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One mistake I often identify when visiting with a small business owner, or inexperienced marketer is the desire to be everything to everyone. If you try to advertise in a generic way and you haven’t taken the time to really figure out what it is you do best, then you will be very disappointed with the results of your campaign.
I received training from the Center for Sales Strategy who teaches a 5 step model as well as studied other principles by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I will summarize how I use their teachings in order to help you make better decisions and get better results from your advertising. The first step is finding your niche.
Successful marketing comes from a focus on your strengths over your weaknesses. An example from a coffee shop would be that if 80% of your profits come from your famous danish sales instead of java, then you’re really a pastry shop. Another thing to consider when figuring out your identity is whether or not anyone else already owns the label of being the leader in that category. Where do you fall compared to your competition? What ever you do, don’t try to be the same thing as everyone else. That’s the opposite of finding a niche, but people do it every day! Really dig down to figure out a narrow point to focus in on. When it comes time to advertise, if you can’t say what you want to be to your clients on a billboard, t-shirt, or in a slogan, you haven’t figured it out yet. Don’t invest any money until you have your identity down pat.
Questions I often ask when trying to figure out a client’s specialty are:
- What product or service accounts for 80% or more of your business?
- What do you sell that makes you the most money? Is that also the most profitable?
- Even if people don’t realize it, your company is really good at (blank).
- Are you altering any of your product lines or increasing your services to be more competitve?
Before you can go on to identifying your target or position or are ready to advertise, you really need to know what it is that you should be known for. What is it that your clients or customers really need from you? The problem is that many business owners think that everyone should buy from them. Which would be fantastic, but isn’t realistic.
So, once you have a specialty or category figured out you can move on to the next steps which involve identifying who to target, how you’ll position yourself and then finally what media you want use with a creative message in an advertising campaign or promotion. The advertising and promotion is often the sexy part that people get excited about, but if you don’t stick to these marketing strategy fundamentals when planning your campaign, you run the risk of wasting your money!
Can you think of any examples of companies who serve niches really well?
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Ray Martin
