Speaking of niche marketing, the New York Times ran an article about three weeks ago on how The Gap is struggling without a niche:

Gap has served up a steady diet of simple, unobjectionable casual clothing designed to appeal to everyone. [..] In an era of niches, when exclusion is as vital as inclusion, Gap has become an anachronism: a single chain, selling only its own brand, with one point of view, chasing shoppers from birth to death. [..] Indeed, consumers are abandoning the chain in staggering numbers. Sales at stores open at least a year, a standard measure of a retailer’s health, have fallen or remained stagnant for 28 of the last 30 months.

I found the article through Duct Tape Marketing, which has some great commentary:

Attempting, intentionally or accidentally, to appeal to all is a sure way to kill sales and buzz. Find a way to narrow your market focus to the smallest niche possible and you will no longer need to worry about competing on price.

This article in BusinessWeek reports on the spread of Firefox, a browser which has grabbed to 10% of the market from Internet Explorer in two years (I switched a while back from Safari).

Several colleagues have happily switched to Firefox from Internet Explorer at the behest of a tech-savvy friend, vendor, or relative. None have looked back.

Don’t miss the Firefox crop circle created on the OSU campus.

That’s a passionate group of users.

Jackie Huba over at Church of the Customer blogged about a hand-written note she received sent by a sales associate at a retail store.

Hand-written notes leave a strong impression — as follow-ups, a thank you, a reminder, or just checking in. I’ve observed that people appreciate the old-fashioned, personal touch.

I know many professionals that spend a lot of time being “in-demand”. To an extent, that’s attractive. We all want to work with someone who has things going on. But that attribute turns quickly from a plus to a minus when service is in question.

Each time you tell someone how great you’re treating your customers, remember to send out some notes. Need a refresh on writing good thank yous? The Morning News has you covered.

Steven Levitt (coauthor of Freakonomics) commented on faking user-generated content (which I discussed here). Found via Emergence Marketing:

One conclusion which Steven Levitt at Freakonomics comes to when answering the question “what does or does not make Internet buzz translate into commercial success” is “One reasonable answer to that question may be that when the buzz is faked/manufactured, commercial success will not follow.”

Whether intentional or not, “manufactured buzz,” along with other viral “gaming-the-system” marketing strategies are just another threat to the future credibility of word of mouth marketing – another one being the lack of disclosure policy which some companies refuse to endorse.

Note to marketers attending conferences: provide a memorable experience, be approachable and noticeable, but don’t be pushy. See the Social Customer Manifesto Blog, which I found via Church of the Customer.

Scoble says:

Why have Google and Apple done so well in the last three years? Cause the grassroots loves them. That’s the powerroot of the industry. Ideas here don’t come from the big influencers and move down. No, they start on the street and move up. Anyone miss how Google got big? Not by throwing a press conference.

Great quote. Temper with good advice from Olivier Blanchard at the Brand Builder Blog:

Don’t fall into the New Marketing vs. Old Marketing trap. You can’t afford to limit yourself to being a supporter of either one camp or the other. If you do, you’ll always be missing a big (and crucial) piece of the puzzle for yourself, and for your clients. Grass Roots, key influencers, advertising, blogs, product placement, PR, it all works… and works best when used in concert. Robert Scoble is right: Microsoft missed the boat when it failed to gain (and perhaps even seek) grassroots support. That being said, his dismissal of press conferences might be a little short-sighted. The combination of the two would most likely produce a much better result than either one on its own.

The Brains on Fire Blog has a good overview on the Al Gore’s Penguin Army video.

Essentially, DCI Group, a PR firm that holds Exxon Mobil as an account, released an ostensibly funny video on YouTube mocking An Inconvenient Truth (and misusing the Linux penguin).

If their purpose was to send up a little flack on behalf of Exxon, they failed. The film wasn’t funny, didn’t make an effective point, and won’t appeal to anyone that doesn’t disbelieve in climate change.

Add some penguin egg on their faces for faking grassroots media. The lesson we can all learn is that falsifying user-generated content will backfire early and often.

Following up to my last post: If it’s true that traditional market research has a bias towards answers given in the convention form, what’s that mean for your business?

Are conventions the ideal type of answer for those seeking insight into their customers’ behavior?

I think no. As the insightful commenter mentioned on Gladwell’s blog, conventions such as “It’s a good value” and “It tastes good” don’t really convey the complex set of factors that go into how we choose a brand—at least not anymore.

Conventions may have been adequate during the broadcast era, perhaps because large companies had been the first to identify and promote several of the “classic” forms of conventions in the way we know them today. It was easier for consumer products companies to fend off smaller niche competitors in this model.

You and I make modern brand choices under different circumstances. Froogle and similar services are drastically changing how can compare prices. Today’s buying decisions occur in an environment completely saturated with marketing messages. We’re processing much more information than during the peak of the broadcast area.

In today’s “narrowcast” market space, stories provide the richer information we need to stay competitive. In particular:

• Unexpected ways and reasons your customers are using your product/service
• Which factors are most persuasive to a particular market segment: perhaps a market segment you weren’t aware of
• What customizations users need to make in order to integrate your product/service into their existing frameworks

In many market spaces, stories are extremely useful for the front end of marketing. Stories relay well. They are compelling sales tools, especially when they demonstrate your understanding of a prospect’s problem. A good story will always beat a vague testimonial by the semi-anonymous John Doe of Long Island, C-level executive.

The downside is that stories seem more difficult to process. How will we put them into SPSS? How will we turn them into measurable goals? How do we rank these “complex” reasons?

The good news for the nimble venture: stories let you simplify, not complicate, your market research.

There are few situations where focus groups provide a good return on investment for small or medium-sized businesses. In the past I’ve held this was due to some combination of the Hawthorne, Pygmalion, and placebo effect — people tend to give the sort of answers that they believe are expected, especially in formal settings, where their beliefs about what answers are expected often change.

Malcolm Gladwell recently reviewed Charles Tilly’s book “Why” in the New Yorker. “Why” provides some interesting ideas about how we present reasons and why we present the ones we do. This review sparked a great comment from one of Gladwell’s readers on the how Tilly’s ideas in “Why” may apply to market research.

Read the review here and the comment here.

The essence is this: There are four categories of reasons that we give: Conventions, which are “conventionally accepted explanations” (Accidents happen), Stories, a re-telling of the cause and effect from your unique perspective, Codes, or high-level institutionalized conventions & procedural rules, and Technical Accounts, or expertise-driven explanations.

The insightful commenter notices that the nature of market research compels people to move answers that sound like conventions, and doesn’t encourage the telling of stories.

Which kind of reason do you prefer to hear in feedback given to you? Why?

Boost marketing success: Targeting your product/service let’s you provide less bulk with more meaning.

Think the last marketing message aimed at you that “broke through”. Here’s what got it that far: Targeting. The message tapped into your circumstance, interests, sense of humor, or style (probably in that order).

From a marketing perspective, a specialized product or service is key to success. But why not pursue the widest appeal possible? People’s minds have become so good at filtering out things they’re not interested in. We’ve adapted to cope with chaotic sensory input (or crappy advertising).

We’re naturally interested in things concerning us. Something targeted to a “Seattle-based business owner with clients scattered all over and slightly tech-geek inclination” is much more likely to get my attention than something targeted to “any business owner, anywhere, with any interests”.

There are many ways to narrow your target audience. A few of them are:

• By geographic region
• By industry
• By organization size/individual income
• By organization style/individual personality
• To be compatible with another product/service
• By acceptable risk level

When the “cult of simplicity” talks about making your product or service leaner, understand you can market to a smaller group and get more from it. By increasing your ratio of user success to features (specializing your product/service), you’re gaining benefits: more targeted marketing, a differentiator (or unique selling proposition, etc), more successful (happy, loyal) users, and the repeat business and buzz that brings. And you don’t have to play “feature cold-war” with the competition.

Remember: An object trying to move in all directions equally does not move.