Inch Wide, Mile Deep

"Inch Wide, Mile Deep" refers to one of the most wonderful properties of a niche market. To take advantage of this, a person needs to have several items to sell, each item must delight the customer and be part of a "sales funnel."

The principle of a "sales funnel" is simple: Given the fact that most people will not make a purchase from a source where trust has not been established, the vendor needs to provide a path by which that trust may be won. Commonly this is done by offering products in a line, arranged from least expensive to most expensive.

Most buyers are willing to risk $20 to find out whether a given product will meet their needs, provided they don't trip over any of several potential obstacles. (Typographical errors, poor grammar, second-rate graphics, resemblance to known swindlers, etc.). Once they get over the initial resistance, purchase and enjoy the product, they are far more likely to purchase a more expensive offering from the same vendor. If they like their second purchase, they are likely to make several more successively more expensive purchases. Hence the expression "inch wide, mile deep."

So, when marketing over the internet, lead with a $20 product, and have several follow-up products to offer potential buyers after their initial purchase.

Next Installment: Establishing Credibility

Matching Niche Markets With Your Skill Set

First of all, allow me to explain what a niche market is: A group of people who want something specific who's needs are not met by the mainstream market.

It is very difficult to compete in a mainstream market. Someone already beat you to it. Niche markets are another matter, since quite often no one has come up with the best solution to meet the needs of the people in question.

Examples of niche markets:

• Organic food (Although it is becoming more mainstream, it started out as a niche market)
• Alternative Health Practitioners (Mainstream doctors and insurance companies are weaker than alternative health care practitioners on prevention and chronic disease, but are generally not set up to refer out to alternative practitioners, so there is an unmet market demand both among patients and practitioners for each other)
• Personal Tech Support (Computer newbies are disappointed with telephone support outsourced to India, so a knowledgeable local tech support person can fill the need)

On the other side of the equation is one's own skill set. We know skill sets from our jobs, so we might think of them as word processing, phone skills, record-keeping, etc. But there are many other skill sets we possess that are not part of those we use for employment purposes. We have skills sets around what we do for fun, whether it is golf, attending the opera, or fishing.

Jermaine Griggs used to give lessons on how to play by ear at his local church. Someone suggested he write them up. After a year he had a whole book of lessons. Someone suggested that he advertise it on the internet. When he did so, he was soon making a few hundred dollars a week selling his book online. Then he got some coaching about how to improve his online sales. He has bought both himself and his mother new houses as a result. Jermaine was 16 when he started and is about 20 years old now. http://www.hearandplay.com/

So the trick is to think of what you already do and how that might be of benefit to someone else.

A good place to start is by experimenting with Yahoo's Overture Keyword Selector Tool:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Try typing in a word related to one of your interests and see what other people are searching for. Notice if a significant number of people are asking questions that you could answer. Just for fun, run a calculation to see if you could make money in a pay-per-click campaign.

For a specific key-phrase calculate:
The number of searches x $.10 = what you pay for each referral (base price, may be greater if others are bidding on the same terms)

288395

love poem

Example: love poem 288,395 x $.10 = $28,839.50 pay-per-click cost
Then speculate a $20 product and assume that 50% will be profit = $10
"My book of love poems"
Then calculate what it would take to break even:
1% conversion = 2884 x $10 = $28,840 - $28,839.50 pay-per-click cost = break even

Of course, there are many other factors, such as how well you pitch your product and what the actual bid prices are, but you get the picture.

The real trick is to spot emerging markets and be one of the first to provide what people need. You may find that in order to meet that need, it will be necessary to learn some new skills. More about that in the next installment.

Next installment: Spotting emerging markets and developing your ability to respond.

Understanding the potential of a website

I have written quite a few websites for people. Some are personal pages but most are business related. I have noticed that in terms of the business potential of a website, many people have a limited notion of what it could mean. Quite often, it is not until they have had their website for a while, that they start to wonder what else it could do for them and generally find out that they might need to start over.

The most common initial approach to internet presence is what I call an Online Brochure Site. A person already has a business and they want to add web presence because someone told them they needed to have one in addition to business cards and brochures. The content from the brochure is readily transferable into HTML and Voila, instant website! Their business cards and brochures are then upgraded to carry the URL and they are happy to have the appearance of being "with it."

A few weeks later they come back wondering how to rank higher in the search engines, and I am compelled to explain to them that even though I optimized their site, the most important first step got left out, namely Keyword Research. In my opinion, it is a good idea to do keyword research prior to naming your business and possibly even before deciding what business you are in. Here is why:

A website is not an ad in a local newspaper. With the potential to reach the entire world, it is much more like being a "ham" radio operator. They don't call it the World Wide Web for nothing. This has its upside and its downside. The downside is that since the playing field is relatively level, a person is competing with the rest of the world to get noticed. The upside is that when you DO get noticed, it is the entire world that notices you. The key is to get noticed by those who are looking for someone like YOU.

Keyword Research is important because it tells you:

1. What people are looking for
2. How many people are looking for things related to what you do
3. The words they are using to look for those things

From a marketing perspective this translates to:

1. Potential Markets
2. The size of those potential markets
3. What you need to say to let them know you can fulfill their needs

From a general business perspective this translates to:

1. What businesses you need to be in
2. Who your customers are
3. What you need to say to get their business

Once I explain this to people and provide a few examples the light bulb generally comes on and they start thinking about various ways to re-think their skill set or their product line to be responsive to the needs of the market. (By the way, this is what differentiates marketing from sales. Sales starts with a product and attempts to find customers and close sales with them. Marketing starts with an examination of what people need, seeks to fulfill those needs and gains sales for doing so.)

Once a person has started to re-think their business, they can start to think of a website as more than an online brochure. Any website has the potential to be:

• A billboard
• A magazine
• A storefront
• A library
• A meeting place
• A directory
• A trade publication
• A referral point
• ...and many other possibilities

Next installment: Matching niche markets with your skill set

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