We get many people joining our information business teaching program at Information Marketer’s Zone who have stunted their potential growth right out of the gates by not understanding the REAL desire of their target market.
Whether your entry into the information business market is via selling someone else’s product (as an affiliate) or by creating and marketing our own info products, the entrepreneur who wins is the one who best puts their finger on the underlying desire of their target market.
The skill that comes in most handy in that regard is empathy.
How Empathy Helps You Win With Your Information Business
Empathy is the ability to place yourself in the shoes of someone else (in this case your target market) so you can not only see (from a distance) their pain, frustration and desire but you get a close up and emotional attachment to this extremely important factor in their lives.
If you have ever come across a book title, an advertisement, a sales page or website that seems to just speak to you EXACTLY, then chances are the create of that product or site has come from a place of empathy and yes – he or she will sell MUCH more than all of the other products combined in a given information business market.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
When we teach people how to enter new markets, we talk about identifying the macro-niche (example health and fitness), sub-niche (Example: weight loss) and then specific niche opportunity (Example: how new mothers can get back to their original weight before having their baby)
The reason we do this is to clear up all of the confusion around choosing a niche and the difference between a niche audience and a niche opportunity…the latter being a very specific topic which is critical to identify before you tackle your information product publishing or finding your ideal affiliate product.
The challenge for most information entrepreneurs is drilling into the sub-niche and especially, identifying the specific niche opportunity trigger they want to focus on.
This is where empathy comes in and why having empathy for your market is SO important.
Someone who is engaged and seeks to research their target market with empathy looks specifically for sources of frustration, emotional angst, deeply held desire AND looks for the reasons behind each one of these.
Breaking Your Information Business Down…
Back to our example above – consider the following:
- Macro-Niche: Health & Wellness
- Sub-Niche: Weight Loss
- Micro-Niche Opportunity: New mothers who want to lose the weight that comes with carrying their baby
- Empathy Triggers: Isolation, depression, dramatic life change, end of era, relationship challenges, desire to appear to others as they did before being pregnant
Notice that the empathy triggers go several levels deeper than just identifying the micro-niche opportunity of new Mom’s who want to lose weight.
Why is this important?
- It helps you lock in your title and outline for your info product
- You can speak directly to your audience instead of looking like all of the other products out there
- You can market far more effectively because you know the emotional triggers behind why someone would desire your product or service
- You reach your target audience at a highly emotional level instead of a logical level which means they will tend to engage and act on your offers to a much greater degree
- Relationships are built on empathy – think about how your own friendships work, the best ones are with people who just seem to GET you at an emotional level – right?
- Empathy suits social marketing exceptionally well – just as good friends practice empathy in real life, social relationships on-line are no different
Do you have a topic you are hoping to tack with your information business?
I urge you strongly to move through the macro-niche, micro-niche, niche-opportunity and empathy steps to defining your info product…not only will your products be much better sellers, your marketing will also be much more effective without the cost of having to educate and and try to create relationships during the costly phases of marketing.
Can you think of how empathy applies to your market or business?
