One of the latest buzz phrases in the online business world is “niche marketing.” You have probably read that niche marketing is highly important on the Internet. If you are wondering what all this talk is about, I am going to try to explain what niche marketing means.

I have read that if you build an online business then you will have millions of potential customers. While in theory this may be true, you will have a hard time finding products that appeal to all web surfers. Your online business will be better served by matching a product with a group of potential customers that are interested in that product.

“Niche marketing” is a close relative to the phrase “target marketing.” Target marketing is usually used in discussions where it is assumed that you already have a product and you are researching which group of potential customers to whom it would be most profitable to “target” your marketing efforts. Niche marketing is usually discussed in situations where you do not yet have a product. You find a hot niche market then find a product to market to that specific group of potential customers.

A niche market is simply a group of people with a common interest. A common interest might be a hobby, or a problem, or social background. There are many more examples of areas where groups of people have something in common. For example, there are many people that have chronic lower back pain. There are many more people that do not. The people that do have this problem all share a common interest. This would be a great example of a niche market. Instead of finding a product that appeals to everyone that suffers from any type of chronic pain, you specifically target only those that suffer from chronic lower back pain.

As you research the Internet for marketing ideas, you will find the phrase “niche marketing” used quite frequently. Hopefully you now understand what is meant by “niche marketing.”

By Kevin Moon

about the author

These tips and many more plus over 12 hours of Internet marketing videos – absolutley FREE – are available at http://www.internetprofitmentor.com.

Copyright 2007 by My Personal CMO .com. All Rights Reserved.

Whether we actually enter a recession or not is still up for debate. However, it does bring up a prickly subject for many businesses. Should you continue investing in marketing or defer those expenditures until the economy picks up?

Let Your Brand Do Your Selling

When the stability of the economy is in question, the knee-jerk reaction for many businesses is to pull back on their marketing efforts until a bull market returns. In reality, there isn’t a better time to market than during a recession – whether real or imagined. As John Vanderzee, former advertising manager for the Ford division of the Ford Motor Company, said during the 1990-91 economic slump, “Anybody who retrenches because of the recession has really got his head in the sand.” Vanderzee then added that spending money on marketing during a recession is a must.

An economic downturn can be an opportunity rather than a death sentence. If your product or service is synonymous with value, then you’re already ahead of the curve. With closer attention to spending, customers are carefully evaluating their options and will continue to look for high-quality, affordable products and services.

What’s more, it’s likely that your competition will be less visible, since many companies fail to recognize the opportunity and instead reign in their marketing expenses. As a result, they leave potential market share on the table. Consequently, your continued marketing efforts stand out and are more likely to be heard with less chatter in the marketplace.

A strong brand can pay big dividends during a recession, enhancing the success of your marketing efforts tremendously. If your brand clearly demonstrates value to your audience, is managed well, connects with your target on an emotional level and instills loyalty, you are likely to fair well during any perceived recession. Prudential’s Retirement Red Zone campaign is one example. It taps into the retirement concerns of consumers and reassures the audience that, despite the current economy, they can achieve their retirement goals. The campaign uses television, radio and print ads, to drive consumers to the Prudential website. Once there, they can engage with personal advisors and access various educational tools, resources and information on their website.

If your brand doesn’t meet the criteria above, do not panic. Now is a great time to heighten your visibility (often amid less competition). Take the time to perfect your brand and then reach out to your audience to underscore your brand’s value.

Conversely, you may have a well-known brand but a premium product or service. You may wonder if your audience will continue to “indulge” when times are tight. If you’ve done a good job of defining and strengthening your brand, your core loyalists will continue to buy. Take Tiffany’s, for example.

Regardless of economic downturns, Tiffany’s continues to thrive. People continue to buy, despite the cost because the brand has reinforced its quality and timeless appeal. The robin’s-egg blue packaging is easily recognizable – even without the name people know it’s Tiffany’s. It conveys the brand without saying a word.

See the Tiffany’s envelope or box and you think: Hope. Promise. Something of value and elegance. Tiffany’s products may be premium but they convey quality and elicit strong, positive emotions within its audience.

Click here for part 2 of the article.

Copyright 2007 by My Personal CMO .com. All Rights Reserved.

To build a strong brand with a loyal customer base, your business must create a complete chain of customer experiences with outcomes that your customers value and adore.

Repeat business is the most profitable business, and so all business should aspire to build customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is based on customer service experiences. These experiences are not merely at the point-of-sale or the exchange desk. Instead, they encompass the compete chain of customer experiences.

They start with the time when, where and how your customers hear about your brand, their first contact with your brand – which may be your website -. They extend all the way to a time that they receive a notification that their warranty is about to expire and that extended warranty is available to them. And beyond this, of course.

Strong branding is the result of this consistent delivery of customer experiences, through distribution and media channels. In these customer experiences, what is important is how your customer feels when they are in your brand presence. How do you manage this? What kind of service is needed?

There is my 4-part approach for loyalty- & brand-building by managing the complete customer experience:

1. Manage Brand Loyalty and Customer Experiences From The Top.
Senior management should be responsible, not a service rep nor middle management. By putting the management of customer experiences in the hands of top management, a bird’s eye view can be applied encompassing the complete set of customer experiences. Furthermore, it gives a clear message to all that your business takes satisfying customer experiences seriously.

2. Complete Measurements Go Beyond Metrics.
Management is to set explicit brand value propositions plus guidelines for employees and channels to bring these value propositions alive. Monitoring click-through rates, conversion ratios or phone-time-on-hold metrics should be complemented with complete customer interaction review.

3. Detail Key Customer Scenarios through Research. Market segmentation can help in pinpointing what customers consider important outcomes of key scenarios. After all, not all customers have the same needs and wants. Detailed market research reveals what customers consider to be key-scenarios and what factors to get right in each scenario. You will find that this kind of market research will give your business an edge over competition that is not necessarily transparent to your customers.

4. Put Complete Customer Experience Management Protocols In Place. When performance metrics and evaluation results are not reflecting your intended brand value proposition, a process should be in place for prompt corrective action.

In Conclusion

Once you and your company have established both the leadership for and the appropriate means of managing and evaluating your Complete Customer Service Experience, you’re ready to actually tune the experience and so create customer loyalty. Loyalty results when customers feel understood and cared for. A strong brand shows business choices that foster loyalty. This article offers a path to successfully strengthening your brand.

Copyright 2007 by My Personal CMO .com. All Rights Reserved.

The information provide is not exhaustive but in the opinion of the author these core elements when implemented will service to act as a sure and solid foundation for your business whether it is home based or whether you are running your own business unit within a larger corporation. Pay attention to the four areas below and work out a plan to constantly refine and update.

Category Marketing : You should know and should take time to sit down and plan out which category of the market your product or service fits into. What is meant by this ? consider the manufacturer’s of cars – when they are planning to produce a new car they determine the category of car which will be produced at the design stage. That is to say, the car could be a Mini Car, a Sports Utility Vehicle, a Multi Purpose Vehicle, a Sports Car, a Soft Top convertible and so the list can goes on.

A car is not just a car – the master category of car (your product or service) can and must be split up to provide a solid foundation from which to launch your business. To define the category for your business, take a blank piece of paper, consider the example of the cars and try to come up with at least five different categories in which your product or service can be placed.

Market Segmentation : This deals with the other side of the spectrum after considering Category Marketing, this looks at the end users or the market place whereas Category Marketing focusses on you, your product and your company’s services. Marketing Segmentation looks at splitting up the target market into group for which you can use to target your product and service to.

The market can be segmented by Race, Age, Earning Capacity, Living Area, Maritial Status, Disposable Income etc, etc which when devised correctly will give you a firm base for which Category of product you can sell to a particular Market Segment.

Channel Marketing : Every product or service must pass through a Marketing Channel in order to reach the end user. Most successful businesses today use multiple channels through which to reach their target market and your business should be the same. Examples of marketing channels are Retail Store, Networking Events, Distribution Warehouses, Shopping Malls, Telephone, Mail and the Internet. You should consider what you wish your primary channel to market to be and focus on this and then work on having a few secondary channels to market.

Develop most of your sales and communication tools for your primary market which will be in line with the Category of product and the particular Market Segment which you are looking to address. I consider the internet to be one of the most important Marketing Channels no matter what business you are in and I find the vast majority of my clients on a worldwide basis this way as I have developed significant expertise in this field.

Ideal Client Profile : Based on your definition of all of the above you should be able to develop and ideal client profile, this will tell you the type of person who is most likely to buy from you and with whom you are able to develop and long term relationship. The client profile will show which segment(s) of the market your client come along with the category of product that they prefer to purchase from you. Along with this you will understand through which marketing channel they prefer to purchase from you.

When working on your business focusing in on these key points will serve you will to take your business results to the next level.

About the Author

Article source: ContentLog.com.

Author Stephen C Campbell is an Internet Marketer & Business Consultant, he coaches clients on how to use the internet to drive their offline business. Learn more about his resources at http://www.EmailMarketingInformationCenter.Com/

Copyright 2007 by My Personal CMO .com. All Rights Reserved.

McKinsey interviewed 40+ CMOs worldwide covering multiple industries, and concluded that “their biggest concern is that an explosion of customer segments, products, media vehicles, and distribution channels has made marketing more complex, more costly, and less effective.”

The issue is the transformative complexity of all aspects of marketing at a time of pressure for with enhanced returns on marketing programs:
• The Markets – segmentation
• The Competition – aggressively targeting in profitable segments
• The Products – product line extensions, new products, new (sub) brands
• The Distribution Channels – fragmentation, many new (sub-) channels
• The Advertising Media – fragmentation & new media
• The Marketing Data – mountains of data, little answers.

As society is becoming both more multi-cultural due to immigration and more separated due to polarizing income groups, customer segmentation has become prolific leading to an overall diverse customer base. Meanwhile, competitive drive for growth coupled with supply chain transformation trigger companies into targeting micro-segments of demanding customers.

All this led to a doubling of consumer products, and a complexity of distribution channels as companies need to utilize more and new distribution channels such as the web and third party tele-sales providers. Advertising needs reflects these trends. “Twenty years ago, big companies used one advertising spot on three television networks to reach 80 percent of the US population; now they need up to 20 messaging and media programs to get the same reach.” states McKinsey.

The New Model of Marketing

To profitably respond to the fragmentation explosion, business must adapt its prior marketing plans and associated organization structure along new segmentation paradigms to control cost, to ensure quality of niche service and to realize ROI and growth.

How?
1. Tackling channel migration, steering customers into the right channels.
2. Rethink brand portfolios, e.g. offer fewer, distinctively positioned brands per segment and/or focus on fewer segments.
3. Address overall cost of service & customer interaction.

In sum, major restructuring of marketing models will be needed to solve marketing’s new Rubik’s Cube.

How about if I added that you can do all of this for FREE?

Skeptical? Read on…

I’m sure you’ve heard about one of the biggest things to hit the Web in the last few years — blogging. A “blog” (derived from the term “web log”) is basically just a web site — with two key differences:

First, it’s extremely easy to add information to it. A blog is like an online journal, so you just log in, type what happened today, post it, and you’re done!

Second, you can add a simple little feature that automatically tells a whole bunch of other web sites that you’ve made an update to your blog — every time you make a change!

You may also have heard that there are millions of blogs out there… more than 28 million with a new one starting every second, according to blog directory Technorati.

However, what you may NOT know is that a blog can also be a very powerful marketing tool for your business… And some people actually earn an income just from blogging!

The fact is, blogging is fast becoming an extremely important strategy for any online marketer. An effective blog can drive swarms of traffic to your main web site Generate MORE product sales Create an additional stream of advertising income Be a great customer service tool … And much more.

Blogs have an informal, conversational style, and readers can join in by commenting on each post. Blogs can be chatty, controversial, informative, opinionated, and often humorous, and it’s this “human” aspect of blogs that draws many people to them.

But the best part about blogs is how accessible they are to EVERYONE. Blogs are FREE (or very inexpensive) to set up using services like Blogger or TypePad.

EASY to use — you can literally create your own blog in less than five minutes!

EASY to promote with all the new tools and resources that have been created specifically for blogs — like Google’s blog-only search engine, Google Blog Search.

Plus, they are PROVEN successful promotional tools for both online businesses and offline businesses. In fact, every business person should have a blog — and I suspect that soon enough, everyone will.

How You Can Use a Blog to Wildly Accelerate Your Online Success!

The fact is, blogs are no longer just online diaries of people’s personal lives. Both online and offline businesses can use blogs to take their products and services to a wider audience — increasing their traffic, leads, and sales.

Let’s look more closely at a few of the extremely powerful ways your business can benefit from a blog. With an effective business blog, you can…

Humanize your business: Because a blog is much more informal than other web sites, you can write posts in your own voice and give your business more of a human face. This helps reassure prospective customers that there is a “real person” behind the web site who will take care of their needs. It also allows you to inject much more of your own personality into your online business than your main sales site could do.

Improve your customer service: Your blog can act as a kind of interactive FAQ, allowing your customers to submit questions and you to answer them. You can also provide product updates, “How-to” articles, and other information of relevance to your customers. And prospective customers who see your blog will be encouraged by your commitment to good customer service!

Give your target market the information they’re looking for: With its automatic archiving feature — by date and category — a blog is a fantastic content management system. It’s easy for you to post new information on a regular basis, and it’s easy for your visitors to find the information they want. With a well-written, regularly updated blog, you can become a reliable resource in your industry, and build a following of loyal readers who depend on your content. These people will be your best potential customers!

Drive traffic to your sales web site: If you already have a web site, a blog can give your traffic levels a real boost. For starters, your blog will attract new visitors that you can then redirect to your main sales web site through links and special offers. But an even MORE effective technique is to use strategic keywords and links to specific sales pages to dramatically improve the search engine rankings of both your blog AND your main web site.

Build your credibility and establish yourself as an industry expert: You can give your credibility a real boost by regularly posting valuable and relevant information on your blog. It’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your subject area — and allow your visitors to feel much more comfortable buying from you.

Promote your products or services: You can actually sell products directly from a blog, or you can use your blog to mention new products and direct your visitors to your sales web site.

Generate extra income: There are now several advertising programs available, such as Google AdSense, that allow you to monetize your blog and generate an extra revenue stream.

There are many small business owners who are using blogs to benefit their business right now… with some spectacular results. We’ve come across farmers, PR consultants, tailors, CEOs, and many more who blog with great success.

As a salesperson or the owner of a small business, do you consider yourself to be qualified, experienced, and dependable? More importantly, have 95% of your customers had a satisfying experience doing business with you or your company? If your answer is ‘yes’ to all those questions, then your services or products have the potential to be in high demand. The trick is effectively communicating that information to your target market.

Let’s assume that you have what your prospective customers are looking for: excellent service, high ethical and quality standards, a near-perfect track record in living up to promises and producing desired results, and the skills or knowledge to help your clients achieve their goals or solve their problems. Think about it. You are exactly what people are scouring the Internet or Yellow Pages for and spending countless hours researching. If you’re not in demand now, then you ought to be!

What’s Standing in the Way?

In all likelihood, your phone isn’t ringing off the hook because you haven’t convinced your prospects that you can offer them all these desirable qualities and benefits. That’s where marketing strategy comes in!

Whether or not people ask you these questions, you can be sure it’s almost always on their minds: “How long have you been in business? What are your credentials? Are there people who can vouch for your dependability (provide references)? Why should I feel secure choosing you over the competition for this important project/need/solution?

Strategies for Establishing Credibility & Trust

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a minute and try to think like someone who’s in the market for your services. At some level, they’re thinking, “Why should I put my faith in this person or business?”

One good way to project an image of reliability is to join the Better Business Bureau and display their logo in your ads, stationery, brochures, and web site. According to their web site, “members of local BBBs are businesses and firms which meet tough BBB membership standards, agree to follow the highest principles of business ethics and voluntary self-regulation, and have a proven record of marketplace honesty and integrity.”

Another approach to making a good impression is to join professional organizations and display that affiliation, wherever space allows, in your ads, letters, and marketing literature. Someone who’s a member of a professional or industry organization usually cares about ethical standards, working cooperatively with others, and keeping their training up to date. It also conveys the impression that they take their profession seriously and that they’re not a ‘fly by night’ operation. Membership in Chambers of Commerce can also be an image-enhancing investment.

Some other ways to establish credibility and trust include being active in the community, earning professional credentials, appearing in the media as an organizational or industry spokesperson, conducting seminars, teaching classes, writing a newspaper column, and speaking at public events and meetings. Having a well-designed, up-to-date website (that’s not ‘under construction’), professional-looking business cards, and an impeccable reputation are also important facets of branding you and your company as a dependable and quality-conscious source of products and services.

One of the disadvantages of traditional marketing is that it often lacks credibility. Why should someone believe you when they know you’re trying to sell them something? However, there are free or inexpensive techniques for gaining business-building, positive exposure through a number of channels that may not be occurring to you or that you may not be taking full advantage of.

1. Send out a press release to the media when your business opens, expands, diversifies, invents something or innovates a process, partners with another business or organization, hires, takes a position on an non-divisive issue, or sponsors an event or a worthy cause.

2. Suggest feature articles and news story ideas to reporters and editors concerning your field or area of expertise. Offer to be interviewed or to provide quotes for an article.

3. Make yourself available as a speaker at Chamber of Commerce meetings, professional associations, community groups, and seminars. Announce your speaking engagement to the press in the form of a news release, phone call, email, or post card.

4. Write a ‘Letter to the Editor’, but avoid taking a controversial position on an issue which could cost you clients. You don’t want to alienate people. Make it a practice to read the editorial pages to see what’s being written about.

5. Teach a class at the local community college or continuing adult education program. It’s a great way to increase your credibility, visibility, and acquire new clients.

6. Become a columnist. Speaking of credibility and visibility, if you can arrange with a print or online publication to run a regular column of yours, especially with a photograph and brief bio at the end, you’ll gain a lot of valuable, free exposure.

7. Word of mouth is the best kind of free and credible advertising. Keep focusing on providing exceptional service and going above and beyond what clients expect, and word of mouth advertising and new business from referrals is virtually guaranteed.

8. Write informative articles that would be helpful to your clients or prospects and post them on your web site. Let people know about the articles in every way you can think of: talk it up, add a one sentence blurb at the end of your outgoing voice mail or answering machine message, include it in updates of your brochures, flyers, business cards, print ads, and broadcast commercials. If you’re editing and uploading the articles yourself (as opposed to having a web designer or search engine optimization expert do it) make sure you liberally sprinkle the article with a few appropriate and repeated key words that would help Internet searchers find your articles. When choosing key words and phrases, think in terms of what a customer or prospective client would enter into a search engine when looking for the topic or service you’re writing about. One website where you can get a list of keyword phrases arranged by popularity (the number of times they’ve been searched) is at Overture.com . Click on ‘Visit the Resource Center’, then go to the Keyword Selector tool.

9. Invite people to sign up for your monthly email bulletin in which you can provide clients and prospects with news, helpful tips related to your business or profession, and new product or service announcements. Four recommendations if you do this: Don’t sign anyone up without their permission, assure subscribers that their email address and other personal information will remain private (have a publicize a privacy policy), tell people they can ‘unsubscribe’ from your list whenever they want to (immediately honor those requests), and avoid making people feel like they’re being inundated with your information and offers. For more information on the responsibilities of email marketers, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm

While marketing tactics that cost money are a necessary part of almost any strategy, make sure to get the most mileage you can out of techniques that are either free or extremely economical. Remember, even if your marketing budget is tight, there are still plenty of things you can do to increase inquiries, boost referrals, and expand awareness of the unique aspects of your business.