The Edge Marketing

You’ve heard variations of that saying your entire life.

Consider:  a marketer to all markets . . . is often a master of
none.

Personally, I take this risk: as a marketing consultant, I move
from one market to the next frequently, and I am often involved
in "mass-marketing" - such as with infomercials selling weight
loss or cosmetics.

But I definitely prefer niche markets. I specialize, by
preference, in only three or four target markets. I target my
own businesses.

And I would suggest to you that the key to risk reduction; to
safety in marketing; to the shortest, most probable path to a win
- - - "you can never be specific enough."

I have taught this as "Message-To-Market Match" for over ten
years.  It is absolutely, inarguably proven valid. And, as an
almost inviolate rule, the tighter, the more precise, the more
perfect the match is, the better the results.

A Horse Is A Horse, Of Course, Of Course - But . . .

Consider the person who has a new nutritional formula for horses.
It improves the overall health, vitality and stamina of the
horse. It can be sold to owners of show horses, thoroughbred
racehorses, standard-bred (harness) racehorses, quarter horses,
rodeo horses, and so on.

But let’s recognize, for example, that people involved with
thoroughbreds dislike, distrust and disavow kinship with those
involved with standard-breds. It would be a big error to use the
same message for both. Try crossing over one testimonial and
you’d lose a whole market.

Now, let’s take just the thoroughbred market. Trainers who
specialize in bringing along youngsters will respond differently
than the "journeymen" trainers who work mostly with already
broken, older horses.

Trainers who frequent the West Coast tracks do not like the East
Coast guys and vice versa. And, in each case, the more perfectly
I matched my message, my talk, my testimonials, etc. to the
specific sub-sub-sub-section of the market, the better the
results I would get.

This sort of thing exists everywhere.

I used to market a lot to chiropractors. In fact, I built the
largest integrated seminar and publishing company exclusively
serving chiropractors and dentists in North America, in only
three years.

There are about 35,000 chiropractors; we did some business with
over 10,000 of them --- that’s 30% market penetration.  But did
you know . . . there are "straight" chiropractors, holistic
chiropractors, chiropractors who specialize in work injuries,
chiropractors who only use the Activator method. . . that there
are individual constituencies within chiropractic tied to
different practice management gurus. . . a small number who
practice cooperatively with medical doctors, but most are at war
with medical doctors . . . ?

Well, if you don’t know all that, you can’t message-to-market
match.

And you may go off so half-cocked you get clobbered. This is
why you or your expert-partner must really know your target
market inside out and upside down. And you should still do a ton
of homework.  It still amazes me how many people are eager to
spend money but too damned lazy to spend a week at the library.

I routinely beat most graphically jazzed up, colorful, slick
brochures with a long-form sales letter. Give me typewriter and
I’ll give you a sales letter that’ll outperform one that was
typeset at much greater cost.  Simple is better.

So the bottom-line is:  Keep it simple and market to as highly-
targeted a market as you possible can. You-and your pocketbook-
will be glad you did.

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