When asked about their target group, many business owners say they sell to everybody. And it’s understandable. Who doesn’t want as many people as possible buying their products or services. I can totally relate. Sometimes you just want to stand there on the town square and shout to the world about what you are doing. Here’s the problem though. It’s never going to work. Why?
Peeing in your shoe
I am very happy to welcome a guest blogger to the Marketing Untangled blog. I have been meaning to do this for a while, but the fact is that active people that have something to say are also busy people so it has taken a little while to get going. Hopefully this is just the first of many fun, interesting and useful guest blogs.
Today our blogger is Halla Kolbeinsdottir, account manager at Icelandic web design agency Hugsmiðjan. I had the pleasure of getting to know Halla in the autumn of 2012 when I worked with the agency on their marketing strategy. Since then they have been rocking their marketing (literally – there are a lot of musicians working there :) and recently their blog was nominated for the Icelandic Web Industry Association’s award as the best online medium – amongst large national mediums. (I take a tiny tiny bit of credit for getting them going with that blog, so I am particularly happy for them ;)
Enough from me, et volià – guest blog from Halla: [Read more…]
Should you still be marketing on Facebook?
Are you marketing on Facebook?
If you are, you have probably noticed that your Facebook posts are not reaching as many people as they used to – or what? Many people have been noticing this for a while now, and it isn’t just that people have been using Facebook less over the holidays or something like that and therefore not seeing what you are posting.
Facebook have simply come out and said that businesses can no longer rely on getting free exposure through their Facebook pages, and they recommend that businesses buy advertising. This shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone. A: They are a business and their revenues come from advertising. B: There is a gargantuan amount of posts swirling around on Facebook everyday and they must somehow filter what people see so that people are seeing what they are interested in. If people started seeing everything, they would quickly leave (and that would in turn render Facebook useless as a marketing tool). People don’t see everything that those they are connected to on Facebook post – they filter it and choose the best stuff for you.
You can see a few more articles about these Facebook changes and their effects below, if you want to delve deeper. [Read more…]
Don’t be afraid to narrow it down…
This is classic marketing and I have talked about this before. Find your target group, the one that is most likely to buy from you, and market to that group. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. Find your dream customer and find more of those.
However, I never said it was easy. And it can be scary. You are always aware that you could be losing out on someone who may, perhaps, in theory, possibly buy. We all do it. I do it myself. I constantly have to remind myself that I have to choose and narrow it down further – not try to be everything to everybody.
Until now I have defined my target group as small and medium business that do not have a marketing specialist on board but need to, and want to, improve their marketing. Great. But boy, that is still wide open! So I am constantly thinking about this, considering things, talking to people and finetuning.
I have considered narrowing down to SMBs in certain industries, e.g. hotel marketing from A to Z, marketing for accountants from A to Z or marketing for designers from A to Z. [Read more…]