1. Choose your specialty

2. Build Trust in that specialty by:
   1. Listening
   2. Helping others succeed
   3. Being consistent

First, choose a specific niche that you would like to specialize in. You can ask yourself the following questions to help find a good niche for you:

What am I passionate about?

What do I want to continually learn about?

What will bring value to other people?

Where is there a need that I can fill?

Once you have an idea of the niche you are going to serve, you need to start building trust. The first step to doing this well is to listen. Find out what’s being said about the topic, what people are doing about it, who is talking about it, etc. The list below are just a few tools you can use to listen:

Blogosphere: Technorati, Google Blog Search, Blog Catalog
Twitter: Twitter Search, WeFollow, Twellow
Search Engines: Google, Squidoo
Social Sites: LinkedIn, Facebook
Other: iTunes podcasts, TED, YouTube
Alerts: Google Alerts, BackType

Once you have a feel for what people are saying about the topic, it’s important that you stay caught up on your specialty by aggregating information. Using a reader is one of the best ways to do this. Simply have the RSS feeds of important blogs or twitter users or news sites funnel into your reader (we use Google Reader) and you can stay up to date on daily of movements in your industry.

Finally, you need to start participating in the conversations that you find. The best way to do this is to help other people succeed. Answer questions, share expertise, offer suggestions, produce valuable content, etc. Do this through creating and writing a blog, participating on Facebook and LinkedIn, producing videos for YouTube, uploading pictures to Flickr, and so forth. Most importantly, be helpful, and be consistent.

Through using these tools and specializing in a niche, you will be able to help out others and build a strong community of people that fosters real human relationships, helps business grow, and builds trust.

What successes have you had working with the above strategy?

To turn a corporate vision into something more than just a nice plaque on the wall, you must tie your marketing efforts to your bottom-line. This means everyone in your organization understands how their contributions help move the company forward, achieve goals, and increase profits.

Niche Marketing Strategies

Take a site like www.ellemenopea.com. They create vinyl wall art like this:

Wall Art by Ellemenopea

Let’s assume their vision is to become the leader in vinyl wall art and decals. That’s a big goal: to become the recognized authority in their field. Achieving this goal would no doubt bring much success, but if there is no action plan, then they might as well stencil their vision on their wall and then forget about it. They need to set clear marketing goals backed up by measurable marketing analytics in order to achieve their vision. Some potential goals to achieve their vision:

Drive Targeted Website Traffic

Ellemenopea may decide that one way to achieve their vision is to optimize their website and get to the top of Google or other search engines. This achieves three purposes simultaneously:
• Get noticed by people most interested in what they offer (non-intrusive marketing)
• Build brand awareness (recognized as authority by ranking highly)
• Increase chances of turning browsers into buyers

Build Brand Loyalty

Another way they might decide to become the leader in the field is to create valuable content for their customers. They may choose to blog and showcase examples of how to take a wall and turn it into art. They may run contests. They may give discounts for referrals. They may run classes. This does the following:
• They are recognized as the trusted source for wall art.
• They get people talking
• These people tell friends
• They post pictures on their own blogs
• They tweet about their satisfaction with Ellemenopea

Pretty soon, Ellemenopea has a whole cadre of brand evangelists who purchase repeatedly and invite their friends to do the same. Their success snowballs, and eventually their goal is in sight.

Gather Competitive Intelligence

Then, the Ellemenopea owners may analyze other websites offering similar services. They could look at the products or services offered. They might look for clear calls-to-action. Then they could determine underserved niches and develop a niche marketing strategy to capitalize on missed opportunities.

By driving targeted website traffic, building brand loyalty, and gathering competitive intelligence, Ellemenopea implements niche marketing strategies to achieve its vision of becoming the leader in their field.

We’ve now discussed setting your vision and linking it to actionable marketing goals. Next time we’ll talk about determining measurable critical success factors. See you then!