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Why targeting is essential…
Although the vast majority of people who get online every day do so to find information, they are not all looking for exactly the same type of information. If they were, it would be very easy indeed to connect with them because you would know exactly what they were looking for without any research whatsoever. However, because this is clearly not the case, you need to dig a little deeper.
Most people do not seek information from the net on a completely untailored, general level. On the contrary, they usually have a specific questions need answering or a distinct problem that needs solving. In other words, they are looking for information of a definitive nature, which means that it is your job as a marketer to discover the specifics of what they’re looking for. If you can do this, you can make the information that you provide the central product or service that your business sells. By doing so, you satisfy their specific requirements or needs, hence they are happy because they have the answers that they needed whilst landing a successful sale ensures that you are happy too. In order to do this most effectively, you cannot expect to provide information to every individual who logs onto the internet every day. To be effective, you have to narrow you own targeting down far more strategically.
Hence, you have the idea of trying to set up a business that is focused on a particular market sector or niche. By doing so, you can identify and then provide the exact information that people in that niche really want, thereby creating satisfied customers. However, you must fully understand the concept of narrowing down your business focus very precisely because if you try to take on too much, you will inevitably fail. For example, there are billions of people who turn to the net every day to search for information about health. There is a massive potential market for entrepreneurs who can provide valuable health-related information via the internet. On the other hand, the general concept of an online ‘health market’ represents a massively diversified market. It covers everything from people who are looking for cures for the common cold to seeking ways to comfort those in the final stages of terminal cancer.
Without putting in the work of several lifetimes, there is no way that one individual could do any more than scratch the surface of such a massive market, hence focusing on ‘health’ would not work. It does not represent a niche market of the kind you must look for as online marketer.
If however you were to focus on providing information to people who are seeking solutions for a long-standing eczema problem, you have found a market niche. In this case, you are looking at a small sub-sector of the health market where people are seeking very specific and definite information.
If you can provide that information and if what you provide is of enough quality and value to convince eczema sufferers to spend money, you have the core of a business. Spend no more than five minutes thinking about it and you could probably come up with a list of several hundred niche markets within the health sector, as you could if you thought about almost any market on a general level.
However, remembering that your primary objective here is to build a profitable mailing list, it is a fact that some niche markets are far more attractive than others for reasons that I will explain in the next section.
Every niche is not the same
Every online marketer who has been around the business more than five minutes knows that ‘The Money is in the List’ but what exactly does this mean? How or why is there money in the list, and perhaps more importantly, how do you put some of that money in your bank account?
For the time being, let’s continue to run with the idea that your primary business model is based on selling eczema related information to sufferers who are willing to pay for it.
In this situation, the first thing you might look for is a suitable product or service that you could sell into this market. Once you have done this, the next step might be to ‘contact’ as many eczema sufferers as possible by targeting all of your marketing and advertising efforts at people who suffer from this particular complaint.
Through your marketing and advertising, you bring these people to your eczema focused website and convince them to subscribe to your mailing list. Now you have the ability to send promotional e-mail messages to these individuals as often as you like because by their action of subscribing to your mailing list, they gave you specific permission to do so.
The money is in the List
In every e-mail message that you send to them, you now promote a product or service. Do this and over time your activity inevitably generates sales, which is where the idea that “The money is in the List” comes from. As long as you keep promoting, you will keep selling, adding extra profit to your account with every outgoing e-mail message.
But think about this example for a moment. The individual who either suffers from eczema or knows someone who does subscribed to your mailing list. They might possibly have bought your ‘eczema treatment’ product or service because they have a medical problem that needs to be solved.
Assuming that this initial product or service does the trick, what are you going to sell them now? After all, they had a problem that you have solved, so they obviously don’t need more information or product recommendations about eczema treatment.
You can probably see that you also have a problem here. By choosing this particular market niche around which to build your mailing list, you have made it difficult to profit from your list in the future because your list members only have one problem (that you know of) and you have already solved it.
Thus, in order to build a mailing list from which you can profit on a long-term, consistent basis, you must focus on a market sector or niche where there is a degree of longevity and continuity. For example, self-improvement is a massive online market and one in which people are always looking for extra information or assistance.
After all, it is a very rare individual indeed who is entirely satisfied and happy with everything about their life.
Certainly, I have never met anyone who is interested in self-help or self-improvement who ever reached this particular stage of contentedness.
In a similar manner, any market niche that is related to hobbies or interests is one where there is a natural degree or level of longevity and continuity. If you sell products, services or information about radio controlled models to an enthusiast, you know for a fact that they will soak up anything else you can provide about radio controlled models like a sponge.
Tags: internet marketing, list, marketer, money, Niche, Perspective Drawing, targeting
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