Advertising is Tribal. Which Tribe are You?

Today we’re going to do something fun. Are you ready?

(Press the PLAY button to hear the audio version of today’s memo.)

I will tell you how to advertise if you will tell me the nature of your business.

Advertising can be broken into 6 major categories:

1. Business-to-Business (B2B)
2. Niche Marketing (Niche-S) with a short purchase cycle
3. Niche Marketing (Niche-L) with a long purchase cycle
4. Short Purchase Cycle (B2C-Short) Business-to-Consumer
5. Long Purchase Cycle (B2C-Long) Business-to-Consumer
6. Mixed Purchase Cycle (B2C-Mixed) Business-to-Consumer

Business to Business.

B2B: If you are in a business that sells to other businesses, tight targeting will be essential to your success, but you can easily identify the customers you need to target.

Their addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses are readily available and direct mail, phone calls and emails are cheap. If you have some extra dollars, you can place ads in the appropriate trade magazines and websites to elevate your brand.

Features, benefits, pricing, delivery, and payment terms are important elements within your message. How well your B2B ad campaign works will depend entirely on what you say.

It will depend on what you say.

Focus on saying the right things.

Now let’s talk about Niche Marketing with a Long Purchase Cycle.

Niche-L: If you sell a specialty product that appeals to an affinity group, social media is a powerful thing. A powerful thing.

Danny sells the most rare, weird, exotic, and inexplicable guns the world has ever known. Firearms collectors are an affinity group. Collectible firearms are a Niche Market with a long purchase cycle.

Danny will soon be producing a new daily short and posting it on YouTube 365 days a year. Each short video will be Danny showing you a different gun and telling you the story behind it. He is not going to shoot the gun. He is just going to tell you its story.

Danny doesn’t need to find gun collectors. Gun collectors will find him. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. Danny just needs to produce interesting content.

Brian Brushwood taught me that.

Would you like to have an invisible garage door like the one that Batman passes through to enter the Bat Cave?

Max can do that for you.

But invisible garage doors can only be installed in houses that have no masonry. Max needs to locate charming houses with wooden exteriors.

He can knock on their doors, leave a door-hanger, or mail them a glorious postcard. Max sells garage doors to a Niche Market with a long purchase cycle.

Do you sell an intangible Niche product with a long purchase cycle?

Are you a sales trainer, an ad writer, a nutritional expert, a motivational speaker, a psychic healer, an entertainer?

Build fame. Ride the tidal wave of fame. Fame leads to word-of-mouth. Be remarkable. Advertising is a tax you pay for not being remarkable.

Be remarkable.

Next week we’ll talk about Short Purchase Cycle Niche Marketing and B2C.

We’ll talk about B2C.

You and me.

Roy H. Williams

PS – When you have achieved a little bit of fame, make yourself easy to find by paying Google for the click whenever someone types your name into the search bar. But that’s not advertising. That’s just helping people find you when they are looking for you by name. 

The people of Jackson, Michigan have loved Gilbert Chocolates for more than 110 years. Brian and Sally Krischbaum had zero experience when they bought the company in 2012, but set out to honor Gilbert’s rich heritage by expanding it into multiple stores and becoming a national distributor. Meet the Krischbaums as they share with deputy rover Maxwell Rotbart the real-world challenges and triumphs of running — and growing — a century-old family brand. They make great chocolate, but we believe you will agree that their story is definitely not sugarcoated. Now let’s get jiggy with it at MondayMorningRadio.com