I was recently inter­viewed by a print mag­a­zine about how I started my busi­ness. In it, I offered sev­eral tips and ideas on how to carve a niche in the mar­ket­place that I per­son­ally applied.

I real­ized some of these tips were par­tic­u­larly pow­er­ful. So I wanted to reprint some of my answers here for you.

If you know my per­sonal story, you know how niche mar­ket­ing played an impor­tant role in my career.

Long story short, as the child of an alco­holic I feared rejec­tion immensely, which led to a reclu­sive child­hood. We all fear rejec­tion to some degree. But for me, it was debilitating.

I wanted to over­come my fears and decided to dive into the world of sales in order to fight them head-​​on. Years passed and many fail­ures ensued until I finally became the top pro­duc­ing sales­per­son in Canada for a major For­tune 500 company.

How did I accom­plish that?

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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?

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The 10 Com­mand­ments of Power Posi­tion­ing: Mag­i­cal Mar­ket­ing Strate­gies for Cre­at­ing an End­less Stream of New, Repeat, and Refer­ral Busi­ness is Michel Fortin’s ebook that brings together the art of posi­tion­ing with the sci­ence of direct response.

This ver­sion is the 3rd edi­tion with over 140,000 copies dis­trib­uted to date! This is includes third party dis­tri­b­u­tion since peo­ple are invited to freely pass the ebook around. In fact, the esti­mate is in excess of 140,000 copies in all. (It’s prob­a­bly closer to 300,000 copies if not more.)

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Through­out my research, I’m always sur­prised when I stum­ble onto web­sites that are pro­fes­sion­ally designed and seem to offer great prod­ucts and ser­vices, but lack or fail in cer­tain impor­tant elements.

Ele­ments that, with just a few short changes, can help mul­ti­ply the results almost instan­ta­neously.

Gen­er­ally, I have found that there are seven com­mon mis­takes. I call them the “Seven Deadly Sins.” Is your web­site com­mit­ting any one of these?

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Many copy­writ­ers often talk about tar­get­ing a niche… get­ting to know them so you talk their lan­guage and describe your solu­tion for them as though you were one of them.

I’d like to take a con­trar­ian view.

I think it’s silly to worry about tar­get­ing a “niche.”

I pro­pose that all peo­ple are the same at their core and if you are actu­ally work­ing a true mar­ket… tar­get­ing is as silly as pre­tend­ing that some peo­ple don’t eat or sleep or have sex or breathe.

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I often get made fun of for this, but one of my favorite movies of all time is “Signs,” directed by M. Night Shya­malan. Why do I like it so much?

Prob­a­bly because it shares many char­ac­ter­is­tics with Alfred Hitch­cock films. (Hitch­cock is my favorite direc­tor of all time.) But it’s also a bit funny, a bit scary, a bit emo­tional, and very sus­pense­ful. The premise is an alien inva­sion, but the plot is really about a min­is­ter regain­ing his faith.

Talk about some­thing for everyone!

That brings up a good ques­tion. How do you adver­tise a film that has some­thing for every­one? Do you try to appeal to every­one? Or do you choose the most prof­itable seg­ment of the market?

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The most impor­tant part of your copy is not your head­line, not your offer and cer­tainly not your ben­e­fits. The most impor­tant part is your customer.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been cri­tiquing some pretty good copy. Very well-​​written and com­pelling. But if the con­ver­sion rate is low (hence, the rea­son why I was hired to con­duct a cri­tique con­sul­ta­tion), it’s because these saleslet­ters do not tar­get the right audi­ence for the offer, or the author and the copy fail to con­nect with their readers.

Research­ing your cus­tomer in depth is vital to the suc­cess of your copy. It’s not only an impor­tant com­po­nent of tar­get­ing and qual­i­fy­ing the best prospect for your offer, but also an effec­tive way to dis­cover new ideas, dif­fer­ent angles, cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­lines, unsought ben­e­fits, and appro­pri­ate length and lan­guage of your copy that will con­vert more.

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