There’s a repetitive conversation I’ve had with my coaching students about choosing the right market, and more specifically the right ENTRY POINT into a market, which I think bears your close attention. (It came to a head a few weeks ago with a new student who shall remain nameless, but rest assured I see this REPEATEDLY)
As you might expect, given that my private coaching board is rather expensive, I tend to attract a fair number of experienced marketers who’ve got at least some success behind them, usually in some less difficult, lower volume, less competitive market.
Inevitably, they look at my methods and say “Wow, if I combined Glenn’s methods with what I know already, I could go into the world’s most competitive market head on, stepping right into the battle, and I’d not only emerge victorious, but unscathed, and I’d have billions of dollars streaming to me with a list of millions of hungry prospects I could email for free every day”
But it’s not true.
The BEST marketers don’t step head into the wind.
They carefully evaluate all the different approaches to a market, isolate the most attractive segment given the levels of competition, money available, relevance to what they wish to sell, and estimated cost per click, opt in, and sale.
In fact, the VERY BEST marketers find several such approaches into a market and develop multiple funnels (perhaps prioritizing and developing just one at a time). They know that if a market is truly valuable, it’s worth spending the time to break it into pieces.
The best marketers are happy to serve only the best segments of a market, and are willing to put in the time, energy, money, and other resources to stake their ground, a little at a time.
You see, if you ARE as ripped as Rambo (excellent at PPC, SEO, article marketing, etc), if your object is to build a solid business and there are thousands of wimps challenging you to a wrestling match, why not take THEM up on it, instead of going after Mike Tyson?
Do you want to prove yourself, or do you want to build your business?
Do you want to be recognized as the best, or would it be enough to just get wealthy?
Here’s how this plays out online:
- You don’t build a site for “arthritis pain” (555,000 searches and one of the most ruthlessly competitive, expensive niches you’ll find), you build several, one at a time for things like “arthritis knee pain” (14,500 searches), “rheumatoid arthritis pain” (27,000 searches), or even “arthritis finger pain” (8,800 searches), etc. where you can declare yourself king (or queen)…
- You don’t build a site for “Hawaiin Vacations”, you build several, one at a time for “Hawaiin Bowling Vacation”, “Kona Holidays”, and even “All Inclusive HawaiinVacations”…
- You don’t build a site for “motorcycles”, you build one for “Salvage Motorcycles”, “Cruiser Motorcycles” (), and even “Motorcycle Choppers”…
Then you build some additional volume using broad match, but you take serious advantage of the relative paucity of competitors to really ramp up your conversion rates, and downgrade your price per click.
In other words, if you really ARE as strong as Rambo, why squander your strength (and your blood) in Viet Nam or Cambodia where you risk getting captured and tortured by the enemy?
Rambo sucks at marketing. (Sylvester Stallone, on the other hand, was a genius)
Not because he lacked the strength…
He just went after the wrong target.
Are you confident you’re going after the RIGHT target?
The first month of my club is entirely about developing this confidence so you’ll be able to focus and confidently move forward, instead of falling prey to distraction after distraction.
Hope it helps,
Dr. G 
PS – The coaching board is currently closed for new members, however if you’ve got any interest, please get on the priority notification list as I periodically DO have an opening, but fill it rather quickly from this list alone. (Therefore I haven’t been notifying the main newsletter subscribers)
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
The below advice alone could be called “10 years experience in SEO in 3 bullet points.”
Great stuff Glen – Ed Osworth
Here’s how this plays out online:
* You don’t build a site for “arthritis pain” (555,000 searches and one of the most ruthlessly competitive, expensive niches you’ll find), you build several, one at a time for things like “arthritis knee pain” (14,500 searches), “rheumatoid arthritis pain” (27,000 searches), or even “arthritis finger pain” (8,800 searches), etc. where you can declare yourself king (or queen)…
* You don’t build a site for “Hawaiin Vacations”, you build several, one at a time for “Hawaiin Bowling Vacation”, “Kona Holidays”, and even “All Inclusive HawaiinVacations”…
* You don’t build a site for “motorcycles”, you build one for “Salvage Motorcycles”, “Cruiser Motorcycles” (), and even “Motorcycle Choppers”…
Great advice. I think we all have trouble deciding what we want … that is “do we want to prove ourselves or just get wealthy.” Focusing on the wrong outcome will always result in wasted effort.
There is much to be learned from avoiding head on battles.
Hi Glenn,
What a great post, and I couldn’t stop laughing! ( I needed that)
And of course you are right as always (GOD DAM IT)!!
In the last 24hrs I’ve realized that a few small successes doesn’t entitle oneself to ‘John Rambo’ status
), and even though those other small successes we might have with small niche’s are minimal yet satisfactory, are necessary to build income, motivation and confidence – it is even more important to concentrate on the things that make you enough money to stabilize a comfortable existence and of course do the niche research as you teach!
The only other requirement of course is a hyper intelligent mentor with heart, humor and whit…!
Thank You Glenn,
John
I too think this post is another winner – thanks for putting it together!
However, I do have a question/comment. Let’s take your arthritis example and assume for a moment that the marketer in question wants to pursue all 3 of those sub-topics (perhaps in seriatim).
My related question is this: should s/he grab separate domain names for each of those sub-topics OR should s/he make each one a sub-domain of the main one?
I think the latter probably makes the most sense but that’s based on reading data from others rather than from personal experience. The reason is that the topics on the 3 sub-topics are clearly related and so if we want those 3 sites to be seen as distinct in Google, we need to do some difficult gymnastics (otherwise they could be seen as associated sites).
Furthermore, if we keep them separate, we lose out on the ability to leverage any overlap that shows up. For example, what if one of the remedies/cures for arthritis knee pain is the same as for arthritis finger pain? It would be great to leverage that if we could without losing the separate conversation in the prospects’ heads that led them there.
Am I missing something?
I remember reading Gary Halbert and him saying he doesn’t want the difficult marketing challenges.
Life is tough enough and throws enough challenges at you.
Pick the easy stuff… and do it much better than anyone else.
Good advice back then and it is still good advice.
Chuck, in my model you build several different complete sites with all that it entails to do it honestly without tricking Google. Sure, you can have another umbrella site with more general arthritis benefits (your example), but a subdomain sends a very different message to the world (e.g. “this is not a whole business about __________, just a little part of my normal business” than a full site.)
This is very helpful – thanks!
The reason you gave at the end of your reply helps a lot with my own business challenge that I’m struggling with. I’m marketing a solution almost no one knows about it which leads to a number of apparently disparate symptoms that more people are aware of and searching to either study or resolve.
So my choice is to either keyword target the symptoms and funnel those into targeted pitches for this common alternative solution OR pitch this solution as an alternative to the principle competitive solutions for all those different symptoms.
The former approach allows for some leverage and would be the preferred solution once the awareness of this alternative approach increases (which may or may not happen). The latter approach is more work, risks the associated site issue with Google, is less future proof once awareness increases BUT is MUCH better aligned with the current conversations in the customers’ collective heads.
I’m not sure there is a precise optimum solution to this dilemma but your reasoning has helped me advance my thinking alot and I once again thank you.
P.S. Your information is top of the line- both paid and free. In my view, you are delivering WAY more value in your paid club than you’re charging for.
I couldn’t agree more,
It’s difficult to try and sell something no-one is searching for, even if you have an alternative solution that would answer a common problem people are yet to approach.
In this scenario I personally feel it would be a possibility to ’spoon feed’ the basic answers to those symptoms to a select part of a largre audience at an earlier stage.
This would allow you to build trust with that audience and serve the more advanced alternatives you have to offer later on, when your audience meets those problems.
It’s no low hanging fruit however if you are confident enough to implemet it, theres no reason not to try it – IF you have a solution you believe in.
Although I have numerous small niches I’m working on myself that in themselves are nice little ‘mini-businesses’ for now, I think you still need to consider the ‘big picture’ which is to build a business that will eventually lead to something you really enjoy doing, even if that means going back-to-basics with the experience you have in any given specific field or even better, a combination of fields and to provide a solution to those who need an answer to the questions you previously struggled to resolve.
Maybe that’s one big mountain to climb, but I personally think that the view would probably be worth it! (even if you only made it half or even a quarter way up!)
In all honesty, the ONLY reason I can confidently say this, is due to the fact I do invest a small amount in personal tuition on a regular basis but only from those who really know how to get to the top of that mountain and deliver on their promises, not solely but that does also include of course Glenn’s ‘over-deliver’ club!
Cheers
John
Thanks, John. Given your comments, I just had to share a follow-on from this discussion.
If you were a science student, remember how they drummed into your head Newtonian physics? After all that head-banging, they then told you that Newton was wrong (or perhaps generously half-right) and that relativity was the answer. (Then more corrections after that but I digress.
)
Well, Glenn\\\’s comment in his response on this post was the unlocking nugget to me for marketing (as you say) what no-one\\\’s looking for.
It sticks to the underlying principles that Glenn espouses but strays in one particular way to accommodate the challenge. After months of agonizing over it, I\\\’m finally super-excited that this is the right way to go! Now I\\\’m in the process of trying it out.
Anyway, I should learn if I\\\’m right (or at least half-right
) in about 3-6 months. At that point, if the concept proves true, I\\\’ll find a way to get the word to Glenn and share my learnings. If I\\\’m wrong, well, I doubt I\\\’ll share that! 
Off to the races…
Chuck
Thanks Glenn
Totally agree with exactly what you have said. I am trying to implement these tactics more and more in some of the niches I am working on as I found them to be so huge and competitive, breaking them down into small pieces makes it so much easier and profitable.
and Thank you John, a few points that I will kepp with me.
Ravinder
The methodology behind niche marketing was something that took a while to make sense to my mass marketing trained mindset and as a result, most of what I began with was far to general in nature to be effective. The next step was the build a general site and use sub-domains for various related niches. Still a mass marketing mindset. Your explanation above to Chuck is a bit of an aha moment for me.
Opps, I did something wrong with the code there, I was referring to this explanation to Chuck:
Sure, you can have another umbrella site with more general arthritis benefits (your example), but a subdomain sends a very different message to the world (e.g. “this is not a whole business about __________, just a little part of my normal business” than a full site.)