Narrow Your Focus to Broaden Your Sales

In the com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place of the new mil­len­nium, the demand for spe­cial­ized prod­ucts or ser­vices will increase. If your site sells every­thing or to every­one, chances are that your audi­ence will not per­ceive any greater value in shop­ping from you than any­one else.

The more generic you are, the greater your com­pe­ti­tion will be since you’ve placed your offer­ing in the same ring as the Wal-​​Marts, Tar­gets, and eBays of the world.

To bor­row the fish­ing anal­ogy, some peo­ple say that going after a larger mar­ket is cast­ing a wider net. Not so. (The net is really your website.)

Rather, it’s like fish­ing in a larger body of water where there are more fish, the fish are more spread out, and there are more com­peti­tors going after the same fish you are.

Unless you are try­ing to be another Wal-​​Mart, there’s no point in com­pet­ing with them. The sheer size of such big box Goliaths gives them a size­able com­pet­i­tive advan­tage — par­tic­u­larly pur­chas­ing power, both in terms of prod­ucts sold and adver­tis­ing dollars.

In addi­tion to being able to buy more ad space than small busi­nesses can, they can buy their stock at con­sid­er­able bulk dis­counts, osten­si­bly giv­ing them the lower price-​​point advan­tage against which most small busi­nesses can­not compete.

So how do you increase your sales in such a com­pet­i­tive, price-​​sensitive marketplace?

Before I give you some help­ful ideas, let’s talk about price for a moment. Price is never an issue. What’s impor­tant is the value behind the price. Price only becomes an issue when your value propo­si­tion is the same as those of your competitors.

When you’re try­ing to com­pete with the big guns and there’s noth­ing dif­fer­ent about you, the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor will be the price. And if there’s noth­ing else to com­pete with or com­pare to, nat­u­rally the cheap­est alter­na­tive wins.

Here’s an exam­ple: you walk to your local home fur­nish­ings store. You ask the sales clerk, “How much for that washer?” to which he responds, “$600.” “Wow! That’s a lot of money,” you exclaim. “The price is way too high for me. I just can­not afford that.”

This is a typ­i­cal knee-​​jerk response.

Moments later, you walk by a car deal­er­ship and notice that favorite new car you’ve been itch­ing to buy for the last month and a half. You walk in. “It’s $25,000,” says the sales­per­son. “Wow! That’s great!” And you drive it off the lot that same day.

Now tell me, if you said you could not afford the $600 washer, then why could you afford the $25,000 car? Being able to afford some­thing is not based on how much money you have but on how much money you’re will­ing to spend. Big difference.

And how much money you’re will­ing to spend is based on how much you want what is being sold, which in turn is based on how valu­able the object of your desire is to you.

So, price is never an issue. Value always is.

Price is an arbi­trary fig­ure that merely rep­re­sents the value of an offer­ing. Afford­abil­ity is often the result of both price and value match­ing up in the minds of the market.

In the case of the car, the per­ceived value matched or sur­passed the price, which wasn’t the case with the washer — i.e., the washer was too pricey based on its per­ceived value.

And per­ceived value is such a per­sonal, sub­jec­tive, and immea­sur­able thing.

Take the weather, for exam­ple. When you meet some­one for the first time, the weather will likely be a topic of dis­cus­sion. After all, the tem­per­a­ture is the same for every­one — 70 degrees is 70 degrees. But whether it’s “hot” or “cold” is dif­fer­ent for each person.

Sim­i­larly, price is a com­mon cur­rency to which most peo­ple can relate. That’s why it’s often the first thing peo­ple look for or want to talk about when con­sid­er­ing a purchase.

The prob­lem arises when price becomes the chief met­ric — and some­times the only one — used because there’s noth­ing to which one can com­pare your value. If there’s noth­ing dif­fer­ent about you, then price becomes a pur­chase cri­te­rion by default.

Of course, price is not the only met­ric, but it is the most com­mon one. It’s the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor. Units of dol­lars make more sense than “units of value.”

But I digress. Here’s the point I wanted to make…

The more unique you are, the less com­pe­ti­tion you will have. The less com­pe­ti­tion you have, the less sub­sti­tutable you are. And the less sub­sti­tutable you are, the less impor­tant price becomes. (In busi­ness schools, they call this price elasticity.)

Being unique or dif­fer­ent doesn’t mean to be bet­ter than your com­pe­ti­tion. And claim­ing that you’re bet­ter than your com­pe­ti­tion doesn’t make you any dif­fer­ent, either.

Why? Because, if you try to copy your com­pe­ti­tion, or try­ing to pro­mote your offer­ing as one that’s bet­ter than your com­pe­ti­tion, like it or not you’re only remind­ing peo­ple of that which you are bet­ter than… your com­pe­ti­tion!

It’s bet­ter to be dif­fer­ent than it is dif­fer­ent to be better.

So don’t com­pete on price — unless price is your com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. Com­pete on value. And one way you can do that is to nar­row your focus (i.e., your mes­sage, web­site, copy, prod­uct, offer, or audi­ence) on a smaller niche.

A lot of peo­ple tend to appeal to large mar­kets with mul­ti­ple or generic offer­ings in an attempt to secure more sales. Sure, doing so will likely help you to stum­ble onto a few who will visit your site and respond. That’s the age-​​old law of averages.

For instance, sales man­agers moti­vate their staff using the law of aver­ages. They say that the more “no’s” you get, the closer to your “yes” you will be. So the trick to mak­ing more sales is to keep find­ing more peo­ple to sell to. Makes log­i­cal sense, right?

But the law of aver­ages is wrong. (Not the law itself but its application.)

Sure, if you ask more peo­ple (other than improv­ing your con­ver­sion rate), you increase the like­li­hood of mak­ing more sales. But if you qual­ify your audi­ence more and tar­get bet­ter prospects for your offer­ing, chances are you will get more “yes’es” than “no’s.”

It’s the same as your web­site. If you increase your hits, you will increase your sales. But that’s not the prob­lem. The prob­lem with such an approach is the fact that you must gen­er­ate a large quan­tity of hits in order to pro­duce a cer­tain result.

It is absolutely true that, if you want a lot of hits, you want your site to be in front of as many eye­balls as pos­si­ble. But what about qual­ity? Would it mat­ter if your site gen­er­ates an incred­i­ble quan­tity of unin­ter­ested vis­i­tors that will sim­ply never buy from you?

To find more effec­tive and cost-​​efficient ways of sell­ing online, then attract­ing a higher qual­ity stream of web­site vis­i­tors — inter­ested, pre-​​qualified, gen­uinely inter­ested vis­i­tors who are ready to buy — is def­i­nitely a bet­ter alternative.

Sure, where you adver­tise is part of it. But I’m also talk­ing about tar­get­ing your mar­ket with your mes­sage — and how con­gru­ent your mes­sage is with them in the first place.

The more focused you are on your mar­ket, the more con­gru­ent you will be. And the more con­gru­ent you are with your mar­ket, the greater the value you will communicate.

Con­versely, the more gen­eral or broad you are, the more you will need to paint your web­site with broad brush­strokes in order to appeal to every­one. In the end, the traf­fic you do gen­er­ate will be just as gen­eral or broad.

Even if your prod­uct is a per­fect fit for most vis­i­tors, if you attempt to tar­get every­one only a small per­cent­age of your mar­ket will see that fit and take action.

Addi­tion­ally, even if your prod­uct has mass-​​market appeal, the broad nature of your offer and the generic image you project will likely con­vey your value is equal to that of oth­ers, and there’s no added value in buy­ing from you than in buy­ing from others.

Out of the small hand­ful of qual­i­fied prospects that hope­fully hit your site, a large num­ber of them — if not all of them — will likely leave due to your appar­ent lack of under­stand­ing of their spe­cific needs, goals, and concerns.

In short, dilute your value and you will dilute your sales.

As a side­note, let me clear up another big misconception.

Some mar­keters tout that niche mar­ket­ing is all about tar­get­ing smaller, denser mar­kets. Not nec­es­sar­ily. Sure, it is the most com­mon form — it’s the eas­i­est and most effec­tive one, too, for begin­ning mar­keters. But niche mar­ket­ing is not lim­ited to niche markets.

The word “niche mar­ket­ing” means a hole in the mar­ket­place that needs to be filled. That hole still can be filled by a prod­uct with mass-​​market appeal, but one offered, sold, and deliv­ered in a unique way or with a unique twist.

In other words, you don’t have to just go after nar­row mar­kets to be a niche mar­keter. You can nar­row your mes­sage, your theme, your product’s fea­tures, your offer­ings, the results you promise, or a com­bi­na­tion of any of these.

By nar­row­ing your focus con­sid­er­ably lessens the need to pro­duce a suf­fi­cient quan­tity of vis­i­tors to pro­duce sim­i­lar results. Let me explain…

Offline, being every­thing to every­one is under­stand­able to a cer­tain degree since, geo­graph­i­cally, you invari­ably reduce foot traf­fic to your retail store. Online, how­ever, mar­ket­ing to smaller niches can work since a mar­ket will expand and is eas­ier to reach.

But it’s a double-​​edged sword. The web may increase your tar­get mar­ket, but it also increases the com­pe­ti­tion as a byprod­uct. Again, cast your net in a larger body of water, and the like­li­hood you won’t be the only one fish­ing in it will be higher.

Offline, loca­tion is impor­tant. And a com­peti­tor next door can be your biggest headache. But online, thou­sands of com­peti­tors have instantly become your neighbors.

Thus, niche mar­ket­ing is even more impor­tant online since, by nar­row­ing your focus, you both increase your tar­get mar­ket and decrease your competition!

Let’s say that your best client is the cor­po­rate exec­u­tive earn­ing $50,000 annu­ally or more, and your site receives approx­i­mately 10,000 hits per month.

If your site’s mes­sage aims for the pub­lic at large, there will be only a small per­cent­age of that ideal mar­ket that will hit your site. And an even smaller per­cent­age will gen­uinely be qual­i­fied for, and inter­ested in, your offer­ing, too.

Let’s say this per­cent­age is 1%. That means that, out of 10,000 monthly vis­i­tors, only 100 will fit your per­fect cus­tomer pro­file — and that’s a very opti­mistic figure.

Since your site is too gen­eral or too vague, an even smaller per­cent­age of those ideal prospects — say another 1% — will be truly inter­ested in your offer and even­tu­ally buy. In this case, 1% of 100 qual­i­fied vis­i­tors would equal to one sale for an entire month.

Still fol­low­ing me so far?

Look­ing at it in reverse, it means that, if you want to achieve just one sale a month from this ideal mar­ket, your site will thus require at least 10,000 vis­i­tors monthly.

So based on the law of aver­ages, to pro­duce two sales you will need to dou­ble your traf­fic, and there­fore dou­ble your adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing, to gen­er­ate twice as many vis­i­tors — i.e., you need 20,000 vis­i­tors to make two sales, 30,000 for three, and so on.

In other words, you will need to mul­ti­ply your mar­ket­ing efforts expo­nen­tially in order to cre­ate a high enough quan­tity of traf­fic to yield accept­able results.

Now, take the exam­ple of another web­site ded­i­cated exclu­sively to cor­po­rate exec­u­tives earn­ing over $50,000. How­ever, this site receives a mea­ger 1,000 vis­i­tors per month.

Admit­tedly, it’s not a lot, espe­cially when com­pared to the other. But in this case, the per­cent­age of those 1,000 that fall into that site’s tar­get mar­ket will be 100% — that’s around a hun­dred times bet­ter than the other.

Fur­ther­more, the per­cent­age of inter­ested leads in a much bet­ter posi­tion to buy will be far higher by virtue of the fact that the site cen­ters on their spe­cific needs, goals, and con­cerns. The per­ceived value will be greater in the mind of those spe­cific prospects.

To be con­ser­v­a­tive, let’s say that this per­cent­age is only 5%. It means that out of 1,000 vis­i­tors per month, one can achieve 50 sales — that’s almost 50 times more sales!

But let’s be a lit­tle more con­ser­v­a­tive for a moment. Let’s say only 1% buys. It’s still a remark­able improve­ment over the other, as 1% of 1,000 vis­i­tors equals to 10 sales per month — that’s almost 10 times more sales than the other with only a 10th of the traffic.

Of course, the above exam­ple is sim­pli­fied and with all things con­sid­ered are equal. I agree that there are many vari­ables, here. And my math may be skewed a bit.

But the spirit of this illus­tra­tion is clear.

By nar­row­ing one’s focus, it took an equal if not lesser invest­ment of time, effort, and money to achieve as many as 10 times more sales than it did to achieve a sin­gle one.

Inci­den­tally, when I first wrote this arti­cle a reader shared this inter­est­ing story with me that par­al­leled this exam­ple. It was from Jim Banks, who started sell­ing car­pets online in 1998. He admit­ted that, at the time, he knew noth­ing about it…

“I thought that it would be a non-​​competitive mar­ket (‘who would want to sell car­pet online?’ I asked myself) and it would allow me to learn about this whole new Inter­net thing.”

At first, Jim floundered…

“I showed car­pet on the web­site, sent out sam­ples, and used a whole­saler in Geor­gia to deliver the goods. I made some money, but it was a lot of hard work. In fact, a lot of hand-​​holding of cus­tomers was required, and my time was a lim­it­ing fac­tor in how much money I could make.”

But then, Jim had an idea…

“I had read one or two of your arti­cles at the time where you stressed the impor­tance of niche mar­ket­ing. And after think­ing about that, and apply­ing it to my indus­try, I came up with the idea of sell­ing car­pets and area rugs with children’s designs (e.g., ani­mals, let­ters, game boards, etc). Today, things are going very well!”

(That site, by the way, is Kid​Car​pet​.com. I’m not sure if Jim Banks still owns it, but the site still exists. And, since it does, I imag­ine is still doing rel­a­tively well, too.)

Obvi­ously, you should first find a niche and fill it. If not, then nar­row your focus to a spe­cific out­come, audi­ence, theme, offer, or prod­uct. Or to con­tinue the ear­lier fish­ing anal­ogy, if you want to fish in a big­ger lake, bring a sonar with you.

By zoom­ing in on your mar­ket, you will pro­por­tion­ately mag­nify your sales.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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