Using your advertising to successfully target your niche market….
July 31, 2007
Knowing who your target audience is one thing, creating a message that excludes all others takes true creative genius.
Get it in Writing started the process by picking up on three different ads which by nature act as a screening device. By creating a puzzle which can only be solved by those competent to join the team, three cutting edge companies have found an effective way to target ONLY those who are not "pretenders to the throne."
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As someone who has been on the hiring end, this is truly a brilliant screening tool. I’ve hired more than a few HTML code monkeys who provided great portfolios, only to discover that their contribution must have been to act as ballast for the project they claimed to have participated. When assigned similar tasks, the work turned in by these young men in NO WAY demonstrated the expertise they claimed to possess. I offer my standing ovation to Google, EA Canada and Navngo.com
Not only did they create inventive ways to advertise AND at the same time screen applicants… Google also earned some media buzz along the way. (Mathworld to the rescue for those who need help deciphering the Google Billboard ad.)
Pronet Advertising has the following to say in a post entitled 3 ads that Guarantee Results.
What differentiates these ads from others is that the ad itself is an employment interview. If you can solve the advertisement you are automatically suited for the job. No need to apply, no need to dress up a resume or dress yourself up for an interview. Furthermore, these ads show that the companies (unlike what is the case for most people that interview potential employees) understand the people they want to employ and aren’t going to waste their time or yours; it also shows that the companies like to think outside the box and are willing to take risks.
Whether it’s employment ads or ads to motivate your customers to take action, tightly targeting your message is the key to advertising and marketing success.
Successful marketing is like a road trip….
July 30, 2007
Successful marketing is like planning a road trip and the key to a successful road trip is to determine your destination in advance.
Let’s say you’re planning to drive from Detroit to Miami. On your way, you’ll pass hundreds of intersecting highways that can take you east or west. You might think you’d only take roads that go south, but if you consult a trip planner or map, you’ll see that it’s necessary to take a few of these east/west highways to reach your final destination.
Without a destination in mind, any intersecting road will take you to interesting places, but few of those roads will take you to Miami. Similarly, the key to successful advertising is to use a marketing strategy to map your route to wherever you want your business to go. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself taking unproductive detours that can not only waste your precious operating capital, but also have the potential to do damage to your company’s reputation along the way.
A plastic surgeon recently made one such unwanted detour. His series of full-page, four-color ads featured some truly impressive “before and after” photos of patients. From a technical standpoint, the ad was superbly put together. It was a design success! The problem was that he placed this ad in a freely distributed “junk” advertising mailer. Advertising was the only content of this low cost publication delivered via the US Post Office to tens of thousands of homes. In each issue, the plastic surgeon’s ad was positioned directly across from a page filled with various coupons, ranging from oil change specials and “free” real estate market appraisals to “buy one, get one free” coupons from local sub shops. The surgeon, as if inspired to join in the coupon madness, actually included his own coupon - $100 off your initial consultation.
How do you want to choose your plastic surgeon? If you’re like most, it wouldn’t be from a coupon in a piece of junk mail. As a matter of fact, the appearance of that ad alone might be enough to cross that surgeon off your list all together. Talk about poor positioning!
The use of the coupon mailer by the plastic surgeon for his advertising can immediately cause readers to question this doctor’s credibility. Even if he is as gifted as the before and after photos indicate, the plastic surgeon will have to work long and hard to overcome his coupon-wielding image. Sans the coupons, the superbly designed ad should have appeared in a publication that would not only reach the clients he hopes to attract, but would also enhance his image as a skilled and practiced professional. Nearly every major metro area has at least one upscale magazine which would be a better fit for this surgeon than the coupon magazine.
This is not to say that the coupon magazine mailer has no place in a successful advertising campaign. It does, just for other businesses wishing to reach this market. The furniture dealer who proclaims he is the “DISCOUNT FURNITURE KING” should have his message delivered via this medium, rather than via a high-end Style and Living magazine.
A coupon mailer is a perfectly good “highway.” It just doesn’t go in the direction that a highly skilled plastic surgeon should have wanted to go. The discount furniture king’s final marketing destination is not the same as the final marketing destination for a plastic surgeon.
Your marketing destination or strategy should be to let the right people know about your business and what your product and services can do for them. Developing a marketing strategy will then help you determine who the right people are and how you will deliver your message to these people. In marketing lingo, the right people are defined as your target market or target customers. Quite simply, these are the people who need or want whatever it is you are selling. You’ve already reached some of these people; they’re already customers of your business. You just need to find more of these kinds of people, the ones who are the most likely to be receptive to your marketing message.
As you begin mapping out your own marketing journey, it is important to remember that no form of advertising ever forced anyone to buy something s/he did not need or want. Many authors and “marketing experts” seem to overlook this important detail. They preach, and their followers seem to believe, that if they pummel a message long enough and hard enough, they’ll eventually get results. That’s not to say that it’s not your advertising’s job to persuade people, it’s just that you need to remember that brute force is rarely effective when it come to advertising.
Essential Key Element to Successful Niche Marketing
July 29, 2007
Seth Godin reports on his blog that actions are contagious. Whether it’s obesity, suicide or wealth, your chances of achieving those or any other milestone increases greatly when you hang out with others who are cultivating those habits. According to Seth:
The most important thing you can do is choose who you’re hanging out with. The second high-leverage thing is to put dynamics in place that reinforce the ideas you’d like to see spread. Celebrate the heroes. Make it easy for those ideas to spread…
Remember, people you do business with will "spread the word" about your goods or services with those whom they hang around. It’s not just health habits that are contagious…. it’s business habits and shopping habits as well.
Which is why Niche Marketing is SUCH a highly touted marketing tactic. Because just like diet and exercise, others are watching our choices and are prone to "fall in line". So, every customer you reach in effect is a tool through which to reach other customers, customers who are very similar in nature.
By tightly targeting your message, you’ll find it’s easier to speak to these tightly targeted customers.
How do they expect to stay in business when they treat their customers like this?
July 29, 2007
Two years ago this week, I purchased a brand new Dodge Grand Caravan SXT from Charlie’s Dodge in Fort Pierce, Florida. I purchased the van from a lovely young woman whose tenure at the dealership was fleeting…. obviously Charlie’s Dodge in Fort Pierce, Florida had no room in the company for someone who treated customers with respect, especially customers of the feminine persuasion. I came to that conclusion after dealing with the dealership over the past two years.
My Dodge van came with a 36,000 mile warranty which meant returning to the dealer for service work. For the first 18 months, the service department performed these ritualistic lube/oil and filters without trying to extract excess cash from me. Then, about 3 months ago, I began to get the hard sell. There were about $600 worth of services that my van NEEDED in order to continue to function. Without these ESSENTIAL services, surely my van would cease to function and fortunately, I had the professionals at Charlie’s Dodge in Fort Pierce Florida looking out for MY well being. All I had to do was hand over the cash and all would be well.
What they didn’t know at Charlie’s Dodge is that my father owned a car dealership as I was growing up. I also am the proud owner of a husband who is very automobile savvy. Between the two of them, I have at my disposal two very knowledgeable advisors on the necessary maintenance of my cars, both of whom recommended I tell the service department that I may have been born at night, but not last night in response to their "efforts" on my behalf. So, I instead politely told the gentleman at Charlie’s Dodge that I would pass on their recommended services. Read more
Why your small business needs a marketing strategy.
July 18, 2007
Most small business owners struggle with marketing. As a result, a very popular search term on the internet is Affordable Small Business Marketing Strategies. If that’s what you’re seeking, then you’re in the right place because the number key to developing an Affordable Small Business Marketing Strategy is to tightly target your niche market!
Many business owners often find themselves chasing after an array of marketing tactics instead of implementing a cohesive marketing strategy. Creating a cohesive marketing strategy is essential if you’re going to spend your marketing/advertising dollars wisely. Be developing a marketing strategy, you’ll be able to define which marketing tactics will work best for your and your small business.
Unfortunately, marketing tactics which may result in great success for one business may fail miserably for the next. Yet many business owners attend seminars, buy books and subscribe to newsletters that do little more than provide a never ending list of various marketing tactics. These small business owners keep gathering these crumbs, hoping to collect enough crumbs and the finding the magical marketing tactic(s) that will turn this collection of crumbs into a slice of toast.
The search for tactics to increase the return on investment dates back to the earliest recorded history. One tactic used by early farmers to improve their farming “return on investment” was to plant discarded fish parts to improve their production of corn. Modern science has shown there are practical scientific principles behind this ancient practice. The decaying fish parts provide the steady supply of nitrogen which corn needs to grow abundantly. It seems the decaying fish parts are a great “lo-tech” method for providing the steady fertilization needs of growing corn plants.
5 Deceptively Easy Steps to creating an affordable small business marketing strategy
July 15, 2007
Step #1: Identify your target audience.
Step #2: Identify the Goals, Desires and Problems of the individuals within your target audience.
Step #3: Identify how your product/service helps solve a problem, quench the customer’s desire or help the customer achieve their goal.
Step #4: Begin crafting your marketing message. Laser focus upon a single Goal/Desire/Problem and outline how your product/service solves this problem.
Step #5: Find the right method of delivering your message to the people who want or need your products or services.
By the way, the 5 steps above are DECEPTIVE in that they appear to be very simple and straight forward. However, when you get down to implementing these five steps, you’ll find that it takes a lot of time and energy to really explore each step.
Transforming your business by tightly targeting your Niche…
July 10, 2007
Yesterday Comcast decided to shut down my business for the afternoon, so I loaded the kids into the Dodge Grand Caravan and we headed to the movies. We went to see the summer blockbuster Transformers. In the movie, I was transported to a place where the men in the military are brave, dedicated and a model of precision/efficiency [yeah!] and GM products are the cutting edge of cool.
WARNING: Possible Movie Spoilers ahead.
The Transformers movie features a Mustang and a Camaro doing battle. According to Auto Blog:
A bright orange Chevy Camaro Concept that’s more than meets the eye will play the good-natured Transformer named Bumblebee, which has traditionally been portrayed by the Volkswagen Beetle. Meanwhile, a Decepticon named Brawl that reportedly "jacks-up poor Bumblebee" is being played by the Ford Mustang.
In essence, the entire movie serves as a 2 hour commercial for the Chevy Camaro. Bumblebee begins as a 1974 Chevrolet Camaro and transforms into the new 2008 concept Camaro.
Excuse me, Brawl was a Ford Mustang? It didn’t even register. My lust was entirely focused upon that sexy Camaro concept car. (Despite my "advanced" age and role as a parental unit, I do remember what it was like to drive a sexy car…. even though parent hood has banished me to mini-van land for a decade or two.)
Combine the movie’s targeted demographic with the target audience for this car, and you’ve got the essence of niche marketing 2.0. Transformers serves as a 144 minute commercial for GM products… where the good guys are GM… the bad guys are Ford and that’s got to be good news for BOTH automakers.
Advertising 2.0: Building Trust is an essential element in marketing success
July 7, 2007
They don’t call it the "information age" for nothing. If you’re concerned with creating information overload, there is no need to worry. If someone isn’t interested in your product or service then s/he isn’t going to bother to read or listen to your advertising message anyway. With that in mind, remember that too much “information” isn’t going to “scare away” an interested potential customer. A great place to feature all of this information is of course, on your web site or blog.
For example, a local electrician tries to gain attention for his message by running his newspaper ad upside down. This small, upside down ad contains the company logo, name and phone number and appears almost daily in the paper. The problem is, when someone is in need of an electrician, they need more than a gimmick to motivate them to pick up the phone and call. S/he needs answers to a host of questions, all of which point to the issue of trust:
- Will this person show up?
- Does he know his stuff?
- Will he charge too much?
- Will he do shoddy work and cause a fire in the future?
- Will he finish the job?
- Will he leave a mess?
- Will he honor his quote?
If the electrician wants to keep the gimmick of running the newspaper ad upside down, he could make it more effective with one simple addition. He could include the address of his web site. A company web site can easily convey the large amount of information necessary to begin gaining the customer’s trust, which is essential in the Information age.
One of the best uses of the electrician’s web site would be to post testimonials from former or current customers. Ideally, the testimonials would address the kinds of questions listed above. Read more
Niche Marketing Success Story: The Bakery in the Basement
July 5, 2007
Beyond the Basement: The story of Ida Mae’s
Ida Mae’s (name changed to protect the client’s privacy) was a small bakery started by two retired nurses who launched their business with very little cash and a huge investment of “sweat equity.” The two women had found space for their business in the basement of an aging office building, which was located in the heart of a dying downtown area.
Originally constructed in the 1950’s as a four story office building, the building they chose for their business also housed an eclectic and ever-changing assortment of offices and shops in its attempt to remain viable in the midst of small scale urban decay. Most of the businesses that were tenants in the building were poorly funded start-ups who hoped to buck the trend of the downtown decline and make a go of it despite the odds.
The reason the women chose the location was simple; the rent was cheap. We’re not talking cheap as in “cheap rent,” we’re talking cheap as in “cheap suit.” There was a reason the rent was so cheap: To say the women had chosen a terrible location for Ida Mae’s would be an understatement. Even if the bakery had been located on one of the floors above ground, it still would not have had the benefit of foot traffic. Very few determined souls ventured downtown from the busy bypass that had drawn virtually every remaining retailer in town five miles to the west.
By locating their bakery in the basement, the owners had signed a lease on the worst spot within the worst building in a dying Rust Belt factory town.
Location wasn’t the only obstacle that Ida Mae’s needed to overcome. The bakery also had to contend with limited parking for their customers. The nearest parking area was located more than a half a block away, and it was a strictly enforced pay lot. Customers who wanted to visit the bakery would have to be unwavering to their mission. The little bakery would have to be their intended destination and they would have to be very determined to find and then reach the bakery.
Approaching your niche with the beginner’s mind
July 2, 2007
Way back in the mid-1980’s….as dinosaurs roamed the earth and this thing known now as the Internet was nothing more than a military defense communication tool…. my mentor, Joan Elias began instructing me in the ways of targeting marketing messages to increase the ROI of any marketing or advertising campaign.
Maybe that’s why Janet Johnson’s post Nesting and Niching really struck a chord with me…
And as you go niche, strip all pretenses away, take “beginner’s mind” (as they say in yoga) and be authentic.
Niche, derived from “nest,” should imply that you’re going into the realm of people’s safe places. Treat them with respect, and the response should be overwhelmingly positive.
It’s easy to forget what it’s like to be a beginner, especially when one is in the "guru" or "consulting" game. Read more
