I was working with a client inside InfoMarketer’sZone this week on refining their information product positioning and marketing campaign…we worked a good deal on how targeted we wanted to get with our prospects.

As you may be aware, a good portion of successful online marketing is matching relevant keyword targeting with strong messaging.  The tendancy is for new (and even more established marketers) to want to target as a big a portion of the market as they can at the expensive of losing their unique positioning in the market.

Many of us operate within sub-niches of larger markets where we absolutely will be MOST successful if we clearly target that sub-niche. 

For example, if we have a method for losing fat…we could target (listed from most general to most specific)

  • health and wellness
  • weight loss
  • lose fat
  • lose belly fat
  • exercise to lose belly fat

As you can see, each keyword takes you one level deeper into the market with the trade-off being fewer searches but also more precision around the actual customer desire. 

I have always found that the more precision means higher demand and typically much better results.

If you use SEO or paid advertising and target “exercise to lose belly fat” you WILL get more general traffic too…that’s just the way it works. 

Does that mean you should lighten the positioning on your product to target the more general market? 

No – our results indicate you should NOT sway from being specific with your positioning.

We have found it is still  better to “differentiate” your solution versus competition over trying to look like everyone else…don’t worry so much about alienating some of your prospects at the expense of attracting others – that will always happen.   The opposite is that you try and go so general that you don’t attract anyone.