Widgets, Bells and Whistles Can’t Compete with Your Dream Team

Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 12:36 pm

“WHO’S THAT GIRL?”

Have you ever heard professional business marketers say:

“If you try and appeal to everyone in general, you’ll attract no-one in particular”?

This knowledge of your target audience is your foundation ‘market intelligence’ on which you must base any planning and execution of your marketing campaigns. Remember: “Fail to plan is to plan to fail.” Your strategy needs to be tight.

Regularly focussing on your key marketing strategies is a must in any business, so let’s take a little time to think through this idea of “niche marketing” here.

Forget about any old school “three foot rule” style of marketing strategy you may have heard. These are woefully ineffective offline.

Know why?

Because, they are far too broad. Not everyone you come into contact with is going to be interested in your product or business opportunity. So trying to convince people at random that they should be, is not only unprofessional, it’s disrepectful, ineffective, and so is just a plain waste of your time.

What makes online marketing so incredibly powerful, is that it gives you the opportunity to research a potentially ‘hot’ target market and then you can focus on marketing exclusively to that target market. This is the equivalent of casting your fishing line in the middle of the ocean for a whole day, versus casting in a pool stocked with fish for an hour!

To start with then, consider who your best potential prospects are. It’s really important that you don’t just think in terms of demographics (which are still pretty broad); instead, think of niche marketing .

What is a niche market?

A niche is a relatively small and specialist, but profitable, warm market. This is precisely where you want to focus your marketing campaign efforts. Many people think of their market in very broad terms, because coming into the industry, we are usually told that there is a huge market for your company or product. And that may well be the truth, but it is not the point.

You should not be thinking in those very broad terms when you start to plan a marketing campaign. The truth is, often the most profitable markets are quite small ones; think quality, not quantity. AND by knowing your niche intimately, you are saving time and energy trying to understand the wider audience!

If you are in the Network Marketing or MLM industry, for instance, the best market to take your marketing message to is people in the same industry. These are people who have a belief in and an understanding of the industry and how the business model works. You don’t have to ‘sell’ them on the concept of this style of business.

Now, while this in itself is a highly targeted niche, your marketing will be all the more powerful if you are able to narrow it down even more. And when you work your business online, search engine marketing creates an environment where you are able to do this.

For example, consider choosing people in the industry in your local area. So narrowing your market down to your home country will be an incredibly powerful strategy. Even though this is a global business, people still like to feel that they have a ‘local’ person to partner with.

From a cultural perspective, I have a very sound understanding of the UK’s cultural sensibilities, and can adapt the approach I take to sponsoring with UK prospects accordingly. This is very powerful. With a move towards localism, when you take this approach to local business forums, your face to face interaction will have great consequences.

If you are living in a country other than your country of origin, you may (if it is appropriate) consider marketing to your home country, especially if the language is different. You will have a definite edge over a business person who is not bi-lingual, and cannot practically access this market.
You can narrow your niche by age group.

Example: “Baby boomers learn how to use the power of the Internet to create a full time income working from home”

Start with your ideal prospect in mind before taking any marketing action and then develop your campaign accordingly.

Take some time out to write down a “dream team” list with the qualities you are looking for in your prospective client.

Here is an example of my dream list:

• Has previously run their own business and has target earnings in mind
• Has a minimum of £10,000 working capital to get started.
• Looking for a full time business.
• Independent.
• Is willing to learn and is teachable.
• Is creative.
• Flexible.
• Solution focussed
• Mature woman

My ‘dream team’ list represents the ideal qualities I am looking for in new consultants; of course it is not exclusive of those who have never had a business, men, or even if they have less capital. However, these people will be my primary marketing segment on whom I focus.

As you write your list, you will probably find that the person you are looking for will be a lot like you: someone you can relate to, who can relate to you, someone with similar aspirations to yourself.

So Who Are You?
Marketing is more about psychology than widgets and techy solutions to lead generation.

So, next, start to think about who your dream team are and where they might be spending their time online. This is where you will want to sharpen up your keyword research, and start to get a feel for whether this represents a market that is worth pursuing. It will give you some ideas regarding where you might advertise after you have formulated your campaign.

This is the beauty of online marketing. By using the Google Adwords free analytics tools, you can get a feel for what size your prospective market is.

If you are going to target people from a similar background to you, think back and remember how you first found your opportunity by testing keywords that you used yourself. What were you looking for? What keywords did you type in to find your opportunity or product? Where were you looking when you first started a due diligence on your business?

Really spend time considering what is going on inside your ideal prospect’s head. This market research will pay off with stronger results.

People tend to over-emphasize technology when they go online, and forget about the psychology of marketing. It is to do yourself a major disservice to not take the time to understand the fundamental and proven principles and practice of marketing. No amount of widgets, bells and whistles can replace a sound understanding of what prompts people to respond to an ad, video, article or blog post. (For more on this subject, read my articles on copywriting).

When you have decided on your marketing niche, your next step is to decide what you will say to your prospects once you have their attention.

Now here is where your real marketing mastery comes into play. There is simply no substitute for valuable, accurate and honest information, delivered with a piece of yourself. Here’s another truism: “We do not offer products, we offer ourselves”. Offer information that will inform and educate your target audience to the point where your niche market are well positioned to ‘convince’ themselves that what you have to offer is right for them and so they take action.

At the end of they day, we all only have so many hours in a day and time spent on adequate analysis and market research will pay off in attracting the right market target audience to you and your offer. This marketing strategy makes it easier for you to focus your efforts and get more lucrative results quicker.

I wanted to get something posted for International Womens’ Day, as I hoped to get a specific timed campaign, but as it’s Mother’s Day in the UK today, here’s a little taste of how one particular woman guru marketer, Maria Andros, goes about speaking to her market… Click the image to access the video.