For micromarketing examples, look no further than The Village People
When I think of micromarketing examples, the first image that always comes to mind is The Village People. (I don’t get up out of my chair and start doing the movement to YMCA, but that probably wouldn’t be a bad way to get a little exercise while working at my computer.)
To command good margins on your product or service, you must identify and reach the niche markets who recognize the special appeal of your offerings. Here’s why I think The Village People illustrate both the successes and failures related to micromarketing.
Every member of The Village People is a stereotypical hyper-masculine male. But at the same time, each member has a more “granular” identity – a cop, biker, military man, Native American, construction worker, and cowboy.
It’s not hard to imagine a company marketing a new product designed to appeal to “masculine men” believing that they had properly defined their target audience. However, if that company broke down the market further and pulled together a micromarketing strategy, achieving success might come more quickly.
In recent years, there has been a lot of emphasis on creating your ideal customer avatar. (Kate Erickson gives a good rundown on the process in this EOFire article.) But I urge you not to stop at merely defining one customer. As I’ve shown above, if your customer was the macho male, you should be able to break that down even further.
As you discover and define these micromarkets, you will be challenged to create marketing materials and strategies to meet each micromarket and you might also discover that some tweaks to your product or service are required to fulfill the needs of each group. These points demonstrate how micromarkets represent growth opportunities.
Making small changes to products, services, materials, and strategies to target different micromarkets can pave your way to continual growth. You know that old saying about not putting your eggs in one basket? By identifying and selling to additional micromarkets – maybe you start with the cowboy, then go to the Native American, then the cop, and next the military man, etch – you create several different, but closely related, baskets. This paves your road to growth.
When that happens, it will be like The Village People sing in YMCA, “You can make real your dreams!”
Image: VPSTartfront, by BikerFan22 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons