Marketing Your Unique Expertise For Knowledge Commerce: Guide

 

The 4 types of marketing a Knowledge Commerce solopreneur must aim to do

What is marketing? And why do so many solopreneurs balk at the word "marketing"? The truth is that no one who thinks he is poor at marketing is really so. He may only have poorly understood what marketing is all about.

C.J. Hayden, the bestselling author of "Get Clients Now!" describes marketing like this. "Marketing, simply stated, is telling people over and over again what you do." It's that simple. What methods you use to talk to people and tell them what you do, and in how many ways you tell them this, depends on your own strategy.

The four marketing methods Knowledge Commerce solopreneurs need to know about are these ... read on.

 

 

Micro marketing is the way to target small audience segments to grow big fast

What is "micro marketing"? It means you break down your audiences into many tiny segments. Micro marketing requires narrowed, intensive focus on small groups of target audiences. You then can build several nuanced products that serve small groups.

How does micro marketing help you grow faster?

In micro marketing, since you address small groups of people, you get to know their pain-points in depth. Your marketing communication gets very concentrated on their needs. Your words resonate with these small audiences better. You relate to audiences at an emotional and empathetic level.

Your audiences instinctively begin to feel that you know them and their issues very well. They feel as if you are writing for them, almost on a one-to-one basis.

Trust bonds develop faster when people feel “understood”. As trust builds, so does sales.

Micro marketing isn't a tactic suitable only for small businesses or solopreneurs. Huge global brands have now understood the value of it. Companies like Coca Cola have changed in many countries to micro marketing. Big companies are trying to act small again.

The Internet now allows very granular audience segments. Large businesses are seeing the value of delivering content that "individually resonates". This is so different from earlier when their attitude was to "mass-educate".

Uber is among the many big businesses that use micro marketing. Uber tries to understand every small transportation issue in global cities where it plans to expand. Naturally, each small geography has its own peculiar transportation problems. The result? Uber says its footprint has grown through an “acute understanding of peoples' commuting bottlenecks across the globe”.

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about marketing yourself on sites like Google to get free traffic

SEO still tops any other source of traffic to Knowledge Commerce blogs and sites. Social media does bring you quite a bit of traffic, but not to the same degree.

Once you get traffic to your site, you can convert readers into subscribers, and buyers. But how best can you cream Google to get enough traffic and more to your website?

The rules seem simple. People read only those blog posts that rank high on Google for the search keywords they key into Google. Your blog posts must rank high on Google for related keywords searched by people. To get your blog posts to rank high for related keywords, you need to "optimize” your blog post for SEO. You also have to see that your site and post have a lot of natural backlinks from high ranking sites.

In the early days of SEO, Google used a rather unsophisticated way to relate a blog post to a keyword searched by people. It would see if the keyword appeared many times on the blog post. Google would also rate a blog post’s quality by the backlinks it got from other quality sites.

Wily marketers then started “keyword stuffing” and “reckless backlinking”. They would use keywords in blog articles profusely and meaninglessly, to get ranked high. They also started some very unscrupulous (black hat) backlinking tactics.

Google fought these practices by getting a lot smarter. Google now uses a process called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). It tries to understand the “intent” behind a searcher’s keywords. Then it ranks high only those blog posts that meet the search intent.

 

Social media marketing is not something to get casual with if you're serious about marketing

Extracting the most traffic from social media calls for two tactics. One, you have to be socially active. Two, you need a strategic campaign with clear objectives.

On social media, you can attract traffic and traction only if you have a set plan. Even with a plan, you need an unwavering focus. You can't afford to get sidetracked by the flow of social interactions. If you get caught in the melee you won't be able to control it.

Even small businesses, in obscure niches, can find audiences on social media. Aim at specific small targets, one by one. Learn how to lead and direct the ebb and flow of social conversations towards your messaging. This is impossible to learn if you cast your net far and wide. Don't try to get too much done in too short a time.

The beauty of targeting small but specific segments on social channels is this. You’ll get deeper insights about your target audiences and their behaviors. The more you interact with them the greater your audience-sensitivity will become.

When targeting social media, see which social channels engage more of your ideal traffic. Each social media channel has its distinct audiences.

First, gauge the typical inhabitants of each of these social media. Then zero in on the level of engagement that people generally exhibit on these media. You can then decide to target the social channels you prefer. You can also target the kinds of engaged audiences you prefer from these channels.

 

How to use influencer marketing as part of your armory in addition to other marketing

Influencer Marketing isn't just a part of the marketing you do for your brand’s target audiences. It requires you to see influencers as separate classes of “stakeholders” in your brand.

You should cultivate, encourage and motivate influencers. Influencers are those whom people in a niche respect as experts. Their words count for a lot among their vast numbers of followers. The Influencer Marketing tactics you use should be different for the different types of influencers you “recruit”. The idea is to get influencers to use their word on behalf of your brand.

People like to feel important and influential. Influencer marketing campaigns use this human need to the fullest. Don't look at influencers defensively, and feel as if they are doing your brand a favor.

When is it best to use influencer marketing besides your regular marketing?

A lot of brands use Influencer Marketing without applying thought to when it is most ideal to use. They don't consider how it should work as an adjunct to regular content marketing and social marketing.

Influencer marketing campaigns may look like a good idea at any time. But they are particularly powerful if deployed at specific times.

Consider Influencer Marketing when your regular marketing could use reinforcing “stakeholder” voices. These voices should add an extra push to your brand’s persuasive communication.

Remember: an influencer need not always align with the brand voice. There are lots of times when the influencer would do very well to use his own authentic voice. His voice must act as a juxtaposition to the brand voice.

There are even cases of influencers arguing counter to the brand. They get the audiences riled. Audiences then gang-up in favor of the brand. It’s all in the strategy.

 

To learn even more of this topic, read on ...

 

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