A niche market is a narrowly defined group of potential customers. An often used technique for online marketers is Internet-based niche marketing. By appealing to smaller segments of larger markets, referred to as niches, a website can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted and usually loyal customer base. The Internet has made the online landscape incredibly “efficient” by allowing businesses of all sizes to position their goods with customers that are seeking their products or services. An online niche based marketing strategy can disaffiliate the clutter and place your brand right in front of your core audience.
Before you can go out and market to your audience you need to evaluate your position. Are you a ‘digital native’ or an “immigrant”? What about your audience? Are they web savvy and hip to today’s online culture and technology? Do you have the right communication resources to reach your core demographic? If you do successfully reach them what will your message be? And will your audience understand it?
The adidas Originals MEGA Diner officially opened and was ready for business on July 30, 2010. A commercial was posted to the adidas Originals YouTube page and a virtual MEGA diner was created on the adidas Originals website. adidas Originals announced: “Get in line with Paul Iacono for your own tasty MEGA Special, served up fresh by B.o.B. behind the grill. Enter the MEGA Diner online and our smokin’ hot waitress will take your order, leaving it to B.o.B. to deliver a custom MEGA Special personalized for you and your friends. It’s the biggest, baddest, freshest thing we got. Get it while it’s hot!”
To most people, this would most likely be seen as just another advertisement. To me it was a MEGA opportunity! And one that I had to jump on quickly while the campaign still had full momentum. But why would adidas Originals and B.o.B ever want to associate with a small sneaker site - AllWhiteKicks.com? I remember thinking that they must find me somewhat influential since AllWhiteKicks.com was already a member of adidas Originals’ exclusive list of people they follow on Twitter. You can read my entire story about how that relationship transpired in my previous post How Twitter Helped Me Become An Influencer In The Sneaker Industry.
Jumping On An Opportunity
On Thursday, August 12 my wife (@katcadwell) told me she bought tickets to the B.o.B concert playing at the House of Blues in Boston on the 15th. At the time, I was actually mad at myself because I did not realize B.o.B was going to be in town. I thought it was a golden opportunity that I had missed out on – if only I had known about this concert a week or two earlier I could have made something special happen through my connections with adidas Originals. After spending a few miserable hours moping, an idea finally came to me. It was a long shot but I had to try something. I was going to report live from the concert through my mobile phone and post the content on AllWhiteKicks.com. In addition, I would use Twitter for my messaging and flickr for my photos and videos.
I quickly relayed my idea to my contacts at adidas Originals. At first, my request was to see if I could get an interview with B.o.B himself. To my surprise, this far out request was not shut down. In fact, they responded quickly to my request and tried immediately to secure an interview for me. I knew from my time running events at Going.com that a two day window (one being a business day and the other on a weekend) would probably not be enough time for adidas Originals to secure an interview with their talent. As I waited patiently I knew I needed to find an alternative route to take advantage of this opportunity and bring my concept to life. My original idea was that the content from my interview would drive traffic. But it soon became clear that the content I created from the concert that would need to drive it. But how in the world would I get the word out about my coverage?
So once again I sent what I thought would be a far reaching request out to adidas Originals. I wanted them to promote the AllWhiteKicks.com coverage of the B.o.B event to their Twitter followers (30,000 +) and their Facebook group, which is nearly 3.9 million strong! Don’t forget, if people ‘like’ the event (1,000 + people did) on the adidas Originals page, my reach would be further extended through their network. On the day of the event I sent this request to adidas Originals asking if they would promote our coverage on their Twitter and Facebook communities. And sure enough, they said……YES!
As one of the first employees at Going.com (originally HeyLetsGo.com), an events based social networking site, I had the unique opportunity to build a community from the bottom up. I still remember my first day at Going.com – I was confused, lost and unsure of my new found profession. I had just finished graduate school and was previously working for the New England Patriots in their corporate sales department. I was well versed in the online space being that I had just spent two years in Emerson’s integrated marketing communication program. I had also picked up some awesome sales experiences during my time with the Patriots. Nonetheless, I still felt unprepared to tackle the initial challenges I was faced with at Going.com.
When I arrived at Going.com the site was solely Boston-based and the community had about fifteen thousand members. Later down the road, I would help launch their first major market – New York. However, my initial task was to focus on developing the Boston market. It seemed like a gigantic task granted the fact I had not the slightest clue on how to acquire members to a new networking site. My first instinct was to invite all of my friends that were currently on Facebook. But then I thought to myself, “well I could invite all of my friends, but it’s definitely not going to be a sustainable model.” In addition, I was unsure if my friends would even find the site valuable. At the advise of our CEO I decided to speak with the founders of Going.com to learn about their past successes. They had recently ran HeyLetsGo Fenway Fest, a popular event that drew just about 5,000 users to the website.
After meeting with each founder for about two hours I had more information than I knew what to do with. They told me how the site started and how they initially got their friends to sign up. More importantly they told me how they got their friends of friends to sign up. My mission was starting to become clear. I now had a game plan to work from and understood how the offline to online acquisition strategy worked. I would have to create dozens of events and have people RSVP on Going.com. The HeyLetsGo Fenway Fest was only one single event. How was I going to duplicate this model over and over again? Creating and managing dozens of events at once would be almost impossible. Don’t forget I would also be on the hook to promote them. We had to create a strategy that would allow us to scale not only in Boston but in our upcoming markets.
The world has been Googled according to Ken Auletta author of Google: The End of The World as We Know It. Auletta writes, “We don’t search for information, we “Google” it. Type a question in the Google search box, as do more than 70 percent of all searchers worldwide, and in about half a second answers appear.”[1] Google has garnered universal appeal overcoming differences in culture, language, and geography by empowering individuals and transforming access to information. Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? puts it best; “Once upon a time, all the roads led to Rome. Today, all roads lead from Google.” [2]
The Assignment
For those of you who don’t know, I am a graduate student at Northeastern University’s business school. I decided to take Creating Innovative Organizations for one of my summer session two classes. Throughout the semester we have researched and discussed dozens of companies and how they have innovated. During our first class our professor went around the room and assigned each of us a company to research – I was assigned Google. We were told to write a five-page paper on how, when and why our company innovated. In addition, we would have to present our findings to the class at the end of the semester. At first, I thought that this was going to be an easy assignment. Finding information on Google has to be easy, right? Well, as it turns out – I was right. In fact, there was too much information! It became clear real fast that this was going to be a tough project. How was I going to pick and choose what to talk about in such a short paper?
To overcome this dilemma I decided I would need to learn as much as I could about Google. Thus, I did what any other graduate student is likely to do when they are seeking information – I went to the library. Unfortunately, all the good books in the library were taken and the ones left on the shelves were simply too old to use. In an effort to save time (being a part-time student saving time is a big deal), I decided to purchase the books at Barnes & Noble. I also decided to buy The Innovator’s Dilemma by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen. Many of my professors, including the one teaching my current course, references Christensen often. I figured that at some point I might be able to relate Christensen’s theories to my work.
This video shows the mood in the U.S., as inferred using over 300 million tweets, over the course of the day. The maps are represented using density-preserving cartograms.
Charlie Chaplin’s London childhood was marked by what were to become the themes of his silent comedies: poverty, cruelty, and loneliness. When his father died of alcoholism and his mother became insane, he and his brother were forced into a workhouse, which Chaplin escaped by entering the theater. Later while on tour in the United States with a music hall revue, he was hired by Mack Sennett, a film producer for Keystone Studio, known for broad comic spectacles of anarchic violence. It was a style at odds with that which Chaplin had perfected in his vaudeville routines, so, when he began to direct himself in his own films, he made changes in Keystone’s frenetic world of farce, developing recurring characters to create comedies filled with emotion and slapstick pathos. Chaplin’s best known character was the little tramp, whose fussy mustache, walking stick, worn bowler hat, and baggy pants with oversized tails suggested both personal dignity and poverty.
Marketing has traditionally focused on the four “Ps”: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Social media has morphed into the fifth, and possibly most important “P”: People. A people strategy is at the center of today’s dynamic and fluid social marketing mix. John Janitsch of Duct Tape Marketing has another take on the four Ps, and has turned them into four Cs for the social age: Content, Context, Connection and Community.
A people strategy is much broader, deeper and more profound than consumer targeting. It involves listening to and engaging with everyone who can touch or influence current and potential customers at all stages of brand interaction. Jeff Pulver is a savvy guy who has had his finger on the pulse of this dynamic for some time. “The social media revolution is less about “we the people” and more about “me the people,” Pulver said.
Social media has changed the way people interact amongst themselves and with their media. People play multiple — sometimes simultaneous — roles as receivers, creators, critics, advocates, transformers and transmitters of messages. Brian Solis’ conversation prism helps to put this mash-up into perspective.
Like the ocean’s tide, fashions ebb and flow. Whether it’s an indie band, a type of beer, a style of facial hair, a cut of jean, or t-shirt with obscure references, all trends come and go. (And then come and go again with each new generation, so keep those keffiyehs somewhere safe for your future children.) The infographic above deconstructs the natural cycle of hipster fashion, using the example of a hat. Does this line up with what you’ve seen?
This video has over 2 million plays so you might have seen it once or twice before. As I watched it for a second time today certain points really struck me as interesting. The video points out that Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama. Talk about having the whole world in the palm of your hand. Why is this so impressive? They are communicating through a platform (i.e. Twitter) that has absolutely zero cost to maintain – not to mention worldwide reach. Take a look at the video below and then check out the rest of the post.
Why am I making such a big deal about the obvious? It’s because I wonder what will happen to all those everyday social media users in the upcoming years. You know the people I am talking about – the ones scratching and clawing everyday for another Twitter follower or friend on Facebook. From the research I’ve done I think it’s safe to say that a vast majority of people with an obscene amount of followers/friends did something offline first to build up their notoriety online. Take a look at recent YouTube sensation Greyson Chance. He performed “Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga at his sixth grade festival and later posted the video of his performance on YouTube. The point here is that he performed offline before gaining popularity online.
Building a successful brand, whether for a company or for a new product, requires strategic planning and a major investment of both time and capital. Three steps lead to successful brand strategies: (1) selecting the desired brand position, (2) developing the brand’s identification, and (3) creating the brand image. Once a company has more than one brand, it then needs a system for managing how the brands interrelate.
1. Selecting The Desired Brand Position
Brand position is the standing of a brand in comparison with its competitors in the minds of customers, prospects, and other stakeholders. The positioning concept was developed twenty plus years ago by Al Ries and Jack Trout authors of Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. According to Ries and Trout, customers whoa re aware of several branding in a product category automatically compare and rank those brands according to the difference they perceive among them. For example, when people think of cars, they might think of Volvo as the safest, Corvette as the sportiest, and Ford as the most practical. Brand positions, like brands themselves, exist in people’s heads and hearts, a company’s marketing communication can greatly influence how customers perceive a brand in relation to competition. Tom DuncaN author of Advertising & IMC explains, “The challenge is to select a position that can be realistically supported by the product, the company, and the marketing communication – and that can be appreciated be customers and prospects.
Let’s review the athletic shoe category. Rockport has positioned itself as “the leader of the walking fitness movement.” It’s marketing communication visually and verbally says “comfort” and speaks to the older wearer of athletic shoes. In contrast Nike has positioned itself as the “performance and personal success” shoe.
Because brand position hinges on a brand’s meaning, changing a brand’s meaning can allow a company to move or enlarge its position.A positioning strategy is generally based on one of several variables as listed below.
Category positioning – This type of positioning is possible anytime a brand defines creates or owns a category or sub product category.
Image positioning – This type of positioning differentiates on the basis of a created association. It is similar to pre-emtive positioning in that any brand can attempt to create a differentiating image for itself.
Unique Product Feature Positioning – This type of positioning is based on an element that is unique to the product or company.
Benefit positioning – This type of positioning is based on benefits, advantages that allow a product to satisfy customers’ needs, wants, or desired.
It’s a marketers duty to understand how customers perceive a brand and its competitors before they can define their own positioning. Perceptual mapping is a visualization technique that is often used to indicate how customers perceive competing brands in terms of carious criteria.
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