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In any type of business, at least about 60% adopt niche marketing approaches. How then can we leverage upon the true power of niche marketing?

The trick is to find your niche within your 4Ps marketing mix, propagate your niche offerings and ensure sustainability. Niche marketing is a subset of marketing, meaning that you adopt similar principles of marketing and "find the niche" using the 4ps marketing mix, components of which are Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place.

Let us assume that you are in a brick and mortar business, carry a me-too product, me-too pricing, and has limited promotion budget. Are you still able to niche your business? Sure, when You Dominate Your Market Space, of course!

You can create your niche in "Place", or namely the "Location". Choose your Location or your Market Space carefully and dominate your Niche Market.

There are 5 Key Niche Business Approaches to Dominate your Market Space:

Go To Your Niche Markets &/or Create Your Very Own Niche Market

• Define Your potential location
• Do the necessary market research
• Confirm unmet need gaps of your niche target market that your business is capable of fulfilling
• Confirm the sustainability of demand for your niche business
• Locate your business within that defined targeted segment of your community
• Example - Setting up an cyber-gaming arcade near a cluster of high schools within a unexploited suburb

Ride on Others with Your Business Niche

• This pertains to complementary product offerings that your business provides to your defined niche target segments.
• Locate your business in a Market Space where you complement other related products, henceforth fulfilling the supply chain sufficiency.
• Remember, Complement. Do not Compete!
• Example - Setting up a café next to the cyber-gaming/arcade in the above example, with the assumption that no complementary cafés are within the vicinity

Continued Dominance of Your Niche Market

Of course, continued dominance of your niche market is more than the above. You must ensure the following:

Your business must have Sustainable Competitive Advantage

• Ensure that your Unique Selling Points are long term and true propositions to your niche target segment fulfilling real needs

Your Business must have Strong Dominating Branding

• Differentiate your Business with "Addictively" Memorable Mind-Share Elements namely Unique product offerings, Services or cost leadership strategies which provides a strong sustaining "hook" on the niche target

Your business must "Annihilate" All Potential New Entrant Threats

• Provide vertically integrated and comprehensive product offerings such that there is limited or no opportunity for competition or complimentary business lines to co-exist

The Kissing Fish Therapy - Another innovative alternative wellness business idea brought to you by BusinessFast4ward for budding entrepreneurs and marketers out there..

Imagine yourself floating in a wonderfully warm spa of 35 degrees at a hot spring resort. Then imagine yourself being nibbled & gnawed by hundreds of tiny garra rufa aka kissing fish . And imagine emerging from the spa totally refreshed with glowing skin … The magic?

The Kissing Fish of course! There are endearing terms for these kissing fish the Cyprinion macrostomus (Strikers) and Garra rufa (Lickers). And the amazing healing process begins when these strikers and lickers starts feeding on the flaking skin which are actually a buildup of dead skin cells which appears on any skin surface, though the knees, elbows, scalp, and trunk are the most common locations. The feeling is something like hundreds of tweezers and tiny suction cups pecking away at your skin. Couple this with the conducive warm circulation of the hot spring spa, and you get rejuvenated glowing skin!

It is said that repeated course of treatment over a 21 day period for more serious cases of skin disorders such as Psoriasis and Dermatitis.

Kissing Fish Therapy converts, be them patients or wellness seekers have heeled the globe searching for the perfect kissing fish therapy with hot spring spas in Japan, South Korea, China and Europe being the most popular. In the Far East, Singapore, Qian Hu Fish Farm & Underwater World in Sentosa and The Kampong Fish Therapy are the new kids on the block.

So, Take a break, go spa with the fishes!

* Note : Patients with open wounds and weak immune systems are not encouraged to pursue this alternative approach in view of possible bacterial infections

marketing

Demographics denote the hard statistics like age, income, geographical details etc. Psychographics essentially denotes a person’s interest, attitudes and opinions. Technographics is a new term, an approach of consumer analysis categorizing the behavioral usage and ownership of information, communication & entertainment technologies. This segmentation approach is more of a focused category of the psychographics which is becoming increasingly important to marketers.

You need to gather or purchase direct mailing lists with the capability to drill down to not only the demographics but also psychographics which are namely life style and life stage behavioral needs. Better still, if the lists include data information on technographics.

Mapping your demographic Direct Marketing listing with psychographic as well as techno-graphic characteristics give much greater accuracy and hence effectiveness.

In fact, marketers will have very distorted perspectives of their Direct Marketing subjects otherwise.

Let us explore this with an illustration:

What would you have sold to your prospect simply with the information that your subject is limited to - Age 50, income group US$200,000 per annum?

And what would you have sold him if you had also known that this person is enjoying an early retirement with a $200,000 per annum investment income, lives in downtown Manhattan, is a digital products fanatic, frequents 5-star Italian restaurants, travels 4 times a year, is a philanthropist, plays golf weekly, and does Pilates twice a week with his 2nd wife (who is 20 years younger)

Indeed, Food for thought for serious direct marketers…

"Thank you for your feedback. We truly appreciate your valuable opinion and will revert to you within one working day… "

Whenever someone takes the trouble to write an email to lodge a complaint to you, you should be glad for the opportunity. You should always revert to complaints promptly within 24 hours. This is the standard response time frame for call complaints as well as email complaints.

Set Your Complaint Management Process as follows:

• Set your response time to within 24 hours for email enquiries. Never keep the person waiting.
• Empower you staff with comprehensive Complaint FAQs to attend to call or email complaints or queries.
• Over-deliver with an earlier revert within half a day
• Delight them with a solution to the complaint together with a complimentary product or service voucher.

If You Are Unable to Provide a Solution Within One Working Day:

• Still, take the initiative to revert to customer within 1 day with an interim message such as "We are in the midst of reviewing your feedback, the outcome of which might require more time. We appeal to your understanding and will revert to you immediately after we have come to a conclusion."…
• Make sure you keep the customer updated throughout the process . Your customer-centric efforts will pay off.

At Closure:

• At your final revert to complete the process, send the complainant a thank you card for feedback (regardless of whether you are in the wrong) together with a complimentary gift or free voucher . This will keep them coming back to you.

Below you will see the original email from an XXX head hunting firm from which I received a couple of days ago, suggesting that I link up with them at Facebook or Friendster.

Companies of all sizes and across all industries are leveraging upon the ripple effects of social networking platforms . They are latching onto the bandwagon of Social Networking, and even P&G leveraged their product promotions in Facebook.

Many companies are re-creating products with feedback collated from online social communities at the same time generating awareness, build brands with the eventual objective to generate revenue over time.

Therein lies great business opportunities for avid online social networkers, so leverage this tool wisely.

So start marketing and branding yourself (albeit tactfully) in social networking communities and turn Leisure into Business Opportunities!

Now Who Says You Can’t Mix Business With Leisure??

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The email :

Career Opportunities from XXX-Search : We are on FaceBook and Friendster

Hi,

Hope this email finds you well. I am Jane Doe from XXX-Search.

We have created Facebook and Friendster account for XXX Search. If you already have a Facebook, Friendster account then do add us at JaneDoe@xxx-search.com . If you are not already on, do open an account.

We are trying out to use FaceBook and Friendster to provide alerts on new positions from time to time. It would also be an excellent way to keep in touch till a really good position for you comes up.

See you online!

In the meantime, do check out our Career Gallery for possible positions. www.xxx-search.com/_careers.html

If by any chance that to some, this idea has caused a certain degree of discomfort, I sincerely offer my greatest apologies.

But the above mentioned literally in the heading of this post, is a relatively new concept for the eastern and zen communities of the world which I felt compelled to share with my readers.

This concept could have been a morphing process adapting the western concept of virtual churches.

The Virtual temples have sermons, blogs and forums with even prayers’ rooms to boot. Some include an e-commerce marketplace to sell related spiritual items.

Advantages of Virtual spiritual worshipping sites literally helps to save travel time and storage space, are very convenient. The biggest disadvantage is of course, reduced physical interaction with members of the specific institutions.

The lesson to take home here is, if your business has anything to do with transiting or expanding from brick and mortar to a virtual world concept, the concept of virtual temples may be an inspiration to you.

As I build upon this concept, I draw parallels to the potential (or already existing) in Virtual Pet Cemeteries complete with Virtual Niches…. Well, morbid but it is food for thought…

How often are you tempted to adopt a broad niche market segment, hoping that more visitors will find your website or blog either through search or from referrals and links. The facts run contrary to the expectations. So hold your horses if you are hoping that it is easy to generate to your site focused traffic driven by very niche target segments as there are some real facts you need to understand.

Always remember, for some things, it’s better Less than More !

To understand why online niche marketing has sprung up as a euphorically huge topic of discussion within the internet fraternity is equivalent to understanding as simple as how people search the Internet for information.

Let us use a comparison to illustrate. Take for instance, you own a brick and mortar shop called The Brick, a physical entity tangible and locatable. Now visualise how people search for directions and arrive at your The Brick. People within a certain locale take out a street directory, or a tangible map of your county to physically search out The Brick. And once there, you shop the aisle like no tomorrow with all the time and money to spend.

Now, take for instance you own a website called OnlineNicheMarketing.com … a new site which I do own and only recently started building.

Again, visualize how people search and arrive at your site. In actual fact, people Do Not Search for your site!

To start, if they are searching for materials on niche marketing on the internet, they could be trying the following key phrases in quotes "internet niche marketing", "niche marketing online", "online niche marketing", "niche web marketing" or simply "niche marketing". For each key phrase, they get a long list of search returns with some variations, and with some luck, your site is listed within.

Needless to say, with such a long list of search returns, your web timeshare is scaled down to mere 10s of seconds before they switch to the next site for good if your content is not specific enough or impressive enough to retain them!

There are several variables in this very different paradig m , the more important ones being - The probability of "your niche" chosen as key phrase and being searched, the number of similar topical websites competing with you, how well you niche your topics and articles at your site, how well you do your site ranking homework, etc…

Let’s hope the above experiment has convinced you that by way of how people search the internet, it is critical to select an appropriately narrow niche segment with sufficient demand and unfilled supply which you are confident in dominating .

But most importantly, as I have mentioned in my last article at onlinenichemarketing.com, choose a niche that you have passion in building and bonding with . This makes online niche marketing all the more exciting.

So do it with a passion!

Good Luck!

I read an email today and choked with surprise upon reading it. As a marketer, I felt compelled to share this with fellow marketers.

A popular job search directory hub has recently launched a "I Love My Job Photo Contest"…. The prize is a Nikon DSLR D80 camera and many other prizes".

This contest has all the usual membership drive tactics for membership recruitment purposes. And of course, you have to become a member of job search site to join the contest.

But up till here, do the above read normal to you or have you already spotted the rhetorical paradox?

What seems more like a "work life balance awareness drive", it is rather paradoxical, don’t you think that in the 1st place, if I really love my job, would I need the services of a job search directory hub … ?

And if the marketer is trying to imply that you are happy after finding a new job through the search hub and join the contest, it defeats the purpose of the recruitment drive!

This is a true life example of an unthinking marketer, who lacks in-depth understanding of his/her potential target market’s mindset and needs.

There are other more effective and rewarding marketing tactics that gives better levarge. For instance, organising Career Seminar Tie-Ups with participating MNCs or Large Locals Employers or Job-skill -Based Contests like planning and implementing a business plan etc.

I cannot stress more that as true marketers , one needs to delve deep into the needs of one’s target markets , know them thoroughly and activate appropriate marketing tactics to garner their trust.

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Visualize their reaction upon receiving your direct mailer or especially unsolicited email trying to sell them something. Some people do tend to react badly to direct mailers which contain even their very basic particulars, viewing this as an infringement of their privacy. Wile I do not react too badly to "junk mail", I feel bad that many trees are sacrificed for this purpose!

Due to the more rampant abuse of email marketing, an "ethics barometer" is much required by the fraternity.

You need to build your copy with a permission-based "option-in" feature which enables willing parties to join your promotion/ campaign. I have given it a name - "The Direct Marketing Essential Ethics Barometer ".

Serious internet marketers adopt this marketing approach very stringently lest the internet marketer is mistaken for a spammer. The process is such - you lead generate a potential customer by giving away free information or a free gift, but on the pretext (and genuinely so) that you need their permission and verification via their email. After obtaining their email, your very intelligent auto-responder will send a confirmation email to the prospect. The prospect logs into the email account and clicks the confirmation link. The link brings the prospect to a site to download the promised free info or gift.

With the opt-in email address, a touch point is successfully and legitimately created for you, the marketer, to continue connecting with the prospect until he or she buys something from you.

And of course, those who are not keen to participate can choose to ignore the mailer or your first marketing email.

This also serves as an effective tracking system for respond rate as your auto-responder should have comprehensive performance tracking analytics. You can then tweak your campaign accordingly for better response results.

What is the single most critical tool of closing a sale? You’d think it’s your selling skills, or your looks, your sales pitch, your script, or even remotely … your outfit … Think again.

It’s Your Heart. Sell it with a Conscience. Yes, Sell it with a Heart.

Yes, you probably heard this many times. But let me share with you that this is not cliché. I have learnt from a ripe young age as a financial planner, the ultimate tool to close a sale is to let your prospects feel your conscience, that you genuinely know their Needs, that you sincerely & full-heartedly wish to help them solve their problems. Convince them with your sincerity.

I have gratifyingly seen many instances in my sales management career whereby my staff sincerely feel for their clients and go the extra mile to do their best and exceed those needs. When you s erve a client unconditionally , you will be naturally rewarded with more future sales, because the trust is built subconsciously.

The end results is truly customer loyalty, because the clients feel in their heart that the sales representatives care, and even more so that when they need their sales rep again the next time round, they can reassured of my staff being there for them.

Sales & Servicing are One and if your chosen career is in Sales, always remind yourself that You are in it for Life … with a heart.