Chameleon Advertising: Marketing to Your Niche Markets with Stories

Do you remember how, in days gone by, salesmen would go doorto door selling their wares? These entrepreneurs would "gothe extra mile" just to have the chance to demonstrate theirproducts to people in their own home.

Why do you suppose they did that? Was it effective enough tomake that extra effort? And what can we learn from it?

The reason why door-to-door demonstrations of yesterday worked so well is because it gave the customer a chance to experience the product. Humans are experiential in nature. That is, we understand the world around us by experiencing it. So putting a product in our hands gives us that opportunity. We get to feel it, use it, and see how its application could benefit us.

Now nobody's telling you to go door-to-door like the salesmen of old . . .

But what if you could achieve the same results by illustrating its application with a verbal demonstration? What if you could provide a similar experience to your customers that was nearly as good as if they held it in their hands? Would you consider that a highly effective marketing tool? Can you imagine the possibilities of being able to get people to experience your product without actually having to hold it in their hands?

This is where using Storylines come in . . .

Stories have been used for centuries to create experiences in order to teach, motivate, and instill values into us. Through stories we gain experiences we might normally never have. They allow us to see worlds we could only dream of, or may never even have dreamed of. Stories insite our senses, and trigger our emotions. They paint "pictures" for us and lead us to an understanding of things that are, often times, beyond our grasp.

But most of all, stories are master illustrators.

Can you see where this is leading?

Through a story, you can create a presentation that satisfies the senses, produces the right amount of motivation and emotion, and illustrates the benefits of your products almost as well as if you rang a doorbell, got let inside and gave a face to face demonstration.

And no one has to wear out their shoes doing it either.

To illustrate how it's done . . .

First we'll create a scenario, then give a storyline example

so you'll see it in action for yourself . . .

The beauty of Niche Marketing is that you can just about create a new market out of thin air. What you're about to witness is a Niche Market that was created where there was none before. But it doesn't matter if you create a niche from a story, or a story from a niche, because it works both ways.

Scenario: You're skimming through the news blogs and you come across a clip about how there's a growing number of homes that are unable to get cable television piped in. The clip goes on to say that, in many of these cases, satellite reception doesn't work either because most live in highly wooded areas. It concludes by informing that neither the cable companies nor the satellite companies know exactly what to do and people are getting really frustrated about it.

So you scour the web and find a solution that's already being marketed, though not very well. You read up about it and discover that there's a resellers program attached to it.

You join it and present it something like this . . .

Story Begins:
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Satellite and Cable Companies Can't Reach Everybody

Television certainly isn't what it used to be. Today, through satellite and cable, you can bring in hundreds of channels in high definition that were once nonexistent, but now are just a click of your remote away. Up to 80% of all households have one or the other type of network service set

up in their homes, as the old fashioned rabbit ears antenna goes the way of the rabbit test.

Unfortunately for some, the cable and satellite companies can't reach everyone, especially in remote parts of the world. There are various reasons why this happens, but it doesn't help those who are left without.

One of the problems with cable TV is the expense that goes into running cables through a town. All too often towns cannot afford the contracts required to get cable, or they feel the monthly charges would be too steep for their residents because of the wiring problems the cable companies would have to overcome. Some towns just don't want the cables running through their streets.

The trouble with satellite is that you need a clear view of a certain part of the sky in order to get good reception, and many in wooded areas just aren't able to cut down enough trees to accomplish that. So there are quite a number of people forced to watch local TV through the haze of antenna interferences. No cable, no satellite, no hope of it changing in the near future.

For some, who might not even get good or adequate reception from an antenna, there's always VCRs and DVDs. But even they can get old fast, and depending on the quality of service from the local video store, their choices could be limited.

Recently there has been some advancement in online TV and movie viewing, however, that just might solve the problem for these people as well as for those who feel the monthly fees of cable and satellite are outrageous. New companies are springing up that offer the same services of the cable, satellite, and even video store companies for a one time fee to download their application to your computer. One of the leaders of this new type of online service, TV.org offers a great package that includes a large number of TV channels, premium movies, MP3, DVD, and game downloads.

So it won't be long when everyone will be able to watch HBO, or the Discovery Channel without worrying about location, budget, town ordinances, trees or anything. In this world of high tech, there's something for everybody!"

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End of Story

If you happen to have visited TV.org, you'll discover that there actually is such a company, and yes, they have an affiliate program.

And yes, it was pretty much taken out of thin air! And it's just one example of how to use a storyline with a niche market. There are countless other ways and styles depending on your purpose and product. Isn't Niche Marketing wonderful?

There are just so many different ways and reasons you can come up with them. The above example came just as the scenario stated, by simply browsing the news blogs and creating a storyline based on a few short clips.

But until now, some Niche Markets were nearly as hard to get customers to, as the "brick and mortar" storefronts. The most that could be done with them is to set up a shopping cart page and generate traffic for them from the exchanges.

Then you'd have to wait and hope someone was looking for what you were selling at the exact time your page came up in their browser.

However, if you start Using Storylines With Your Niche Marketing, all sorts of new venues will open up for you. By using storylines as sales campaigns, your areas of advertising broaden greatly. You can send out press releases, advertise directly through ezine articles, create news clips for syndication, you name it!

Fred Farah
copyright 2005

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