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Informative Articles

Consultants - Writing Articles for the Internet Blankets the World with your Expertise and Style
Copyright 2005 Off the Page A Consultant could be an Expert about Absolutely Anything Calling yourself a “consultant” demands further clarification. A consultant who… What specific problems do you handle? And who needs what you know? Everyone?...

Conversation With A Newbie
I've been inspired to write this short piece to answer THE most common questions I hear. It takes the form of a fictional discussion. NEWBIE: "How do I make money on the Internet?" ME: "You need to sell `something` to `somebody` - and of...

Do SEO's bring Targeted Web Traffic?
Learn - Weather SEO's attract or distract - targeted traffic to your site? Search engine optimizer (SEO), usually a good SEO firm provides useful services to its web customers. Services like site architecture, a good site design, find...

How To Write An eBook People Will Actually READ
Copyright 2005 Jim Boere The hardest part of writing is the first sentence. When you look at the whole project, it seems like an impossible task. That's why you have to break it down into manageable tasks. Think of climbing a mountain....

Search Engine Robots - How They Work, What They Do (Part I)
Automated search engine robots, sometimes called "spiders" or "crawlers", are the seekers of web pages. How do they work? What is it they really do? Why are they important? You'd think with all the fuss about indexing web pages to add to search...

 
What "Big Pharma" Can Teach You About Niche Marketing

A recent newspaper review of a new book, Selling Sickness, got me thinking about niche marketing (The Globe and Mail, Saturday, August 6, 2005, D8-D9). The book in question considers case studies that purport to show how “Big Pharma” (the entire pharmaceutical industry, from manufacturers to drug salespeople) manipulates data to “create” a disease that they have the “cure” for.

Regardless of how one feels about the pharmaceutical industry, the book does demonstrate one thing—the ability of this industry to correctly identify small-but-profitable niches and exploit them for huge profits. The book, as indicated by the reviewer, identified a “familiar pattern” for the “selling of sickness”:

A pharmaceutical company identifies a wedge condition, set of symptoms, or “risk factors”; hires a PR firm to come up with a “disease” name, ideally something catchy with a pronounceable acronym (e.g., SAD); develops a drug, or adapts an existing one, to tout as a “fix” for this new medical problem; and begins massive marketing to physicians and the public. The media pick up the story, suggesting that the “new” disease is greatly undiagnosed/undertreated; the market expands; drugs sales rise. And voila! Another blockbuster is born. (Direct quote from the


review)

Do you see the building blocks for a niche business in this description? Following Big Pharma’s lead can help you begin a small niche business and grow it into a financial success. Simply follow these steps:

1. Within your industry, identify a “wedge” that you can target.
2. Create a fancy way of describing the number one problem your product or service solves; make it stand out from any other site that offers the same thing.
3. Demonstrate, by way of strong benefits, how your product or service will solve the problem.
4. Tailor your marketing efforts to your “wedge” by these means.
5. As your marketing catches on, you will grow from marketing to just a “wedge” to marketing on a larger scale.
6. Voila! You have your own niche blockbuster business!

Such a process certainly takes time, but these 6 steps provide a solid foundation for any niche business to gain a foothold and grow into a success.

About the Author

Jeremy M. Hoover is an online article and content writer. If you need articles for promotion or for your website, contact Jeremy at his website, www.jhooverwebcopy.com . Read more marketing articles by Jeremy at his blog, www.jhooverwebcopy.blogspot.com .