Do You Remember Marketing 101?

It struck me today that alot of us who consider ourselves to be “online marketers” have forgotten what “marketing” itself is really all about.

Here’s what I mean…

I think too often we forget about marketing 101 which would say “Know your customer”.

We’ve been reading about SEO so we pick a niche and decide that we’re going to drive traffic to this site with good ol’ Search Engine Optimization.

Hang on…

How do you know that Search Engines are where your target market hangs out?

The majority of the internet traffic DOESN’T go near a search engine… What makes you think your target market does?

“But Wordtracker told me that XYZ term gets 100 searches a day”

That’s great, so you know that at least SOME of your market hits the search engines – but are they really the ones that are going to buy your product?

Here’s a fine example.

I met with a lovely lady who was wanting help marketing a certain site that allowed users to download music after paying a small membership fee.

Who’s her market? People who download music. (being completely accurate, people who download music and have the disposable income such that paying a small fee to make downloading their music easier is a possibility) . So where do you find them?

Unfortunately, SEO might not be the best way to go here…

Either might [tag]PPC[/tag]…

The first thing I thought of when she mentioned music was [tag]Myspace[/tag]. Millions of people interacting with one another, sharing the music in their profiles – it’s how lots of bands are getting their start and alot of people who download music are hanging out.
Now the point here isn’t that Myspace is the best way to market music, heck it might even NOT be – I haven’t tested it.

What I’m trying to get across is the fact that:

“You have to base your traffic generation strategies on an intrinsic knowledge of your market – NOT on what method you happen to know most about”

Making sense?

If you ARE best at [tag]SEO[/tag], or PPC, what could you do instead? Pick the niches where you KNOW Google or Yahoo is a place they’re going to go to help themselves  make a BUYING DECISION.

In alot of markets, people would rather go and post a question in their favorite forum before they decide to buy something. Some would head to somewhere like Yahoo Answers. Some might prefer to see if it’s been reviewed on Squidoo…

The point is you have to do your research. Looking to head into a new niche? Don’t JUST look at the Wordtracker results and the Google competition!

Search the keyword in Google yourself, find it’s biggest forums, search it in social networks, talk to it’s people – KNOW the niche truly before deciding whether to enter it and how to market to it.

I know all this seems like too much effort for some people but I thought that when thousands (who knows, maybe hundreds of thousands) of dollars are on the line, it might be worth a shot.

Don’t forget the fundamental principles of Marketing just because you’re in cyberspace.