Gravity Marketing

By Gihan Perera © 2005 Gihan Perera. All rights reserved. Reprinted by Remacue with permission

Market First

When Max Hitchins released his e-book 365 Marketing Ideas For The Hospitality, Tourism & Travel Industries www.HospitalityDoctor.com, he sold over $4,000 worth of e-books within the first 24 hours.

Was he just lucky? No.

Some years ago, Max had a printed book with the same title. When the print run ended, he decided to re-write it in e-book format. But he didn’t just make that decision because he had run out of print copies. No, he had a much better idea.

When he asked people to subscribe to his weekly e-zine, he also offered them the chance to enter a monthly competition, and he asked them which of his products they would like to win as a prize.

What we discovered over a period of months was that almost everybody was asking for the “365 Marketing Ideas” book. That’s why Max put so much time into producing this particular e-book, and gave that priority over all his other products.

And sure enough, the proof of the pudding was when he finally released it for sale, and sales shot through the roof.

Gravity Marketing

Suppose you and I are each going to open a new restaurant in the same street. We’re going to be competitors, desperate to outdo one another. Before opening night, the Hospitality Genie appears to you and grants you one wish. The Genie says, “Jane (if your name is not Jane, please substitute it here instead), I know that you and Gihan are both going to open your restaurant tomorrow night. I’m going to give you one advantage that Gihan isn’t going to have in his restaurant. But choose quickly, because I’m going to visit him in five minutes to make him the same offer.” Hmmm ... What will you choose? Would you like ...

• The best chef in town?
• The spectacular ocean views from every window?
• A glowing report from a world-famous food critic?
• Nationwide exposure on a reality TV show?

Did you make a choice? Well, here’s what I chose: A crowd of hungry people.

Everything else – and I mean everything – is secondary. I bet you that if you chose something else, my restaurant would do better than yours.

The most important factor for success is a crowd of qualified clients who are eager to buy from you.

Here’s the point ...

The rule is: Market first, product second. You’ll get much more leverage when you create your products and services to match your market. When you know that there’s a demand, it’s easy to create a product or service to fill that demand. It’s much harder to create your product or service first, and then look around to find a market for it.

The old saying “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” is missing one vital ingredient. It’s not enough to teach him how to fish; you also have to teach him where to fish – in other words, where the fish are biting.

Unfortunately, most business owners do it the other way around, which means that they spend – or rather, waste – much of their time fishing where the fish aren’t biting.

Why “market first” makes sense

This is a strange concept to many people, especially to business owners who think that their products and services are the best thing out there; who are so close to them that they haven't figured out what the market is interested in.

That's why market first makes sense as a strategy.

First, it’s relatively easy to identify the people in your market.

Second, once you do find them, it's much easier to sell to them, because you can focus on improving the match between your product and their requirements, rather than spending or all your time convincing them that they need your product.

It’s also easier and cheaper to reach that market. Discover where they hang out and hang out there with them. That's much easier than try to find the market by big broadcast advertising and hoping that the right people will watch it.

In a similar way, that’s obviously less waste. Because you have a highly targeted market, you make sure that most of the people who see your promotional messages are at least somewhat interested in your products and services.

Slice Up Your Market

One of the biggest mistakes business make is that they try to be all things to all people.

If your product or service is already fine-tuned to appeal to a certain market, of course it makes sense that you target that market only. On the other hand, if your product or service appeals to a wider market, it’s even more important to target a narrow market niche within the broad market.

Remember that the smaller your market, the better your product. For example, suppose you’ve created a system to revolutionise the way that salespeople sell. If you write a book for all salespeople, you’re competing with every other sales book on the planet, and you can probably sell it for $39.95.

On the other hand, if you customise the book so that it’s applicable to real estate salespeople who sell unique commercial properties in Timbuktu, you can get a much higher price for it.

The other side of the coin, of course, is that you’ve now got a smaller market. But provided the market is big enough, you’ll find it much more responsive than a more general market.

Gihan Perera is an expert in creating leverage for profit. He finds hidden income opportunities in businesses, analysing what they are already doing and identifying ways to create extra cash flow with very little extra effort. For more information visit www.firststep.com.au