It all starts here.
Your ability to identify your audience and then create "filters" with your marketing — to get the attention of the highest quality prospects.
Needless to say, 99.9% of marketers screw this part up too. (And that's being kind!)
They try and please everyone.
They target too wide an audience.
And in doing so they only end up diluting their messaging … and not connecting and resonating with their ideal target customer.
Go narrow (the narrower the better). Identify a narrow category of people that have a very specific need. Polarize your message. Speak directly to that ONE GROUP of people, and…
What you have to say will resonate with people if you talk to them directly — addressing their specific problem, want, need or desire.
It's impossible to do this when you go too broad and try to please everyone.
By trying to please everyone you'll only result in alienating your ideal potential customers.
But don't beat yourself up if you've been guilty of going too broad in the past — or perhaps still do. Mainstream media — like Time or Newsweek — have been doing this for years, and still do.
If anyone should know better, it's them.
Seth Godin recently wrote about this:
Does anyone read Time or Newsweek (being sold to anyone who will take them) any more? And when they disappear, who will really miss them?
The problem is that they are both slow and general. The world, on the other hand, is fast and specific.
Is there a business here?
- Focused on issues that appeal to some, but not all
- Having a very specific audience (call it a tribe)
… and this is where your own marketing should start.
Instead of starting with a product in mind — like everyone does — start by identifying an audience … an audience that has a specific problem.
An audience that is after a specific solution or desired outcome.
Remember … we're solution providers and pain relievers.
Start there. Then work backwards.
The last step — not the first step — is to associate a "product" with your group/crowd as a means of relieving their pain.
Here are some questions you need to ask yourself when trying to identify your ideal target audience:
- Is the person experiencing pain and urgency, or irrational passion? (In other words … a strong emotion to seek out a solution?)
- Is there an audience proactively searching for solutions … and already spending money to satisfy this desire, want or need?
- From the prospects perspective, do they have few or no perceived options?
- Is there potential for a long term relationship? (Meaning … are there backend options/opportunities?)
Point 4 is critical if your goal is to establish a long term relationship and make money from the same person, over and over again — over time.
Meaning … a bad example of a hungry audience would be the spyware market. Selling a spyware solution is all about that initial frontend sale. Problem solved. Done.
There's no natural outlet for selling them other stuff. There is little need to get these people on a list. There is no long term relationship opportunity.
Conversely … the weight loss market is perfect — for all the obvious reasons. You don't need me to spell it out for you.
Once you've identified a larger potential market — like weight loss — you then need to narrow down your audience even further.
Markets are make up of niches … and within these niches, there are even smaller pockets of customers with very specific needs.
This is where you want to be looking!
Back to the weight loss example to demonstrate what I mean:
- What about weight loss for women?
- But more specifically … busy women?
- But not just busy women … but busy mommies? (Women with kids!)
- But not just busy women with kids … a busy mommy who has just had a kid? (Post pregnancy!)
See how that works? Do you get what I've just done here?
I took the very general weight loss market and extracted a potential micro-audience… with a very specific need.
Busy mothers … who have just had a kid … and want to lose the post pregnancy weight.
Now you just need to do some due diligence to see if this micro-audience satisfies the four questions I listed earlier.
If so, time to move on. Time to find a product solution that addresses this very specific audience.
This now allows you to approach market niche product solution research from a different perspective.
Meaning … something like this now potentially becomes a brilliant fit:
… instead of something that gets immediately rejected or automatically filtered out, just because the gravity metric (Grav) is too low.
Lots of marketers ignore everything under a gravity 50, or even 100. Certainly everything under 30 will be ignored. (Gurus are to blame here too, because this is what they teach!)
I don't do that. I think it's stupid.
The above FitYummyMummy.com product has an upsell. It has future earnings. In my mind it would be a perfect fit — presuming that the actual product is top-notch quality, of course.
I hope you've understood the different perspective that I've laid out on this page. I hope you "get it". Because it'll put you lightyears ahead of most marketers.
I'll drill down even further now.
