different places to advertise and so many different types of customers, you could go broke trying to be everything to everyone. But if you know that your target customer is a woman aged 30-60, living in Sanilac County, who prefers to buy quality brand name clothing over quantity of cheaper pieces, and that they have a teenage daughter who wants the coolest designer jeans, you probably won't be advertising nationally in "Field & Stream" magazine and getting results. By really focusing marketing to appeal to the customer and placing it where they will see or hear it, you are much more likely to get a sale.
I knew the name Target Marketing was used by an industry magazine at the time, so I added "On" because who doesn't want to be On Target? And every single piece of marketing that goes out on behalf of my clients is written so it engages with the target customer and gets them to act.
Clear Ideas and On Target Marketing have both done well over the past 22 years, because we each have our own specialties. Clear Ideas does a fantastic job with medical, corporate and non-profit marketing...and On Target Marketing specializes in smaller businesses, mainly retail & service, with very specific niches and much smaller advertising budgets.
