MARKET TRENDS: Stay Focused and Don't Be Afraid to Rely on Technology
by June Bisel
Partner, BBG&G Advertising & Public Relations
Modern technologies have resulted in some wonderful new market trends. It provides companies with all sorts of databanks comprised of consumer profiles, allowing them to know their customers better than ever. Modern technologies also provide companies with the tools they need to reach customers. And the combination of both knowing and reaching customers creates an opportunity for niche marketing.
- Niche marketing is a win-win for everyone
Most consumers are not opposed to niche marketing. A young apprentice carpenter wants to receive information about discounts on tools; baby-boomers with empty nests enjoy perusing catalogs describing Italian walking tours. And niche marketing works to save the advertiser money: the struggling carpenter would consider the walking tour brochure junk mail, just as the empty-nester would have little use for information on buying hammers. So why approach the wrong people when reaching the right ones has become so easy?
B2B marketing is equally successful when it stays on target and focuses on a smaller group of potentially more receptive audiences. A growing and effective trend among B2B marketers is the use of enticing 3D direct mail pieces (or more simply stated, mail packages) sent to select decision makers. Follow-up calls subsequent to appropriate 3D mailings are almost always met with pleasure, and the return on the investment is proving to be quite a bit higher than traditional direct mail campaigns.
- So how does an agency develop a marketing strategy for a particular niche?
Ad copy remains the foundation for any sort of marketing plan. If your ad copy is brilliant, you’re already halfway there. But why reserve your dazzling texts for newspapers, magazines, and mailers alone? Nowadays there are many other vehicles equipped to carry it.
E-mails are particularly effective in reaching a niche market. And the great thing about e-mail is that it can include links to company websites.
Take, for example, Expedia, a company that uses email very successfully: If a consumer has registered her email address with Expedia and has visited a few times to check on prices for Cancun vacations, Expedia’s databanks will remember that, and when they have Cancun specials, she’ll get an email telling her about them, replete with the links to videos and virtual tours of resorts…and a clear passage to the webpage where she can purchase her vacation package.
Not all companies are in a position to create that kind of complicated search engine, but all companies can benefit from that kind of sequence model.
- Display advertising offers an excellent form of niche marketing
Displaying advertising (including billboards and signage in trains, buses and at kiosks) can be surprisingly inexpensive, and if your company has a regional message, it’s a solid means of getting it across. Back before the days of “57 channels” and remote controls to access them, TV was the number one way to reach a regional audience, and while it can still be effective, you don’t get much bang for your buck in a household where viewers are more likely to switch to the weather channel while they await the return of their preferred programming or fast-forward through their favorite shows on their DVR. But your billboard (or other display) ad—succinct and larger than life, and properly positioned where commuters or shoppers are likely to see it—speaks its message loud and clear.
- Online Directories do more than point the way:
Online directories are extremely cost effective, amounting to only a fraction of the cost of traditional yellow-page/phone book advertising. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a yellow page ad; it simply means that if you are only listed in the yellow pages, you may be missing some economical, success-yielding opportunities.
Just like their more traditional cousins, online directories can be sectioned off by region, allowing advertisers to target local communities. But unlike their cousins, which usually sit on a shelf collecting dust until needed, online directories travel.
Two thirds of Americans own computers; and in keeping with on-the-go lifestyles, many carry laptops at all times. Accordingly, when they want to access information while on the train or in the office or sitting in Starbucks, it’s not phone books they whip out; it’s laptops or palm pilots or pocket computers.
And as with email advertising, most directories include links to company websites and even maps. Think of how much it would cost to include that amount of information in a yellow-page ad?
And some directories even offer the benefits of small websites; visitors can actually see images of products and read product information, press releases, and pricing information right there.
- Technology offers its own rewards
Consumer technologies now have Americans striving to be connected at all times and entertained whenever possible – through cell phones, iPods, mobile computers (laptops, PDAs, palm pockets, etc.), high-speed Internet, video & digital cameras. These new technologies have brought about new means of advertising. Short audio or video programs known as podcasts can be downloaded from the Internet and watched or listened to from a laptop or an iPod. These podcasts are developed to satisfy a very specific niche market and provide consumers with highly customized experiences.
If you limit yourself to traditional advertising venues, you are missing opportunities to meet computer/media-savvy consumers on their own turf.
