- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
QUESTION ON Promoting Your Business
I have an online business on poems and would like to target baby boomers. I’ve done searches on the web but have not come up with any sources that I can promote my business to this target audience. Any ideas? Thanks so much.
– Joann
ANSWER
Advice by Tammy Harrison
Dear Joan:
What great poems! Anyone would enjoy getting such a personable gift.
Try role playing: It is Wednesday, my wife’s birthday is Saturday and I need a gift. Where would I look first? Some husbands would ask their secretaries and some would start searching themselves. Do you see where this is leading? When you select a large, general target audience consisting of women and of men, you would have to go to great lengths to market to both genders. As is, it would be essential to be seen in predominantly male mediums and predominantly female mediums.
When you define a target audience, I recommend that you narrow it down a bit. Baby boomers is a good start but, as you said, you cannot figure out where to go with that. I would decide the “what and why” baby boomers would want to purchase your product and then decide “where” they would go to do so.
Let’s try a different approach. Look at your sales records and see if you can determine a more narrow focus of your audience. Are they mostly men who purchase your poems? Are they mostly women? Do you know their ages? Without knowing anything about your sales, I would venture to say that husbands buy wives poems and females buy them for other females (on the average). Use that information you have from the past year to figure out where you need to market in the future.
Start your marketing in men’s mediums if that is where most of your sales have come from. I always recommend to start advertising for an internet business in eNewsletters/eZines. Most publishers of these can tell you what the percentage of their audience is (and a whole lot more demographic information). Then, play on your baby boomer target audience by gearing your advertisement towards them. There are numerous sites that offer very affordable advertising in this medium.
Internet marketing experts have said that if you market TO your target audience, others will come. Be focused on exactly who purchases your product and if all of the other factors of a great business are met (i.e. quality product, affordable prices, great customer service) then others will follow!
Tammy Harrison
Recommended Resources on Online Business Promotion
- Online Business Promotion (Made for Success Collection)
- Local Online Advertising For Dummies
- 30-Minute Social Media Marketing: Step-by-step Techniques to Spread the Word About Your Business
- Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online
Article originally published in April 2002. Updated March 1, 2012
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link