Successful Marketing For All Starts Business

The basic concepts of effective marketing but is not the product or service. Forget or ignore this fact at your peril. So many marketers worry because they lack a spectacular new product or service to sell, when what they should be doing is focusing on their chosen marketplace first. A marketplace is just a group of people who buy certain types of products or services, and they're reachable through specific media -- specialty magazines, TV ads, email lists, or whatever.

The marketplace will tell you what it wants. For example, golfers want to shave points off their scores in the fastest, easiest way possible. Therefore, they buy all kinds of gadgets so they can show off to their buddies and be heroes out on the links. There are different schools of thought about which type of club can help you lower your score the most. Some people say, "You've got to drive farther," while others say, "Drive for show, putt for go." Whatever your specific school of thought, in the end, it's all about lowering your score and impressing your friends -- and finding a faster, easier, less painful way to get that result even quicker.

These are matters of the heart -- of emotions -- and those who serve the golfing market best are in tune with these matters. Like all the most successful marketers, they start with the marketplace first, paying close attention to the kinds of items that are most appealing. If you focus on those things in your market, then you can be a so-so copywriter and still get wealthy -- because you've homed in on those key areas that you know are red-hot.

If you can't find an unfilled niche that people actually want filled, then look for the most appealing items in the market first -- i.e., those that sell best. If you focus only on trying to sell those types of items, you won't waste your time beating your head against the wall, trying to sell things that only excite or interest you. You'll be alert to what excites your marketplace, and now you can create something even better than what's already out there. This will help you understand your specific niche market and pull you even deeper into that niche, because as I like to say, there's riches in niches.

Always start with the market. I'm repeating that already because it's so important -- and most marketers just don't get it. Look at the people who comprise that market, and note exactly what they're buying. Let the market tell you what direction you should go, and you'll rarely, if ever, spin your wheels trying to sell them something nobody wants to buy. You're going into a market you know is full of eager, rabid buyers. You're going to improve the wheel just enough to make it a little better than what your competitors are offering, and grab some of that market in the process.

It's all about understanding what people want, and then developing products and services that appeal to that specific marketplace. Start with their biggest desires; what does the marketplace want the most? Then develop products and services that give it to them. 

That's one of the reasons I like information marketing. If you sell widgets or anything else you have to manufacture, whether it's a bottle of water or a dining room table, there are certain limitations on how you can market it and how you can go about creating products. But when you're an information marketer, there are all kinds of ways to create information. It could be as audio CDs, DVDs, books, reports, digital media, or any number of other delivery mechanisms.