The Thing No One Told You About Marketing

by Bill

Marketing is all about networking which is about being social as in making connections that bring people to buy your stuff. How you fit those connections together as a network depends on the environment in which you need to work.

The success of your network depends on everything from where you live, who lives there, who your stuff can be sold to and how much those folks are willing to pay for it.

I call all of these factors “contexts” because they all have some influence on how you go about your business and whether you’ll have a business at all! How you deal with the contexts that influence your business is also a major factor, in fact I’d almost say it is the key factor.

Contexts play a key role in marketing strategies. If you live in East Timbuktu your strategies will look different than if you live in New York. If you are geared to only selling to the wonderful citizens of E. Timbuktu and they’ve never heard of the Internet, you definitely won’t need a web site or even e-mail. Likewise, if you live in Omaha you won’t likely need to learn how to use carrier pigeons.

Contexts come in as many different flavors as there are people and places, they are generally combinations of social, geographic, technological and psychological factors related to your market.

Social

If you are gearing up to sell to the Amish ( assuming you have something they would want) your marketing needs to consider the social constraints of life in the 18th century. Short of joining their religious community you’ll have to find some way to interact with them in person. You’ll need to consider the factors that would attract a community of simple living rather reserved folks.

You’ll have to learn how their social network functions, how they are all connected and the key roles in their community. Throwing a rousing bash to announce the launch of your latest thing-a-mabob might not draw a lot of people and it might end up getting you run out of town on a pole.

On the other hand, volunteering to help erect a barn might be just the thing to at least get you a hello.

Geographic

While it certainly could be said that technology has shrunk the world, all but eliminating geographic barriers, geography still remains a factor. If you are selling your stuff on-line geography effects how your wonderful stuff is going to get to the folks who buy it. Delivery time in Northwest Yukon Territory will be a lot different than the delivery time in Kansas City.

Geography also effects the way you connect, especially if you live on a farm in Western Wyoming and internet access depends on the frequency of solar flares. In this case, selling on-line might be kinda hard... you might want to try pony express.

If live in the frozen tundra getting out and meeting other folks might also be a little sketchy when the temp drops to -100!

Technology

If you or your buyers are technologically challenged, you’re going to experience some serious limitations on how you communicate to potential buyers, as well as, how your buyers find you. The pool of potential buyers will probably be limited to those raising carrier pigeons, which is fine if they are your market.

If you live in Appalachia, you’ll not only be influenced by the feuding clans but also by the fact that there probably won’t be a lot, if any bars, on that iPhone of yours. So, you’ll have to get a little creative at building your network.

Psychology

Are you a people person or...not so much? Does you stuff appeal to a different market than you’d like? Just as with the other contexts your personality, your psychological make up influences everything you do from what you make to who you want to sell your stuff to and how want to tell everyone about it.

So...if you are a people person and love meeting and getting to know new folks you’ll have better luck building that network with other people who have a similar make-up as you. Trying to build a network in a community of Norwegian bachelor farmers might be difficult unless you are offering a dating service that features Norwegian single women who like farming in the middle of nowhere.

If you are shy and shudder at the thought of putting yourself out there then maybe blogging is not the right tool for you to build your network. If you freeze up at the thought of meeting strange people then that weekly networking event the chamber puts on might not work so well for you. You might want to try a less public way of networking.

On the other hand, if you thrive on one on one contact but are a little shy at first a less intimidating way to network might be using Facebook, or Twitter but you may want to check your fears of technology before you sign up.

The Moral of the story...

Before you head off to market your stuff based on what someone else said would work really well for you, step back and look at the big picture. What context does that way work best? If you’re not a public person then blogging or tweeting may not work best for you. Likewise, if your market is Norwegian bachelor farmers who live in nowheresville then Facebook or anything else that requires anything other than smoke signals to connect might be a little hard to make work.

So...the moral of the story is, how you choose to build your network and market you stuff is, in the end up to you. And for everything to work you will need pay attention to context every step of the way.

Cartoons courtesy of Geek and Poke

http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekandpoke/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

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