Business deep dive – Drill Down and Strike Gold!

There are three key take aways for me from the lessons of last week that I can immediately implement in my business. You’ll need to sign up for the Online Marketing MBA to understand the details, but for me, the further I drill down on who my target market really is, or more precisely, who my target markets really are, it opens up some marketing ideas that will help my business.

With my primary site, I have three different audiences: sales people who are looking for a job; employers who want to hire sales people; and an unexpected crowd – people who like my job search related content (e.g. resume advice, interview tips, etc.). Drilling down to come up with a 3-second pitch was not an easy task for me. That was a surprise. I run a niche job board for sales professionals. Easy, right? Well, what about all those customers who are not sales people who visit my site? Do I have products at the ready to sell to them?

What is a niche job board anyway? Is that industry-speak? When I think about it, I know that it is. I find myself telling people it’s just like Monster or CareerBuilder – but for sales people. Since I feel compelled to explain it, it must not be intuitively clear.

So, think about your customers. Who are they really? And, more importantly, what do they really want? H- segmentation, a concept out of this week’s material, is a powerful marketing tool that I plan to implement in my business to address the needs of my different customer groups. That’s on my growing “to do” list.

I’ve also been giving a lot of thought to the idea that all business merely improves upon what has come before it. Think about some of the famous motivational geniuses of our time and what they teach…don’t reinvent the wheel. Study people who have been successful and do what they do. Yes, you need to tweak ideas to make them your own. But, you don’t have to start from scratch.

When’s the last time you heard a truly unique idea? Or found a keyword phrase that no one else has uncovered? Or had an idea for a business that has no competition? Truth be told, a business without any competition probably means that there’s no market for it! It’s like implementing a PPC campaign for keywords that no one else is advertising. Smart? I think not!

Finding a way to add value, or capitalizing on a weakness in someone else’s product, provides a fruitful path for exploration of new money-making ideas. Dee Kumar runs through some rather compelling examples to prove his point. As a serial entrepreneur, I find this whole concept worthy of study. I am always looking for “new” ideas. And, while I think focus is important, Dee has provided a structure for looking at strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats around industries and products that interest me. He probably doesn’t know it, but for me, that alone is worth the price of admission!