Finding Your Niche

Is your audience a mass market or a special niche audience? If it's a special niche audience, how is it defined: by age, by gender, by geographical demographics? Are your customers primarily men or women, urban or rural?

These are all extremely important questions. Do your homework. Take a look at your competitors and see how they market and who they market to. I'm not recommending that you do expensive demographic testing or studies, just use some common sense and get rid of any preconceived ideas you have. Try to step outside and look at your business as a disinterested onlooker would.

Although I believe that it is important to listen to your gut feeling, you have to walk a fine line here, be realistic, be cautions, get feedback from others, weigh all of the possibilities, and then make your decisions.

For example, let's say you've developed a new line of baby wear. Okay, who is your target market? Parents, and primarily mothers. Right off the bat, I'd say you could write off auto racing and golf-oriented publications as your primary media targets.

Where do you reach mothers? The most obvious would be parent and child-oriented publications (of which there are many), talk shows, local magazines, newspapers, TV and radio programs, and women's magazines. But study the various women's magazines; are all of them targeted towards parents of infants and toddlers? No. You want magazines that new mothers read. Seventeen or Teen should probably not be on the top of your list.

Okay, you have defined your message, and your market, and narrowed your target. You have done all of your preliminary work, work that most people tend to ignore. You have defined what you do, what your message is, and who your target market is. Now you are ready to launch an effective public relations campaign You're ready to learn to communicate your message not only to the person next door, but to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people across your city, throughout the country, and around the world.

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2006

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