People who drink beer have opinions – strong, passionate opinions – about the potent potable. When describing a beloved brew, you’ll hear words and phrases like “piney,” “effervescent,” “toffee-like,” “floral,” and “autumnal.” These words evoke a certain sophistication and understanding of the subtle nuances that different hops, malts, yeast, and fermentation have on the final product.
The most popular beer in America, Bud Light, has quite a different set of phrases beer connoisseurs use when describing the lager: “watery,” “forgettable,” “flavorless,” “zero depth,” and, my personal favorite, “canned horse piss.” Even while Bud Light is the true king of beers in the United States, selling more than twice as much as its nearest competitor in 2016, sales of the bland beverage have been declining sharply in the past few years as interest in craft beer has skyrocketed.
Bud Light’s biggest problem is that by trying to be everything to everyone, they end up being nothing to no one.
In the world of promotional products, many make the mistake of trying to be like Bud Light, thinking that simply because “everyone” buys branded merchandise, everyone is a potential client. Trying to be everything to everyone is a precarious position that undermines your brand as the following happens:
• Cease to show differentiation
• Deliver mediocre work
• Give your target audience a sense of desperation
Instead, it’s far better to narrow your niche by reducing your target audience. To someone who wants to sell more, it may seem counterintuitive to reduce the size of your potential customer base. But you want to narrow your audience for two reasons:
You can’t please everyone – The sooner you accept that it’s fine that some people may not be interested in buying from you, the better. You want to talk to people who want to listen to what you have to say. Don’t waste your time trying to convert people or change their world views. As master marketer Seth Godin wrote in his book, All Marketers are Liars, “You need to realize that changing a worldview requires you to get your prospects to admit they were wrong. This is awfully hard to do.”
Define what you offer and be true to it – even if it means losing people along the way. Remember, your goal isn’t to sell promotional products to organizations that don’t see the value in them as a messaging vehicle. Your goal is to speak with prospects that have a similar worldview and are already open to the concept of leveraging promotional merchandise to achieve their organizational goals and want work with an expert in the industry.
Humans desire specific solutions – As humans, we love specificity. For example, if you are thirsty and went to the grocery store, would you buy a bottle of beer simply labeled “beer?” Even though it’s in the general category of what you want, it’s far too broad to be a real solution. What about the bottle that’s labeled with phrases like “rich toasted malts,” “dry hopped,” “barrel aged in oak casks,” or “velvety smooth?” Most likely, you would buy this over the first beer. Given a choice, people will almost always go for the one that specifically addresses a problem.
If you market yourself as simply another promotional products distributor, you will get lost in the ocean of the other 23,999 who also sell the same merchandise. Instead, seek to provide a specific solution to a specific set of people. Promoting yourself as an “insurance marketing expert” instead of a promotional products distributor not only leverages your unique expertise, but allows you to sail away from the crowd.
If you refuse to narrow your niche, you run the risk of becoming as generic – and memorable – as Bud Light. Remember, the most remarkable brands will not appeal to everyone. In the craft beer world, Stone Brewery makes a standout India Pale Ale (IPA) that has cultivated a fanatical fan base who enjoy the bitter brew. They don’t try to make beer that people who prefer to drink Bud Light will buy. Instead, their audience is the discriminating beer drinker that demands a slightly more complex and bitter beverage. In the 21 years since Stone’s founding in 1996, they have experienced wild success by staying true to their brand, not trying to please the masses, and narrowing their focus.
Don’t be afraid to narrow your focus – find your specific niche and speak to it continuously. When you try to be everything to everyone, you miss opportunities to share your specific message to an audience where it will resonate. More importantly, you end up being nothing to no one with sales flatter than a stale light beer.
Bill is president of PromoCorner, the leading digital marketing service provider to the promotional products industry, and has over 17 years working in executive leadership positions at leading promotional products distributorships. In 2014, he launched brandivate – the first executive outsourcing company solely focused on helping small and medium sized-promotional products enterprises responsibly grow their business. A featured speaker at numerous industry events, a serial creator of content marketing, president of the Promotional Products Association of the Mid-South (PPAMS), and PromoKitchen chef, Bill has extensive experience coaching sales teams, creating successful marketing campaigns, developing operational policies and procedures, creating and developing winning RFP responses, and presenting winning promotional products solutions to Fortune 500 clients. He can be reached at bill@PromoCorner.com.