Finding your natural niche market
January 31, 2008
Many, many businesses start out trying to be everything to everyone. When asked who their target customer is, the reply is invariably: everyone!
"But you don’t understand! EVERYONE can benefit from my products and services!"
Oh, I do understand. Over at the Women Owned Business blog, she (I assume it’s a she…. the blog owner doesn’t give much personal info on the blog’s about page) gives a GREAT example of th in the post :Entrepreneur Strategy for Women Business Owners - Your Niche Market
The more specialized, the easier it is to stay focused AND be effective. Think of it like MEDICINE.
A general practitioner needs to know a little about everything. A pediatrician needs to know all about children. A pediatric specialist focuses all their reading, conferences and training on ONE main area of children’s medicine.
Even when it comes to medicine, even the general practioner STILL can benefit from targeting a niche in the market.
My primary care physician is a homeschooling mother of three. Her practice in the area is relatively new, yet she’s finding more and more homeschooling parents "discovering" her practice. Word of mouth is a WONDERFUL way to build ANY business and I’m sure that her name comes up at MANY homeschooling group meetings in the area. Even though my physician doesn’t "officially" target homeschooling parents, she’s found that her style of practicing medicine works well with homeschooling parents.
That’s the beauty of targeting a niche market. Word of mouth marketing happens NATURALLY for those who tightly target a niche!
What many beginning small business owners fail to realize is targeting your niche market doesn’t mean thinking small at all.
Our county’s estimated 2006 population is 252,724 and of those 40,435 are between the ages of 5 and 18. I’ve heard somewhere that 1in three children in Florida are homeschooled, so to find the number of homeschooled children in our county, merely divide 40, 435 by 3 and you’ve got 13, 478 homeschooled children in our county.
I haven’t asked, but I’m pretty sure that if my physician attracted just 10% of the homeschooled children in our county to her practice (13,478 X .10 = 1,347) plus their parents, she would probably have to consider closing her practice to new patients.
However, if she were NOT to tightly target her "marketing" by sharing her status as a homeschooling mother…. well, then there would be no "reason" for her homeschooling mothers to recommend her to their friends! "She’s a GREAT doctor!" doesn’t motivate as well as "She’s a GREAT doctor who ALSO HOME SCHOOLS HER BOYS!"
Niche marketing doesn’t mean thinking small… it means using laser like precision to carve out an audience. Instead of competing with every other doctor in the county, my physician finds herself in the position as the ONLY homeschooling physician in the area!
What’s your natural niche?
Mausoleum web sites and “set it and forget it” marketing
January 25, 2008
How long has it been since you’ve reviewed your marketing materials? Has it been weeks… or months… or perhaps years?
Small business web sites are notorious for acting more like mausoleums than powerful marketing tools. Indeed, most small business web sites are nothing more than elaborate tombs for marketing copy that was dead the day it was laid to rest, ehm… I mean posted to the web page.
During the past year, I’ve been working with clients on creating a NEW kind of web presence… one that is vital and alive!
A few have told me up front that they plan to use their Acumen Web Services web site "just like a traditional web site". When they say that, I know that what they mean is that they have NO INTENTION of updating their marketing content on a regular basis, but at least the Word Press blog format allows them the option of doing so when they finally decide they’re serious about promoting their business.
On the other hand, I’ve had others who have jumped feet first into creating alive and vibrant web sites. While they are not by any means "bloggers" in the traditional sense… they don’t post content every week, let alone every day… but by using the blog format, they do keep a regular stream of "fresh" marketing content on their web site. The result? One client, who averages a whopping 28 visitors to his blog each month during the past six months recently reported that he got his first client via his blog. If 1/2 of his 28 blog visitors become clients, his practice will be full to overflowing. Another bonus, the lifetime value of that new client is many times his investment in the launch and maintenance of the blog!
I get it. I understand the appeal of a "set it and forget it" web site. I’m human too. I like "leisure" as much as the next person. (OK… that’s OBVIOUSLY not true or I’d be at the beach instead of at my computer.) These "set it and forget it" web sites are SUCH a struggle to create… with clients going over them with a fine toothed comb to make sure every character is in order and that there’s only a single space after each period instead of two. After weeks of this intense scrutiny, the site it launched and ACK! A typo! There, on the About" page! FIX IT!! QUICK!!! IF WE DON’T THE WEB SITE WON’T "WORK"!
Revisit the site six months later and it’s exactly the same as it was the day it was launched… except for that typon on the "About" page which has now been fixed. A quick look at the log files shows… yep, no one is coming. Nobody cares. The web site owner doesn’t care… he/she hasn’t updated it in six months… yet somehow, potential customers are supposed to be so enthralled with the presentation that they quickly whip out their credit card and begin snapping up products and services.
You don’t need a blog to have a successful web site. (If you’re making a Major Sale however, then I strongly recommend launching a blog. Read more about the Major Sale in my book Beyond the Niche.) However, you do have to have a target audience in mind and a way to communicate with that target audience. Communication that is alive and vibrant. If you haven’t had "time" to review your marketing materials then hopefully, you don’t need to do the review. See, you either have an abundance of time or money…. if you don’t have either, you’re spending BOTH your time AND YOUR MONEY on the wrong activities.
A few people may find it interesting to roam around a cemetery and read the epitaphs on the tombstones…. but you don’t see anyone setting up a hot dog stand to capitalize upon the crowds and very few of those people make a daily habit of repeatedly reading a few well chosen words on a tombstone.
Instead of carving your marketing content into stone, instead try write your marketing content in the sand! You’d be surprised how many more people go to the beach than to the cemetery on a sunny day!
Target your Niche: Essential first step in creating a marketing strategy
January 21, 2008
The first step in creating a marketing strategy is to identify your niche or target market.
This will provide the foundation you need to develop your marketing strategy. When you zero in on your target customer, you’ll find it MUCH easier to create marketing messages that "connect" with your customers.
Many businesses find identifying a niche market difficult. The owner will look at his client or customer list and say, "THEY HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON! They’re young… they’re old and they’re everything in between! I have women, I have men and I have children as customers! I have married people, single people and divorced people as customers! How can I find some demographic that all of my customers have in common?"
If this is your battle cry, you are not alone!
First, let’s "reframe" how you think of targeting your customers. For example, one client of mine came to me a year ago with just such a lament. Media rep after media rep had hammered the point that targeting his niche market meant identifying the age, gender and income of his ideal client. However, when we began to look BEYOND the surface, we found one interesting thing ALL of his clients had in common: They were all relatively affluent and they were all interested in healthy living. In the end, his clients were interested in health foods, natural and whole foods AND exercise.
Suddenly, everything came into focus. His television commercial is now running on Food Network and we’re creating POS pieces to place in local gyms and health food stores. All because we looked BEYOND the simple demographics and dug deeper. In the "marketing biz" it’s known as "behavioral targeting"…. when a group of demographically diverse people are targeted based on behavior instead of age/income/gender.
Many business owners find identifying a niche market difficult and that is why I wrote Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results. In the book, I help to simplify the process of defining your target or niche market.
Make like a marketing scout and be prepared….
January 16, 2008
Luck favors the prepared… a lesson I keep seeing illustrated over and over again.
For example, I joined LinkedIn because I needed to contact a gentlemen who has done PR work for a client of mine. When I Googled the gentleman, his LinkedIn account was the only reference to him so I joined so I cound contact him. I was wanting to contact him because in my November newsletter, I was writing about "Do your marketing goals include appearing on Oprah?" I have NO desire to begin consulting on PR and this gentleman did a great job with my client.
I contacted the PR guy and asked if he had a resource I could share with my readers. You know, a "The Top 10 Things you should do BEFORE you try to launch a PR campaign" type of piece. I view these kinds of partnerships as win/win/win. I provide a resource to my readers so they win. That makes them WANT to read my newsletter. (I win) He wins because he gets his services showcased to a new crop of potential prospects. Win -Win- Win.
However, there was a catch. He didn’t HAVE such a resource prepared. Could I give him until December to prepare one? Since I didn’t have a December issue prepared anyhow, I decided to move the Marketing Goals and Oprah piece to December and quickly pull together a new piece for November. The December deadline came and went. PR guy missed a showcase opportunity because he was not prepared.
The thing is, the piece I asked him to provide my readers was a piece he could use OVER AND OVER AGAIN! That’s what’s GREAT about planning ahead and being prepared. By responding to THAT opportunity, he would have had a piece prepared that no doubt would serve him well over the next months if not years.
Now to provide an example of a STARK contrast, allow me to introduce you to Tamar Weinberg. Tamar and I had connected via her techipedia blog and as a result, she’s in my gmail contacts list. When I joined LinkedIn, she got one of my global "invites" and now she and I are "linked" at Linkedin. AWESOME!
Today, I saw that Tamar had replied to a question on Internet Marketing. Smooth as silk, Tamar offered a quick link to her "list of the Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007."
Prepared on December 26, 2007…. Tamar created a post that will serve her well over the next year. Now, she’s leveraging that post. Instead of spending an hour or more composing a "personal " reply to a general question… she tosses out a well prepared piece and VIOLA! She’s a star for providing such a resource to a fellow LinkedIn member AND everyone in her extensive network is being directed to the post. Time spent: 15 minutes or less. (Assuming she didn’t get sucked into the LinkedIn vortex of social networking!)
(To be read in Napoleon Dynamite’s voice) "Gee, Tamar. You sure are lucky. You’ve got a great blog with a lot of traffic. Geesh…. You’re so LUCKY!"
It’s this kind of "preparation" that makes you "lucky"…. don’t ever forget it. That blog post took a lot of time and effort to prepare and now she’s "cashing in" on that preparation time. I have a feeling if I’d contacted Tamar for a resource for my newsletter, she’d have it to me as quick as lightning.
Following footsteps in the sand….
January 14, 2008
When we first moved to the east coast, merely walking on the beach was enough to keep everyone in my family entertained. Now, three years later…. a walk along the beach needs some "spicing" up to keep my teen aged children entertained and engaged. So, last Saturday when we went to the beach, my athletic son created a new "game" of follow the leader.
The game was simple enough… you had to follow the leader and walk in his/her footsteps left in the sand. Simple, right?
First, allow me to frame this experience for you. My oldest son, who was began the game as "leader", is a three sport varsity athlete at his rather large high school. There isn’t an OUNCE of fat on this kid and his athleticism is incredible. This is our "leader" who leaps and twists like a gazelle being pursued by a cheetah on the Serengeti plain.
Following my son, the "cheetah" in this scenario, is my 20 year old daughter. During her high school tenure, she too was a three sport varsity athlete. Two years of devotion to higher learning has only affected her stamina, not her ability. She may have tired more quickly than my oldest son, and was able to kept up with him for a significant stretch of sand.
Next is my 13 year old son who has eschewed sports in any way shape or form, I suspect because of the LONG shadow his older brother casts on the athletic fields of competition. Anyhow, as you may suspect, the youngest was keeping me company in the rear of the procession. At least I could keep up with him.
Needless to say, the two athletes quickly left me behind and I had a moment of clarity. I realized that I couldn’t keep up and that I had to choose whether I would watch the "dance" my son and daughter were performing or I could try to walk in their footstapes. I could not do both. I couldn’t watch what acts of grace and athleticism my son and daughter were performing AND match my feet to theirs in the sand. I had to choose and as the two of them got further ahead, it became more and more difficult to determine what action had caused any particular footprint in the sand.
I tried both methods. I tried matching my feet to his footsteps, but when he began twirling and spinning, all he left was chunks of churned sand. Then I tried watching his movements, but he was way too far ahead by that time and way to gifted athletically for me to keep up. My daughter was enjoying the game, but I definitely wasn’t. I needed an easier version… a dummy’s version if you will.
As I watched my two older children twist, turn and twirl with gless… I saw my 13 year old plodding ahead of me. He wasn’t jumping… he wasn’t twirling. If he just plodded along, he could keep the other two within a reasonable distance. He needed an easier version as well.
As this unfolded before me, I realized the implication for my business… and possibly your business as well.
My son’s game reminded me of most of the "marketing instruction" programs I’ve seen. Many are offered by well meaning people who have a natural "gift" for marketing. These marketing experts are by nature social and gregarious creatures. For people like that, marketing comes "naturally". If you can keep up… well, then the game is fun. The results come quickly and you enjoy the game.
However, I’ve noticed that my target clients aren’t gifted when it comes to marketing. Many of my clients have tried to market their businesses for YEARS without success. I remember my first few sessions with one client. I spent three weeks listening to him assure me that he had done EVERYTHING under the sun to market his practice. In a nutshell, marketing wasn’t fun for him, so he would hop from one marketing tactic to another… anxiously anticipating the one that would magically make the phone ring. The problem: He didn’t pursue any of the "tactics" long enough to see results.
We’ve since spent most of 2007 preparing for the launch of his marketing campaign in 2008. He is pleasantly surprised at the growth of his business…. thanks in no small part to the hard work he’s done. Marketing still isn’t "easy" or fun for him… but it is now productive.
Just as a personal trainer can instruct you on the proper "form" in the gym so that your work outs are most effective, a marketing coach can help make marketing your business fun as well.
How an effective marketing campaign can do more harm than good
January 11, 2008
Congratulations… you’ve done it. You’ve measured and listened and finally done it! The phone is ringing off the hook, your web master has called and informed you that there will be an additional charge for all the bandwidth your web site is consuming, but you don’t care! The orders are ROLLING in and a nice big bandwidth charge is just the icing on the cake!
YOU’VE DONE IT!!!! You’ve achieved marketing success!!!!
Or have you? Actually, you’ve only just begun on the journey to marketing success. Yes, the phone has rung. Yes, the customer has placed their order… and now, the REAL challenge of "marketing" begins. According to Wordsmth, marketing is defined as:
all of the activities involved in transferring goods from a producer to consumers, esp. including advertising.
I recently had an experience with a company who thought their job as "a marketing services" company was limited to securing the order. Long story short: I used choicehotels.com to book a hotel in a city on the other side of the country. When I arrived at the property, it was ugly and it was scary… as in "Can you direct me to the nearest crack house because I’m sure I’d be safer staying there than here." I was not surprised when the property owner refused to honor my cancellation… but I was surprised when choicehotels.com gave me the "Sorry, we’re just a marketing service" response when I contacted them.
Long ago when I worked as a media rep for a newspaper, I had as an advertising client a newly opened resale shop. The shop’s owner was VERY astute and recognized that her biggest marketing challenge was not getting customers into the store, it was providing an exceptional selection of gently used clothing. She understood that her resale shop could quickly disintegrate into a rummage shop if she didn’t carefully screen incoming clothing. Her customers wanted to bypass the "yard sale" experience of digging through tons of "garbage" That meant upsetting more than a few potential "contributors" of clothing in the beginning, not to mention enduring a few months of sparse selection in her newly opened shop. However, her eye for quality quickly became known and not only did the volume of acceptable intakes increase, but her shop’s reputation grew in the community.
Choicehotels faces the same obstacle…. do you allow any hotel operator to join your marketing services so you can provide an impressive list of choices for potential customers? Or, do you carefully screen the properties, allowing only those who meet a minimum standard to be included?
After my disasterous experience with Choicehotels.com, I have a new appreciation for the Hotels.com advertising campaign. Like Choicehotels.com, hotels.com is a firm that provides "marketing services"… however, unlike Choicehotels.com, Hotels.com clearly identifies their "customer" as the user of their service and not the hotels that pay to be listed on their web site.
Hotels.com has adopted the business model of an uber successful company : Google. Google has identified their "customer" as those who search and not those who wish to be included in said searches. As a result, when Google dances, web masters and blog site owners wimper, cry and curse. However, each "dance" Google has danced has been in the name of providing better SEARCH RESULTS for their customers, defined as visitors who search.
Want to base your business model on one of the most successful businesses of the new millennium? (How long has it been since you’ve seen THAT phrase: new millennium!) A decade ago, Lycos, Alta Vista and Yahoo were all dancing to attract the attention of web masters who were willing to pay for the privilege of being listed while a new upstart called Google decided to focus on providing better search results.
Begin by correctly DEFINING your customers. Hotels.com has defined their customer as those who use their site. Choicehotels.com has defined their customer as those who pay to be listed.
Composing compelling content appropriate for the season….
January 2, 2008
Just a few weeks ago, every marketing message was centered around the holidays which are celebrated around the time of the Winter Solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere). Now, those images have shifted from snow and reindeer to hard bodies sweating in the gym. Oh what a difference a few days can make! If you want your January message to "stand out", then go ahead and feature the fat bearded guy dressed in red. Your message will definitely "stick out" but the term "sore thumb" also comes to mind.
Early January is ripe for playing to the "making resolutions" types of ad… and Nike has a great "no excuses" spot running featuring UW-Whitewater Wheelchair Basketball Player Matt Scott
where he recites the many "excuses" we average humans make about why we don’t exercise.
While the message is timeless, it plays EXCEPTIONALLY well at this time of year.
Back in May , I posted an article on my "main" business web site on how blogging is like exercise. This morning when I logged on, I found a flurry of trackbacks to the article. The message is the same as it was back in May… but now the post is being found because people are searching for how blogging is like exercise and they’re finding that post.
While that kind of "sleeper post" is possible on a blog, it’s not possible when you’re utilizing other media. Had that been a traditional advertisement (running in radio, television, newspaper, billboards, magazines, etc.) it would have been "here today, gone tomorrow." There is no such thing as a sleeper advertisement.
Would the Nike "No Excuses" spot featuring Matt Scott be powerful if run in May? Of course it would be, but it grabs even more attention being run the first week of January.
