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August 25, 2009
How to Find Your Unique Market
Today's online social media are great tools for both talking and listening.
But, before you begin talking, try listening.
Listen and do market research. This is critical if you want to start a small business at home and use social networking as a relationship-based marketing tool.
Relationship-based marketing is all about gaining followers online and gaining the trust of those followers. After you have established your credibility with those followers (they trust you), they become potential leads and potential clients/customers.
You can then show them that you have something of value to offer (which they are willing to pay for) -- such as coaching, music, photography, sign language interpretation, voiceovers etc.
But, first you need to listen to your prospects and track what your competitors are doing.
Use social networking to identify new needs for your product or service within a redefined niche. You need a special spin for what you offer so it stands out against your competition.
Note that your product or service can be your own. Or you can market and sell other people's products and services through partnerships or affiliate programs.
If you want to sell other people's products or services, you still need to listen and observe what is happening within social networks so you capture the right set of followers for what your affiliates are offering. You need to direct those followers to a landing place on a blog or a web site where you can offer them further information that they need for free in exchange for their contact information.
So, whichever path you take, you need to identify what individuals really need within a niche audience that others haven't already fully tapped.
Here are three ways to use social media to do that.
First, use Twitter to seek out potential prospects in your targeted field. You can also look at your competitors and see who is following them.
Let's say you want to market your voiceover talent.
You can go to http://search.Twitter.com and type in:
- Voice Talent
- Voiceover Radio
- Voiceover Careers
- Voiceover Commercials
- Voiceover iPod
- Voiceover Professional
- Find Voiceover
You'll be able to see ongoing Twitter conversations about voiceovers. You can then join the conversation, contact people directly, and ask questions (all with your marker research needs in mind).
Second, join a group on LinkedIn which most closely matches the niche customers you have in mind, and then listen and join the discussions and ask key questions which will help you identify what this niche really needs in terms of your product or service.
Third, use social bookmarking to further refine your market research.
Digg , StumbleUpon , Reddit, and Delicious are very popular sites for what is known as social bookmarking.
The great thing about social bookmarking is that you can get started with it even if you do not have your own content to share with others.
Through social bookmarking, you can discover useful information about a customer base for a certain tag.
A tag is just a keyword or term assigned to a piece of information. For example, "voiceover" is a tag, "sign language" is a tag etc.
By searching for all of the Web content tagged with your specialty or niche, you can begin to size up your competition and see what strikes a nerve with the community.
In what ways can you use online social networking to help you refine your own market niche?
Add your comments to this posting
Posted by Liz Seger at August 25, 2009 06:11 PM
Comments
Use social networking to build a profile of your ideal customer.
From a marketing perspective, people either search for something that "reduces their pain" or "increases their pleasure."
As you conduct your customer research on online social networks, keep a running list of your ideal customer’s concerns. Write those concerns in terms your potential customers are using to describe them -– because they may be different than the words you’ve been using.
My friend, Barbara, wrote this to me recently:
“I found that almost ALL of the terminology that I used as a professional just wasn't being used by my target audience in search engines. So it really helps to take that step back and step into their shoes.”
It's really helpful to put a name and personality on each type of potential customer you think you may have. When you dig deeper into their buying attitudes, behaviors, etc., you'll find it's easier to keep each customer type straight in your mind.
And when you've created a real, live person, it's easier to talk to her or him.
Barbara actually came up with five very different customer profiles (Metro Michael, Uptown Ursula, Trendy/Tired Tina, Fatigued Felicity, Feisty Fiona, and Serene Sally). Then she picked the top two and just focused on them.
Posted by: Jim Hasse at August 26, 2009 04:16 PM
Once you have analyzed your potential customers and described their problems or concerns in their own words/voices, then rank those concerns in priority order.
You'll obtain an understanding of those concerns by listening to and conversing with your potential customers through social networks -- an opportunity you didn't readily have just 10 years ago.
Those conversations will prepare you for thinking about building your web site.
Here’s one option to consider for web site development. Go to SiteSell.com and check its process for web site development, which you can do yourself with expert guidance for about $300 a year. Or you can farm it all out to experts that SiteSell.com recommends.
The joy of SiteSell.com, as I understand it, is that, if you can tap into those keywords that your prime customers are using to search for the product or service you offer, then the Sitesell.com process will tell you automatically how to label your content and get high rankings in the search engines.
If SiteSell.com isn’t your cup of tea, you can complete all the steps of building your site yourself by combining free or low-cost services (such as blogging services, a merchant account, installing software on your site for credit card transactions etc.) on your site. Or you can farm out one-time work that you can’t do or don’t want to do yourself by contracting with a freelancer through guru.com or elance.com
But before you sign up for a web site hosting and development service such as SiteSell, you need to have a specific service, a product or information to sell and have a clear idea of who your prime customer is.
And social networking can help you do that without leaving your keyboard.
Posted by: Jim Hasse at August 26, 2009 04:54 PM
We really seem to have hit that tipping point on the Web where specialists with narrow focuses and pinpointed solutions have much more value than ever before.
You don’t need a gigantic following to succeed as an entrepreneur online.
One scenario I heard lately: Two years of work in building traffic to a well-thought-out web site built around key search words and offering quality content upfront for free and a pay-for product or service on the back end can yield 1,000 high-potential customers -- and a sustainable business.
Focus and quality are key -– not quantity.
Find the right niche for yourself.
Posted by: Jim Hasse at August 26, 2009 05:38 PM