5 Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from a Weird “Real World” Business

5 Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from a Weird “Real World” Business

Reader Comments (37)

  1. That’s an awesome find, Sonia. You’re right, that niche isn’t common but it’s definitely a huge market. Even here my country there are a lot of people who are obsessed with taking care of their pets. Myself included.

    Enjoy the rest of your week!

  2. That WAS a great find, Sonia. Thanks for sharing. Success comes at the intersections is so true. Funny – that’s the second time I’ve heard that this morning. (The Universe must be trying to tell me something…)

  3. You really hit the nail on the head there with your fourth point.

    If every business in the world concerned itself only with satisfying customer *needs* there would be no high end luxury car market, no jewellery market, and no high end wine market.

    Every customer has certain desires that go unstated but are there for anybody to see. If you want to make money selling cars, don’t just play up the fact that a car is reliable and cheap, think about the different desires and yearnings that people might associate with a car, and find a car market to sell in where you can position yourself to satisfy those desires. Same thing for computers, guitars, or anything else you’re selling. As you said, there is often an intersection point between a specific market and a specific type of customer that, if you tap into it, will let you establish a niche that is truly your own.

  4. Great article,Sonia, and very timely. I’m working on a post about goal setting and have found that the greatest failure area is the “intersections.” For example, if you are on a diet and you come to a menu (intersection) and there is Low Fat Jello and a Chocolate Mousse Pie staring you in the face, the Chocolate pie has a great chance of winning. In marketing, that intersection may just be a dirt path, that needs to be widened, paved, and made accessible. Take Steve Jobs and the iPad. That intersection didn’t exist. Steve and Apple had to create it and then tell us why we needed to go down that road. Now it is a super highway. Find a need and create an intersection…!

  5. Hi Sonia,

    I think you’ve highlighted an often-neglected aspect of marketing. Frequently, particularly in B2B environments, we obsess about vertical markets and completely ignore the horizontal ones. Any two customers might be completely different in “typical” demographics like age, sex and income, but they may be united in their love for Doritos, their desire to buy cool shoes for their kid, and their appreciation of a local organic produce stand. Sometimes, connecting the dots horizontally is a great way to discover new growth potential.

  6. Reach, positioning, and timing.

    I love this story, it just shows that there is something out there for everyone – especially in the places you don’t normally look.

    Im creating something for an industry that is not my norm right now, the thing that stuck out for me was the labelling, sometimes we just expect people to get it, big mistake.

    Like you said Sonia, use the language they use if your trying to sell a biro pen for £20 you can’t call it a biro – maybe the “shade to black, the biro that last 5 times longer than your hubby does”

    All fun and games –

  7. I work with a lot of musicians and artists – helping them turn their passion into a viable and scalable business.

    Often, though, I find myself learning instead of teaching. Sometime they have all the answers, just from a different perspective. It’s all about (like you said near the beginning) being receptive to innovative ideas.

    Thanks for the great post Sonia!

  8. Another great post Sonia, thank you for your continuing creative inspirational writing .

    Have a wonderful Christmas with your family and I look forward to your posts in 2012. BTW love the image of the Westie…. We’ve just added Lola ( a Westie puppy ) to our family.

  9. Hi Sonia,

    Ever since reading “Switch” by Chip and Dan Heath, I’ve been keen on studying what works in other markets to learn from their success. In the book, the Heaths talk about how much more value can be gained by observing what is successful than attempting to learn lessons from what is not working. The content in this post is a great example of this.

    Thanks for the post; now it’s time to apply the lessons! 🙂

  10. This reminds me that it takes persistence as well as smarts and knowledge to find an angle that works.

    And I like the “How you can apply it:” calls to action. I am going to steal that and hope you are flattered.

    Best,

    DB

  11. These are some great points covering the purpose of being in business! Sometimes it takes a little bit of a change to find something a little bit better for ourselves!

  12. Hi Sonia,

    Great article I have a http://petanimals.org website on Pets and Pet Care, I would love to enter the thinking space of my visitors to find what they are searching for so I can help them fulfil there needs. How would you find out what your visitors are searching for? Best Regards Steve

  13. Another excellent post, Sonia! Your ability to distill and communicate helpful insights is very much appreciated. Identifying a niche in which we can excel and sustain passion is key. Thanks for another year of outstanding and valuable content!

  14. I sure learned a good lesson today. Interacting in an en environment as homogeneous as the the world of accounting, I’m sure our marketing could benefit from breaking the circle by borrowing from completely different businesses – and the dog beauty product business is no exception 🙂

  15. I love this quote:

    “One of the most useful skills in business is to be able to look at what someone else is doing in an unrelated topic, and bring it to your own online marketing.”

    The cool thing for bloggers is that there are so many niches online in which people are developing creative ways to start businesses. We can learn so much from a little research.

    I love the idea of studying offline businesses as well. I find that it is really helpful to visually map out the model and see how it compares to your own business model. (And if you don’t have a business model for your website, why have you been wasting your time?)

    Thanks for taking us through this exercise Sonia!

  16. Very clever post. I do many times try to implement what i see on the real world, online. All jobs have something in common. HUMANS. All jobs need humans to be done. So it is very easy to find similarities or ways to implement a good characteristic from one job to another and finally get results. Continue the good job Sonia

  17. I love #1 – Success comes at the intersections. I’m reading Steve Jobs’ biography right now. He saw himself – and Apple, by extension – at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Everything interesting happens at the edges – also known as intersections. Wildlife congregates there. Mathematical phenomena occur there. Unique businesses are formed there.

  18. WOW, what a great article. Enough for me to motivate myself. I liked all the points and his style of doing business. I’ll definitely think to do such kind of profitable business.
    thanks Sonia 🙂

This article's comments are closed.