Category Archives: Advertising

Ask SCORE: What is the best way to market a niche product?

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by Ken Sethney, Kitsap SCORE

Marketing a niche product means that you’re not selling to everyone. You are focused on a group of people who are most likely to buy your products or services. 

Having a narrow pool of potential customers comes with challenges and ultimately means more work on your part to find those people who fall within your niche. However, marketing a niche product also has advantages once you identify your customers. 

Successfully marketing a niche product starts with an in-depth understanding of your potential customer’s wants and needs.

When you are targeting a small group of buyers, you need to understand who is most likely to buy your product and how your product can provide solutions to their needs.

Start with a bit of market research. Google can help you find lots of useful information. You can also visit the Kitsap Regional Library and speak to an adult services librarian. The library website can give you access to valuable information. 

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The Importance of Proofreading

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Eats Shoots and Leaves vs. Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

What a difference one comma can make in terms of readability and even meaning.

The above is the title of Lynne Truss’ book about grammar. Like many people, I am on social media, and notice misspellings and typographical errors. I don’t actually correct these errors, as I understand that people often dictate posts and messages into their phones. It does seem to me, though, that proofreading has fallen on hard times. Using my own skills, I attempt to help when appropriate.

Naturally, I proofread my own papers when in school, and even other classmates’ writing occasionally. The first time I remember realizing this is my particular skill is in college. If only I’d been on the college yearbook staff!

In my current nostalgia, brought about by remembering happy times before COVID-19 lockdowns, I’ve revisited college yearbooks and unfortunately noticed many errors. I even took to marking corrections in my old yearbooks. After so many years, it wouldn’t hurt anyone, right? Continue reading →

Should I advertise in a down economy?

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by Ken Sethney, Volunteer Business Mentor, SCORE Kitsap

A recent article on money.com dealt with a couple of difficult questions: “What Is a recession, and are we in one?” Three experts answered the questions. From a technical perspective we’re not there yet, but we could be very soon. 

OK, fine. I’m not a college professor, a manager of economic research, or an investment strategies advisor, but from my perspective, we’re smack dab in the middle of a recession. The question we all face is what do we do about it?

If you own a business, you want to cut costs, but where? For some companies the decision is easy… the first cut they make is advertising. But you’re not so sure. Continue reading →

10 Free Social Media Marketing Tools Every Business Owner Should Use

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social media on tablet

Just about anyone can get into social media marketing with a smartphone and little to no extra cost. But as you keep doing it, you’ll want to find ways to make it more efficient, especially as a business owner.

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools available online to make social media marketing easier and less tedious. A lot of the best tools have paywalls, which is not ideal for small business owners looking to up their game.

 

Continue reading →

When advertising, think about the context.

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Have you ever read a magazine or newspaper while waiting for a haircut, dental exam, or car repair? A Kitsap SCORE client is offering an alternative choice for local advertisers. Here’s his message…

tidbits-mags.pngWelcome to Tidbits — “The Neatest Little Paper Read” — locally owned and operated.

Tidbits is an affordable way to tell the folks who eat, shop, work and play in the greater Kitsap County area about your business!

Your ad will be visible in 290 + points of distribution from one end of the county to the other. Available in restaurants, fast food places, medical and dental offices, hair and nail salons, markets, quick lubes, tire stores, repair shops, hotels – any place where people have to wait and want to be entertained.

You can have an exclusive spot on the front page and beat the competition once again! Act quickly to join this exclusive club of only 9 of Kitsap’s best advertisers. Continue reading →

How to Use Social Selling for Your Small Business

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“Your network is your net worth.”

Ever heard that saying? It goes all the way back to the days of paper Rolodexes, but it is just as important now.

The idea of using your network as a business asset is why social selling matters. And why every small business should be doing more of it.

Social Selling 2017 Trends Report

Image source: Social Selling 2017 Trends Report Continue reading →

In search of the minimum viable audience.

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by Seth Godin

Of course everyone wants to reach the maximum audience. To be seen by millions, to maximize return on investment, to have a huge impact.

And so we fall all over ourselves to dumb it down, average it out, pleasing everyone and anyone.

You can see the problem.

When you seek to engage with everyone, you rarely delight anyone. And if you’re not the irreplaceable, essential, one-of-a-kind changemaker, you never get a chance to engage with the market.

The solution is simple but counterintuitive: Stake out the smallest market you can imagine. The smallest market that can sustain you, the smallest market you can adequately serve. This goes against everything you learned in capitalism school, but in fact, it’s the simplest way to matter.

Continue reading on Seth’s Blog…

How to make Facebook work for your business.

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According to Facebook, there are more than 50 million active business Pages, and most likely you have one as well.

Here are six ways to maximize the bene ts of a Facebook business page and help to engage with, and possibly increase, your customer base:

1. Link your Facebook page to your website, or make Facebook your main online presence

No website yet? No problem. Many businesses use Facebook as their primary online presence. But remember, you want to build your brand, not the social media site’s brand. The solution: register a domain name (or web address) and redirect it to your Facebook page. Also known as web forwarding, you create a rule that all visitors to your domain name be directed to a web location of your choice (in this case your Facebook page). Redirecting gives you a memorable and permanent company web address to use for marketing and is becoming increasingly popular. From the fourth quarter of 2014 to the fourth quarter of 2015, redirects to a Facebook page have increased by 21 percent.

If you already have a website, make sure to include social sharing buttons on prominent pages and content. That way people who nd something of interest on your site can easily like and share that content on their social media channels.  Continue reading →

Sometimes, old school marketing really works.

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Direct mail has faded dramatically as a way to reach out to new customers. That said, you can stand out in the recipient’s mail box if you keep things simple and do it right. Here’s an example of a postcard that might work for you, and it can be really cost effective.

Post card example

If you want to give it a try, go for a 5 1/2 inch by 8 1/2 inch format with a dramatic color on one side. You can use a photo to grab people’s attention but the right “grab line” will do a better job.

A little help from Ken Sethney, volunteer business mentor at Kitsap SCORE and former marketing coach for the CEOs of mid-size companies.