Dear Broker, here are your updates for this week...

M a r k e t i n g  t i p
Micro-marketing can lead to huge results

Make a list of the five people whose opinions could make a huge difference to your business. Your list is probably filled mostly with decision-makers at large vendors, but might also include a few bankers or media personnel or other focal points of new business. Now, what if you won the favor of three or four of those people? What would it take to do so? What would that mean to your business?

It’s not a new concept. It is a close relative to – or maybe descendant of – public relations. It is akin to the eighty-twenty rule. But it is somewhat counterintuitive, and therefore oft overlooked. In any market, there are a few dozen, or at most a couple hundred, market makers. These are the individual people that can make a huge impact on your business compared to the masses of end-users or one-deal-a-quarter vendors. These are people that have such control, such breadth of influence over the market that they can swing it.

In big business consumer marketing (think sneakers and colas), market influencers can be Hollywood elites, media royalty, bloggers, wholesale or retail buyers, or even key fashionistas in the right environments. If a few of these people start stocking their stores’ shelves with a certain handbag or are seen carrying a particular cell phone, boom! Overnight change in the market. The same principles hold true in business-to-business marketing, and even more so in smaller markets.

You probably already know who those key influencers are in your market – they may reside in the corporate offices of one of the truck, trailer and equipment dealership mega-chains that have sprung up over the last few years. These people might dole out writing assignments for industry magazines or local newspapers. They might be v- or c-levels at regional banks; or they might be the president of a large trade association of transporters or contractors.

So what are you going to do about it? Hit ‘em, and hit ‘em hard. You (and your competition) make hundreds of outbound calls, drop direct mail, run ads, bid on keywords and more trying to attract vendors and end-users and hoping that a few of them become clients. You spend money and time to do all of that. Consider redirecting some or all of that effort at those key people. For the price of two months’ ads in one of the major industry shopper publications, you could host an all-expenses-paid sit-down with one of the market makers…in Hawaii. With the time spent on outbound cold calling, you could coddle one of the key influencers with such impressive knowledge of and solutions for his or her business and maintain the relationship with unprecedented service and communications.

The question is, is it worth it? Imagine what it would take to win the favor of just one of the key people. Then figure the opportunity cost – ads you would have to stop running, calls you wouldn’t make, etc. Then compare. Is it worth it?

S a m p l e  d e a l  o f  t h e  w e e k
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