Fish in a different pond

THE PRINCIPLE

Targeting a different audience for what you already do may reveal lucrative new markets

Many times everyone who offers a particular product or service is chasing the same set of customers. Often the best way to surge ahead of the competition is to figure out how to slant the product or service to a different audience.

The Nintendo Wii is a great example of this. At a time when many video games were chasing the fanboys who love shoot-em-ups, the folks at Nintendo realised that there was a whole new potential audience out there for games that didn’t involve killing anybody. The motion-control element was also a new way to interact, and the upshot was a success that put competitors in the shade.

You may find an untapped audience by appealing to different groups according to various criteria including:

  1. Age groups. Can you adapt it to appeal to children, teenagers, young adults, the middle-aged, the elderly?
  2. Gender. Can you adapt it so that it appeals to a different gender?
  3. Geographic location. Can you offer it to people who live in other areas, perhaps by using the internet?
  4. Occupation. Can you figure out how to make it useful for people in other occupations?
  5. Hobbies. Can you adapt it to people with different interests?
  6. Relationship status. Can it be adapted to appeal more to singles? Or to people in a committed relationship? Or to people newly engaged or recently divorced? Or to new parents?
  7. Values. Can you make it appeal to those especially concerned with protecting the environment? Or those worried about their personal safety? Or people wanting to be seen as high-status?

Let’s take the straightforward example of financial planners who are struggling to find new business. Using the list above, they might come up with these ideas:

  • Specialise in helping the elderly take charge of their finances.
  • Work with recent graduates who are new to the world of work.
  • Specialise in working with people who are self-employed or, even more specifically, with freelancers.
  • Target young parents to help them to plan for their children’s futures.
  • Target customers who are especially interested in finding ethical investments.

Once you decide what kinds of individuals or groups might be a new target audience for you, you need to figure out how to market to them effectively. Here my book Marketing for Entrepreneurs (Pearson) will be helpful.

Obviously not every product or service lends itself to every one of these variations, but you might surprise yourself with how many you can generate. When everybody is fishing in the same pond – find another pond!

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