Niche Marketing - How to Greatly Increase Your Odds of Business Success

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is trying to market their product or service to a large general market instead of focusing on a small niche market. As a marketing consultant, getting my clients to focus on a niche market is the most difficult part of my job. Whenever I tell a client that they must start off small and focus on a specialized niche market, my client almost always says, “But I think everybody could use my product and if I limit my market, I will get fewer sales.” Then my response is, “Okay, if you want to market your product to the world, how many millions of dollars do you have to invest in regional, national and international advertising campaigns?” Then I get a blank stare or the phone goes quiet.

To be successful in today’s hyper-competitive, over-advertised marketplace, you absolutely must focus your business and marketing on serving a specialized and preferably small niche market. This is especially true and a matter of survival if you have a small marketing budget. If you ignore this advice and try to market to a large general market before first becoming successful in at least one small niche market, I can guarantee you that you will soon go broke and be out of business. However, if you do decide to focus on serving a small niche market, you greatly increase your odds for business success with much less risk.

So what is a niche market? A niche market is group of consumers or businesses that all have a very specific need or want. For example, let’s say you sell fancy and fairly expensive parrot cages. Your niche market consists of people who own parrots, and particularly people who own parrots and earn an income large enough that they can afford to buy your fancy parrot cages.

On the other hand, if you decide to market your fancy parrot cages to everybody in the United States who owns a bird, you are marketing to a fairly large general market and the money you spend on marketing will be wasted because nearly all of the people who will see your marketing will NOT have a need or interest in buying an expensive parrot cage. Yes, that sound you just heard is the sound of your money being flushed down the toilet because you ignored niche marketing.

Here is another example. Let’s say you invent a new kind of ergonomic chair. This chair is very comfortable and really helps people who suffer from lower back pain. Now, what most inventors would do when they come to me to market their product is they would say, “Everybody will want my ergonomic chair. I want to first market it nationally and then to the world.” Then I ask my famous question of how much money do they have for marketing, and I am told it is a couple thousand dollars. So, my client wants me to launch a national marketing campaign for a brand new product nobody has ever heard of and I am supposed to do this with a few thousand dollars. Not going to happen.

My advice for how to market this new ergonomic chair product is to market it to a very specialized niche market and there are several to choose from. The key is finding the market that most needs this product as well as can afford this product. One niche market to consider would be to market the chair to assisted living centers for the elderly. Another niche market is Chiropractors who could sell this chair directly to their patients who suffer from lower back pain. There are many other niche markets that could considered too. The key is to determine who has the most desperate need for your product or service and then focus your marketing on that niche market. If you are still confused, do this exercise. Find the people who stay up at night worrying about the problem your product or service solves and you have just found your niche market.

Peter Geisheker
The Geisheker Group Marketing Firm
(920) 471-1638

Myspace Marketing - How to market your business for FREE on Myspace

Myspace.com is the world’s largest social networking website. It is the cool place to be if you are in your teens, 20s and 30s. I have also found that it can be an outstanding free marketing tool for social business and websites.

So what is Myspace.com? Myspace is a website where anybody in the world can create a free “personal” web page (i.e., my space). Once you have created your personal web page on myspace, then you can connect your page to other people’s myspace pages by clicking on a link to request to be a person’s friend. Once that person agrees to be your friend, then you and that person can email each other, chat with each other, leave comments on each other’s myspace pages, and read each other’s blogs. There is no limit to the number of friends you can have and some of the more popular people on myspace have millions of myspace friends and have actually become Internet celebrities and have been featured on talk shows.

Over the past year I have been conducting test marketing on myspace for a couple of my clients and I have discovered that myspace can be a very good free marketing tool for businesses. However, myspace is not for all businesses. The types of business that will do well having a myspace page are the “cool” types of businesses that want to market to people in their 20s and 30s. Businesses that will have luck marketing on myspace include bars, clubs, “hip” clothing stores, and cool Internet websites.

Here is how to market your business on myspace.com:

1. Go to myspace.com and create a free profile. Make sure to talk first about yourself and then about your business. However, you must consider your myspace page a personal page where you talk mostly about you and a little about your business. Do not just talk about your business because if you do, people will not want to be your friend. You need to focus on the personal aspect such as, “hey this is me and my life. And by the way I run this Internet website that sells cool t-shirts.” If you think of myspace as a place to network and meet friends FIRST and market your business SECOND, then you will do well on myspace.

2. Once you have created your myspace page, click the browse link to find the type of people you want to market to. You can search by gender, age, location, ethnicity, etc.

3. Go to each person’s page and click their “Add to friends” link. The person will either approve you or deny you. If they approve you, your myspace page and their myspace page will be connected as being friends.

4. To market your business, post friendly personalized bulletins. When you post a bulletin, a link to your bulletin will be posted on each of your friend’s myspace pages. If you have 5,000 myspace friends, than you can literally have a message sent to all 5,000 of these people for free. However, remember that you must be personal with your messages. Talk like you are talking to your best friend. Do NOT talk to people like customers. Myspace is a place for friends and you must respect that.

5. Post friendly comments on your myspace friends’ pages and include a link to your website. Then, everybody who goes to your friend’s myspace page will see your comment and your link. Some will click on your picture to become your friend and some will click on the link to go to your website.

Good Luck!

Peter Geisheker
The Geisheker Group Marketing Firm
(920) 471-1638

Free Sample Sales Letters

Many business owners want to know how to correctly write a sales letter. So, I have written a short article on how to write a sales letter. At the bottom of this article are two sample sales letters that you can download.

To write a successful sales letter, there are several strategies you should use:

1. At the top of your sales letter, use a strong headline that states the most important benefit you are offering. This headline should be bold and a larger font size than the font size you use for the body text in your sales letter.

2. When writing your sales letter, use a friendly conversational style. Do not try to write "corporate" where you use large words and try to impress your prospects with your command of the English language. All that does is turn people off. Instead, write your sales letter as if you were talking to your best friend.

3. Your sales letter needs to explain the benefits your potential customer will receive. Understand that everybody cares about one thing in life - "What’s in it for me?" Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask yourself, "If I was receiving this letter, why would I want to buy the product or service being sold? What’s in it for me?"

4. Ask your prospect to take action such as to call you for more information, to visit your website, to complete and order form and mail you a check, etc. If you do not ask your prospects to take action, they won’t.

5. Include testimonials from customers. Testimonials are one of the most powerful sales tools available, so always include at least one testimonial in your sales letters.

6. Use a P.S. in your letter and restate your most power benefit and sales offer in it. Most people will read a P.S. first before reading the sales letter, so it is important to make your P.S. have a very strong sales message and a call to action.

7. Make sure to include all of your contact information - telephone number, fax number, email address, postal address, and your website address.

8. Make your envelope "lumpy" by enclosing a small, inexpensive free gift. Make sure the gift has your company name and contact information on it and that the gift is something a person would want to keep - such as a nice pen, a good highlighter, etc. And, the promo gift should have your company information on it – your company name, phone number, and website address.

Free sample sales letter 1 (pdf)
Free sample sales letter 2 (pdf)

If you need help creating a powerful sales letter, brochure, press release, website or other marketing materials, please contact The Geisheker Group, Inc. by calling (920) 471-1638.

To view all of the different marketing services we provide, please visit
http://www.marketing-consulting-company.com.

To Your Success!

Peter Geisheker
President and CEO
The Geisheker Group Marketing Firm
(920) 471-1638