Friday, September 01, 2006
Marketing by beach head
The link above points to a perfectly correct article telling you not to market "in general". Instead "focus on a smaller group."
I'm visually oriented though, so I've always thought of this marketing principle in military terms: “establishing a beach-head.” (Think D-Day, in WWII.) You must have a small territory that you've conquered. Once you have that, expanding that territory enormously is actually far easier than taking the (relatively) tiny beach-head in the first place. Think of it this way: dropping one hundred thousand soldiers by parachute scattered all across France, Belgium, and Germany on June 6, 1944 wouldn't have resulted in a German surrender within a year, it would just have wasted lives.
So find a need that's genuinely unmet, then make sure your product really meets it, as the article I've cited above says.
I'm facing this problem with an out-there health site called photoperiod.com that I'm constructing (it's hardly there as yet). I want to persuade a lot of people that humans didn't evolve under electric lights, and that extending our daylight hours with artificial lights can, decades later, lead to just the chronic health problems we are now seeing in industrialized countries (including weight gain.)
More than one group makes a tempting to target, but I'll likely start with a truly tiny one: sufferers of the obscure genetic illness Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), and work my way up to diabetes and hypertension. The need is greatest for EDS. There is no treatment of any kind for it now except joint splints and an electric wheelchair when that becomes necessary.
But be warned: you may find the best small group is unreachable, or unconquerable for reasons that were unforseeable, or at least, unforseen. In the case of EDS, the general ignorance of the fact that genetic illnesses usually are determined by environmental variables (such as the most prevalent genetic illness, celiac disease) may well prevent easy acceptance. As well, it usually takes sufferers of this illness many years to simply get a diagnosis. They may feel that accepting the idea that an environmental variable could strongly influence the course of the disease is tantamount to saying they aren't truly ill, or that they don't actually have a serious genetic illness – a diagnosis they probably fought hard to obtain; and which in many cases their families resist. I don't know yet either way, therefore, I'm looking hard for my next prospective beach-head location, too.
In other words, there is no guarantee that your first planned location for a marketing beach-head won't turn into a Dieppe disaster (a WWII reference again.) So have a couple more possible beach-head locations in mind. When you start to succeed, reinforce that success with everything you've got. Testing a few small beach-heads at once can yield success; but it's better to make a list and and then focus on one at a time until you get a success. What's all but certain is that broad, unfocused marketing won't work very well at all.
If EDS is a non-starter for photoperiod.com, then I think obesity will be my next target. There are lots of treatments, but none that aren't very difficult for patients to follow, or extreme – such as surgery.
I'm visually oriented though, so I've always thought of this marketing principle in military terms: “establishing a beach-head.” (Think D-Day, in WWII.) You must have a small territory that you've conquered. Once you have that, expanding that territory enormously is actually far easier than taking the (relatively) tiny beach-head in the first place. Think of it this way: dropping one hundred thousand soldiers by parachute scattered all across France, Belgium, and Germany on June 6, 1944 wouldn't have resulted in a German surrender within a year, it would just have wasted lives.
So find a need that's genuinely unmet, then make sure your product really meets it, as the article I've cited above says.
I'm facing this problem with an out-there health site called photoperiod.com that I'm constructing (it's hardly there as yet). I want to persuade a lot of people that humans didn't evolve under electric lights, and that extending our daylight hours with artificial lights can, decades later, lead to just the chronic health problems we are now seeing in industrialized countries (including weight gain.)
More than one group makes a tempting to target, but I'll likely start with a truly tiny one: sufferers of the obscure genetic illness Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), and work my way up to diabetes and hypertension. The need is greatest for EDS. There is no treatment of any kind for it now except joint splints and an electric wheelchair when that becomes necessary.
But be warned: you may find the best small group is unreachable, or unconquerable for reasons that were unforseeable, or at least, unforseen. In the case of EDS, the general ignorance of the fact that genetic illnesses usually are determined by environmental variables (such as the most prevalent genetic illness, celiac disease) may well prevent easy acceptance. As well, it usually takes sufferers of this illness many years to simply get a diagnosis. They may feel that accepting the idea that an environmental variable could strongly influence the course of the disease is tantamount to saying they aren't truly ill, or that they don't actually have a serious genetic illness – a diagnosis they probably fought hard to obtain; and which in many cases their families resist. I don't know yet either way, therefore, I'm looking hard for my next prospective beach-head location, too.
In other words, there is no guarantee that your first planned location for a marketing beach-head won't turn into a Dieppe disaster (a WWII reference again.) So have a couple more possible beach-head locations in mind. When you start to succeed, reinforce that success with everything you've got. Testing a few small beach-heads at once can yield success; but it's better to make a list and and then focus on one at a time until you get a success. What's all but certain is that broad, unfocused marketing won't work very well at all.
If EDS is a non-starter for photoperiod.com, then I think obesity will be my next target. There are lots of treatments, but none that aren't very difficult for patients to follow, or extreme – such as surgery.
