There are four types of people in the world… There are dog people and cat people… And, there are people who would own neither and people who own both…
My wife and I have always been dog people… Our neighbor is a cat person…
My wife is fond of saying that the only good cat is a dead cat… My neighbor has threatened on dozens of occasions to kill our dog, if our dog did not stop barking at his cat… Our neighbor despises our dog, because our dog barks at his cat, and his cat walks by our yard as in fear for his life…
All you have to do is to holler real loud, when you see the cat trying to sneak by our house… If you do it just right, the cat will jump out of its skin, before setting the new land speed record for a feline… LOL… My wife is so mean…
Putting my child-like amusement to the side, there is actually a business lesson in this story…
Who Is The Real Target Market For Your Business?
I am forever amazed at the responses I get, when I ask online marketers who is in their target market…
Everyone? Really?
You would be wasting your breath trying to get my wife to like cats, and you would be equally frustrated trying to convince my neighbor of the value of dogs in this world… Both are dead-set in their ways, and you will not change their minds…
Try selling your kitty scratch pad to my wife…
Try selling your dog bones to my neighbor…
You could spend ten million dollars and a lifetime trying to convince my wife that cats are awesome and she should buy your cat toys, OR you could call my neighbor and get his business for the price of a phone call…
Honestly, which approach makes more sense?
We Must Advertise To The Right People
If you have been trying to operate a business online for any length of time, you will have realized by now that you must advertise and there is always a cost for adverising — a cost that can be measured in either time or money…
We all have to spend time or money to attract an audience to our website, so that we can make the pitch for our products or services…
Given the high cost of advertising — free or paid, it makes sense that we should try to talk directly to those people who are most likely to buy what we are selling, doesn’t it?
This is why it is so important for us to properly identify our real target market…
If you deliver your pet-product advertising to people who refuse to own a dog or cat, then you are wasting your limited time or financial resources trying to sell your stuff to people who would never buy your goods…
Think about selling ice water to an Eskimo… Then realize that the guy in the desert is parched for a drink, and he might pay ten times the going rate to buy your ice water…
If you are talking to the wrong people, your advertising will produce few sales, and therefore, your advertising will be very expensive…
On the other hand, if you are talking to the right people with your advertising, you will be able to sell more stuff to more people, thereby reducing your overall cost of advertising…
When your advertising consistently pays for itself, you will find it a no-brainer option to keep advertising…
You will find that by taking your advertising resources and messages to the right audience, you will be able to consistently produce profitable results for your business…
Tracking Down Your Target Audience
I have often found that forums are an excellent tool for finding new ways to reach my target audiences…
Contrary to what you may have taught by other marketers, I don’t seek out niche consumer forums so that I can drop links in my signature file… That could be a real waste of time, since most consumer-oriented forums do not allow signature files…
Whatever the product or service, I seek out consumer forums for the niche to do research… I want to learn about the people who are in my target market…
I have found that the consumer forums in any niche can teach me three important lessons about reaching my target audiences:
1. I can find forums where I might be able to advertise on-site;
2. I find other websites that my target audience finds useful, where I might be able to buy advertising; and
3. I find the questions that people in my target audience are asking — questions that I could possibly answer in the form of an article for my website or a syndicated article.
I know you have heard it before, but I will reiterate the point here… Google is your best friend…
Since I have been talking about dogs and cats in this article, I wanted to emphasize the usefulness of forums with examples…
In my first search, I plugged in the words “dog forum” into Google… The first result was http://www.dogforums.com/
With more than 68,000 threads and 800,000 posts related to dogs, I am certain I would have no problem finding other dog-related websites and topics for articles that would be of interest to readers in that niche…
In my second search, I queried Google for “cats forum” and found http://www.catforum.com/
It contains 67,000 threads and nearly 700,000 posts… Once again, it will not be hard to find related websites where I might be able to advertise, and I will have no problem uncovering questions that my target audience is already asking, so that I can construct articles for my website or syndicated articles that will directly address the needs of the people in my target audience…
In Conclusion…
I have come to realize that for as long as my wife and I continue to live where we do and my neighbor continues to live where he does, my wife and my neighbor will always be tweaking each other over our dog and his cat…
The only way for that battle to end is for one of us to move out of the neighborhood… LOL
As a business owner, you must understand that your target market can never be described as everyone on the planet… It is important for you to do your research, to better understand who your real target audience is, so that you can more easily understand how to get your advertising message to them directly…
Once you understand who is in your target market and how you can reach them with your advertising, you will find yourself on the road to real success…
Also published here.
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We teach the Basics of online marketing and Cutting Edge Techniques used by professional online marketers, to develop lead generation systems and new businesses. Our Online Marketing Bootcamp training is geared for new online marketers, network marketers and offline business people looking to go online. http://www.BestBusinessNetwork.com/OMB/ Author: Marty Bradfield
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