There’s a lot of marketing, especially in the online world, that is very incestuous.
What I mean is, even from lots of savvy entrepreneurs, there is a “herd mentality”. People look at what other marketers are doing and just follow in their footsteps. Everyone leverages the same common sources. Everyone tries to tap into the same pool.
Some of the biggest breakthroughs – for your lead flow, lead generation, and traffic flow – come when you begin to go outside of the norm.
About a year ago we had to do a very quick promotion, which is very uncommon for us. As you know, we typically go through the testing and roll-out process and then scale up over time. But we were striving to drive quite a significant amount of traffic, and do it primarily by leveraging media buying. That’s a lot more paid traffic than we usually do.
In order to drive the traffic volume and lead flow that we knew we needed for this promotion, it forced us to explore a variety of different resources than we normally would have used. We needed to “get out of the box” and explore other places that we could tap into.
You need to do this too. Let’s look at the example of marketing to chiropractors.
If you sell to chiropractors, you know, of course, the common places to advertise in order to get out in front of them: chiropractor journals; the chiropractic association websites; and the groups that chiropractors go to. Where chiropractors go to talk about business, they are talking about marketing.
In addition, you know to reach out to prospective partners who are also marketing to chiropractors. That’s all “the norm”. It’s kind of like “Marketing 101” to go to these sources. Even non-marketers could come up with these sources if they thought about it for a few minutes.
Not just “the” audience
So then you have to ask, Where else do chiropractors potentially go where we could advertise?
Is there a website about insurance regulations for alternative healthcare experts? What about where they go to stay up to date on insurance regulations, medical and legal news, breakthroughs, and other topics?
Now you are not just asking “Where are chiropractors the audience?”, but “Where are chiropractors part of the audience?”
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The more similar the market or audience is – the more narrow and targeted the audience is –the more money you’re going to pay in terms of media.
If you want to do an email solo ad to a list of random people in your geographic area, it’s going to cost far less than if you wanted to rent an email list, or do an email drop to a very specific, targeted audience.
A very narrow audience costs more
Years ago, when we were exploring all of our traffic-generation marketing opportunities with different chiropractic journals and associations, you could buy email solo drops.
They also offered opportunities for you to hold a webinar, and because the audience was so targeted, so narrow and specific, they were able to charge premium fees. At the time, they would guarantee a minimum of 500 doctors to register for your webinar, which would cost you at least $3,000.
If you go to a website that is some type of hub for insurance regulations for alternative health practitioners, mark my words, what you pay is going to be far, far less than for such a targeted audience.
And yes, there will be some “waste” – non-relevant audience members – but because it is a lot less targeted, it’s a lot less expensive and therefore, a lot easier to make it work for you.
It’s a matter of really going outside the normal channels, and not just thinking, “All right, I’m selling roller skates so let’s advertise to people who are interesting in roller skating, or roller blading, something else related to skating.”
Where is your Mother Earth?
Do you remember “gold by the inch”? It was a business opportunity for folks looking for a low-cost, low-barrier-of-entry way to get into business for themselves.
Dan Kennedy explained that one of the biggest breakthroughs in lead acquisition came when they started advertising in a magazine called Mother Earth. It had nothing to do with money making, home businesses, or anything like that.
But they discovered that the people who bought into the “gold by the inch” business opportunity had the same demographics as those of the readers of Mother Earth. They ended up hitting a home run with those ads.
It’s all about advertising to your audience; it’s not about only marketing and advertising in channels and locations where your audience congregates to learn about the topics that you are selling. More generally, you need to answer the question: Where does my audience congregate?
It’s the same concept as when a local business puts up a banner at the local high school football field as a way to try to advertise. Not everyone there is interested in what the local business is selling, but they are going where their audience also goes.
The secret to this marketing strategy is to expand your universe mentally, and look for uncommon sources of where you can go to market to your audience.
It’s your turn! Tell us in the comments below what your industry is, and some “uncommon” marketing and advertising places that you have either found to be successful, or that you plan to try this week!
