Culture Conversion: Designing for Niche Markets
Culture Conversion: Designing for Niche Markets
Unless you are in the community being targeted, it can be hard to tell upfront whether the design of your creative is going to be effective. But when you’re part of the targeted community, you get the message loud and clear. The trick comes in when you want to target a niche market to which you yourself do not belong. Bridging this gap between business and niche markets thus often requires a thoughtful cultural conversion campaign.
The concept of cultural conversion in the creative field is very important when designing materials for niche markets. Once a base concept is defined, your need to evaluate the viability of your message within the context of your specific target markets. Advertising is about emotion. If something in your concept is offensive to a particular group, it needs to be addressed. Similarly, this type of evaluation can help to highlight latent strengths in your concept, which can be played up to maximize efficacy for that market. If the concept translates well, then you can begin to refine your message, creating highly targeted language and visuals. If it doesn’t, then you have the luxury of reworking the concept at an early phase until it does.
Cultural conversion evaluations have the ability to capture both intellectual and visceral nuances in a concept. One of the core properties of a successful ad campaign is the presence of a direct perceived connection with the audience. More campaigns today are veering away from the staid and safe language of standard sales copy, and are instead delving into the expression of more raw and emotive concepts… and niche audiences are loving them for it. It can be a heady trip, and a tightwire act… any campaign that leans heavily on emotion is taking a chance. However, when you hit the right note, the rewards are undeniable.
Correctly targeted and expressed emotion in marketing can also lead to fierce brand loyalty - your market connects with you on a personal level… not just a practical one.
As business owners, we always want to make our brands bigger… more effective, more important, and more relevant. The style of marketing you use should excite the people who buy your product. And in order to do this, you need to know who these people are, where they live, what they love and the values by which they live their lives.
Targeting is more than just using photos of your niche market in your advertising materials. A properly composed marketing campaign needs to target for a culture… which is more than just fashion. To target properly, you need to understand your market’s entire mind-set, while avoiding stereotypes.
The approach you choose to take in marketing vis-a-vis its returns can be likened to your investment strategies. You can develop safe, palatable solutions that have a predictable but somewhat lacklustre return, or you can aim for high returns by taking a risk, stripping down your brand and pointing that arrow directly at your market’s heart.
Culture Conversion Designing for Niche Markets - To learn more about this author, visit Chanie Pritchard's Website.
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A niche market is a focused, targetable portion of a market… or a narrowly defined group of potential customers. In general, if your business focuses on a niche market, you should be addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers.
Unless you are in the community being targeted, it can be hard to tell upfront whether the design of your creative is going to be effective. But when you’re part of the targeted community, you get the message loud and clear. The trick comes in when you want to target a niche market to which you yourself do not belong. Bridging this gap between business and niche markets thus often requires a thoughtful cultural conversion campaign.
The concept of cultural conversion in the creative field is very important when designing materials for niche markets. Once a base concept is defined, your need to evaluate the viability of your message within the context of your specific target markets. Advertising is about emotion. If something in your concept is offensive to a particular group, it needs to be addressed. Similarly, this type of evaluation can help to highlight latent strengths in your concept, which can be played up to maximize efficacy for that market. If the concept translates well, then you can begin to refine your message, creating highly targeted language and visuals. If it doesn’t, then you have the luxury of reworking the concept at an early phase until it does.
Cultural conversion evaluations have the ability to capture both intellectual and visceral nuances in a concept. One of the core properties of a successful ad campaign is the presence of a direct perceived connection with the audience. More campaigns today are veering away from the staid and safe language of standard sales copy, and are instead delving into the expression of more raw and emotive concepts… and niche audiences are loving them for it. It can be a heady trip, and a tightwire act… any campaign that leans heavily on emotion is taking a chance. However, when you hit the right note, the rewards are undeniable.
Correctly targeted and expressed emotion in marketing can also lead to fierce brand loyalty - your market connects with you on a personal level… not just a practical one.
As business owners, we always want to make our brands bigger… more effective, more important, and more relevant. The style of marketing you use should excite the people who buy your product. And in order to do this, you need to know who these people are, where they live, what they love and the values by which they live their lives.
Targeting is more than just using photos of your niche market in your advertising materials. A properly composed marketing campaign needs to target for a culture… which is more than just fashion. To target properly, you need to understand your market’s entire mind-set, while avoiding stereotypes.
The approach you choose to take in marketing vis-a-vis its returns can be likened to your investment strategies. You can develop safe, palatable solutions that have a predictable but somewhat lacklustre return, or you can aim for high returns by taking a risk, stripping down your brand and pointing that arrow directly at your market’s heart.
Culture Conversion Designing for Niche Markets - To learn more about this author, visit Chanie Pritchard's Website.
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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