There’s not a whole lot of point speaking to people who don’t want to speak to you. If you are involved in advertising in daily newspapers, general interest publications, direct mail to diverse mailing lists or even billboards, you are probably wasting a good percentage of your advertising dollar. Unless you’re overall goal is awareness, then this is a luxury best avoided.
A better more lucrative approach would be to begin building niche lists. Niches are finely tuned special interest groups of like minded people. Examples of niches would be Harley owners, runners, trekkies, knitters and new moms to mention a few. In my world, start-ups are a niche I’m keen on. Doing everything you can to first identify the niches that are your focus and secondly, start populating those niches. One way of accomplishing this is to have documents available on your website that would be generally desired. Require the users to sign up for this FREE document. Once in, they would next be required to check off “interests” that they have. Each selection would put that individual into that niche, so in essence, they are building the niches for you.
One new revenue stream resulting from this suggestion would be to cross-promote with other businesses that would benefit from one or more of your niches. I would only suggest that you not release the identities of your niche members, as it took a lot of effort to build them and gain their trust. Damaging that trust damages your brand.
Once you get a healthy number of constituents in your niches, now you can start marketing directly to them based on their common interests. Aim your offers at their unique thirst and build a trusting relationship with them. Develop solutions and content your niches crave. With niche marketing, 100% of your advertising dollars are working for you and with the proper systems in place you can detect exactly who is responding to your efforts to contact them.
