I’ve often sung the praises of tightly targeting your niche market as a way to create effective and compelling marketing messages. However, I must point out that I am making a HUGE assumption with this advice: I’m assuming you’re offering a quality product or service.
In "Yet another way to piss off your customers" I tell the story of my friend who purchased a product that was exquisitely marketed but poorly produced. Her wrath at being "taken" has spurred her to make it her current mission to discredit the product to everyone she meets. While I am not a potential customer for the product in question (it is tightly targeted towards single women), her unsolicited review to me would dissuade me from purchasing it.
While I am not included in the target audience, MANY of my friend’s other acquaintances are single women who ARE potential prospects for this product though. While the internet is indeed a BIG market, I can not for the life of me understand why anyone would make a promise in their marketing materials that they had no intention of delivering.
Satisfied customers are not exactly the BEST source of business because, when they’re satisfied they tend to tell 2 or 3 people about their good experience. On the other hand, customers who feel they’ve been abused are likely to tell 16 people about their horrible experience…. and that doesn’t factor in the "internet" effect… where those 16 friends may choose to share this one horror story.
There’s no way to make EVERYONE happy especially in business. However, when you’re tightly targeting a market it’s best to not make promises you have no intention of keeping. Doing so tends to anger your customers…. who know other potential customers or worse yet… are active bloggers with a huge audience.
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