So much of your ability to gain attention, interest and desire today hinge on reputation, social breadth and recommendation we have to ask ourselves what that means for effectively marketing our business today and into the near future.
Let’s take a step back, it used to be that you could get away with having a me-too or slightly improved product in a given space and still make good money by being more effective reaching and influencing your target market through push advertising.
Fast forward to today, we see two massive changes:
- Influence to buy products is now much more a “Pull” exercise where you and I seek out information from the community on what products and services to buy.
- Even where Push advertising reaches us, we still expect to make community opinion and influence at least a significant part of our buying decision
Will You Get Attention In The Middle?
Can you see the challenge with having a me-too or non-differentiated business when buyers depend on the opinion of their interest and buying community to decide on what to buy and who to buy from?
Think of your business as one of the Million bubbles formed when you boil a large pot of water – they all appear the same and you pretty much ignore them unless a bubble is massive and looks different than all of the rest.
The same goes for your business in this decade of monumental change in how customers buy products and services online (and offline for that matter)
So how do you avoid the middle?
- You “think outside of the box” when you address common frustrations or desires for an outcome. Instead of just offering another solution to achieve a certain outcome, you offer a markedly different approach…something you know will catch the attention of your marketplace
- You rise above the others in terms of how you reach your market. This could mean you reach them through domination on certain platforms (Ex best YouTube channel, top FB fan page, best targeted ads and landing page for paid advertising, dominant Instagram platform, best streams via Meerkat, Twitch, etc…, dominant email marketer). What platform do you see an opportunity to eclipse your competition AND that feeds into your strengths in terms of telling stories and producing content?
- Commit to a space and go deep…I’ve never been a big believer in being able to run several businesses at a surface level online but rather see it both necessary and far more effective to go super-deep in your market gaining a higher level of participation, loyalty and understanding/empathy with your target market. He who knows his market best (at an emotional level) wins!
So many people that we work with over at Information Marketer’sZone operate businesses that were designed to operate in the Middle – what that really means is that they have set themselves up for failure.  What we help them with is to move out of the middle and be exceptional in one or more areas of their product positioning, marketing, product development, or operations…setting the foundation for wild success in this decade of change.
