Serious Marketing Guide

Suzanne Falter-Barns In the marketing world, you hear a lot about micro-marketing, niche definition, and so forth. But not a lot about WHY this kind of focused and disciplined approach is important. Here’s the deal: You cannot (REPEAT: CANNOT) expand your market to the size it naturally wants to be if you’re vague and sloppy about who they are. Just yesterday I was on the phone with a colleague, Yvonne Divita, with whom I’m cooking up a majorly cool live event on publishing. In the course of just a few minutes we whittled our market down from ‘Just anybody on our lists and blogs’ to experienced corporate and wellness coaches, semi-advanced crafters who want to make a living from their business, and possibly therapists who want to break out and have been in practice at least five years.

(Don’t worry, you can come too, even if you don’t fit those niches.
) I hung up feeling strong and inspired … I knew who I was targeting and just where to find them. My action step: to find associations, SIGS and other groups that reach exactly these folks. And so, that’s your next action step, too. Do you know where your potential buyers and readers and fans hang out? And if you don’t, is it because you don’t know who they are? This is what I like to think of as ‘Micro Market Definition’, and doing so can triple your business and build your list like crazy. BUT … you’ve got to do your homework. First, determine exactly how well you know your people. Imagine a typical person in your market right now. What is she or he doing? Watching TV – and if so, what’s on? Or is she sitting at her desk, trying to figure out how to pay her bills? And agonizing? Or is he looking out the window, wondering where his own child is right now – the one who just moved away from home. This micro market definition is different from niche-ing, because you already know your niche, right? This is simply carving out a much more specific, detailed picture of who supports that niche and actively wants what you’re offering. More importantly, it’s understanding the exact emotional frame of mind of your market. We’re not talking about the usual, boring stats like age, marital status, geographic location and education.

Instead, determine the psyche of the person you’re selling to, their current highs and lows, and what the big needs and wants are that define their lives. By knowing this, you can design a website, a blog, an ezine, bonuses and infoproducts that speak right to their hearts. And so you can effectively solve their problems, deliver your work, and live your life’s purpose. You want to think empathetically. For instance, if you decide your market is teens going through major life transitions (parental divorce, moving to a new state, life threatening illness in the family, etc.), I want you to really put yourself in the position of that young person. Here are some key questions that will help you micro-niche your own business: 1. Are they reachable by industry or by some other situational classification, like Empty Nesters, teens about to go to college or recent retirees? Or are they distinguished by a life situation like depression, recent millionaire, or weight loss support group attendee? 2. Exactly where within their niche are they (i.e. not just ‘life coaches’ but ‘newbie life coaches considering a career in wellness but looking at several different options, maybe six months out of training’ 3.

What is their biggest need right now? Where do they go looking for support or advice? 4.

If they’re niched by industry, what level are they? (Managers, mid-level clerks, executives, CEO’s, solo pros, work-at-home Moms, etc.?) 5. How do they spend their lunch hour? 6. What do they do for fun? 7. What keeps them awake at night? 8. Do they hang out with other people in their field? Where? 9. In addition to their work (if they’re niched by industry) where else do they tend to congregate? (i.e. Life coaches who are also Unitarian Universalists, or Dentists who are into yoga.) (Yes, it is possible to go a little too tight here … but an interesting exercise. This works best with really big niches, like empty nesters or chiropractors.) 10. If there’s a gender slant to your niche, can you identify what’s unique about this group. (Note ‘women’ is not a niche. But ‘women who recently lost weight and are newly into healthy eating and approaching menopause are.’) 11. Are there any upcoming situations that your micro-market is facing? (i.e. New mothers who are about to give birth, or college graduates about to start looking for a job.) By having the discipline to sit down and really dig into your market – and possibly even get some help from surveys or focus groups with your potential market – you can lock in on who they are with much greater precision. Think of it as the difference between a mature business and one that’s only taking baby steps.

Go forth and conquer!

Marketing for the internet is an entirely different field when compared to marketing in the real world. Although, just like marketing for corporations in the real world, many of the same theories apply. At the start of every business, you should have a business plan. This will undoubtedly be different for different companies and different types of industries. In some cases, you don’t have as much planning to do, but in others you’ll end up with a 200 page document. Now, when starting an online business, or even when just branching off and creating a website for your business, you’ll have lots to plan. For starters, what type of website works best? Many internet marketers will tell you that first and foremost, you need to have a blog based on your industry. If you’re running a company that sells candy, start a blog on how candy is made. This is becoming more and more essential because it turns your website into a living, breathing thing. People will be able to leave comments and you’ll be able to receive feedback on your product.

Blogging is a great way to start an online business because not only can people leave comments and feedback, but you can write about other people and others can write about you.

This is the basics of linkbuilding.

Essentially, the more that other people talk about you, the more popular your website will become, most notably in search engine rankings. One of the biggest mistakes that online businesses make is to put up advertising on their site. This is fine once you’re established, but is absolutely never okay when just starting out. It generally takes well over a year for any business to start making money through the internet. It will be worse for your company to try and force it than to try and make money right away. In fact, using ads can actually hurt your reputation as a legitimate company in the eyes of many online communities. Once you have everything running smoothly, you should start using social media marketing. Submit your blog entries to StumbleUpon and Digg and Reddit. Get friends to help rate your blog posts and you’ll start to see a huge increase in traffic. A good estimate of what you should aim for is 2000 hits per day.

Elaine Currie What’s In A Niche? When talking of niche websites, the answer to that question is, in my humble opinion, not very much at all in most cases. Certainly much less than should be in a niche. Is it just me – are my expectations too high? I don’t think so because I have seen some good niche websites as well as many horrors. A real niche website that has been built with care and passion is a thing of beauty (or, at the very least, interest) and is usually a treasure trove for visitors who share a love of the niche subject.

What I am complaining about are the so-called niche websites people are throwing together for the sole purpose of collecting advertising revenue.

These sites have little (if anything) in the way of content. The colourful pictures and plentiful advertisements do not make up for this lack. Advertising is fine, in fact it’s usually essential if you want to stay in business. What makes me see red is clicking on misleading advertisements and landing on website after cloned website only to be confronted with a few sentences of poorly written text and dozens of gibbering advertisements. To test the integrity of a niche site, look at what would be left if you removed all the pay per click advertisements. It is unfortunate for people who are surfing for information that the Internet is being overrun by the awful flimsy looking template produced websites that are being churned out at a crazy rate. If you spend any time on the Internet, you will know the type of thing I mean. These websites consist of a couple of pages with nice enough looking header graphics (that’s the pictures at the top, if you are not «in the trade» so to speak), and clumps of advertisements placed so that they are the first thing you see. If you manage to get past the advertisements, you might find a few articles which have been copied from other websites just for the sake of having something on the pages to lend them some credibility. These websites don’t exist to provide information or services or to promote anything.

Their sole purpose is to carry advertising that will earn the owner money in return for just about zero work on his part. How much time and effort goes into creating one of these monstrosities? Practically none: in most cases it is all done by a software package. The pseudo webmaster doesn’t ever need to worry about actual webpage design or building. All these charlatans need to do is decide upon their niche topic, toss a bunch of keywords into the mix and the software will do the rest. These people can create their pseudo niche websites on any subject anyone in the world might think of. It’s easy because they don’t need to know anything about the subject themselves. Whether it is dog training, bridal dresses, funerals or haemorrhoids, an online search tool will provide a list of keywords and the software will do the rest. Nobody cares that the laughing man clutching a fistful of cash or the sports car pictured in the heading has no relevance to the content and would be frankly inappropriate if you were looking for a funeral director or medication for a painful medical condition. The webmaster has no intention of offering you anything of value. In fact, it is in his interests if you take an immediate dislike to his web page because that makes you more likely to click away from it via one of his advertising links and that’s how he makes his money. After a couple of days of trying to do some semi-serious research on the Internet, I feel like unplugging my pc and dusting off my library tickets. Ok – so you can’t judge a book by its cover but the cover doesn’t usually set out to deliberately mislead you as to the contents (quite the opposite in fact). When I type a query into a search engine, I want the results to lead me to websites containing the answer to that query. If I am searching for information about a particular subject, I don’t appreciate being directed to websites that consist of a few keyword loaded sentences walled in by blocks of advertisements for other similar websites. Roll on the day when someone invents a search engine that can distinguish between a real niche website and an advertising vehicle built from a cheap kit.

Maybe we can get back to the time when searching the Internet was faster than catching a bus to the library and thumbing through books.