Have You Ever Been to Nantucket?

I don't know if you remember the television show "Wings" or
not. It was a cute comedy show whose reruns are now being
shown on the Nick at Nite Network about two brothers who ran
a small plane service on the island of Nantucket.

Anyway, the other night I had the show on and a girl was
talking about how the travel business had risen 15% on
Nantucket since she started working for the agency. One of
the guys made that comment that it was cold there in the
winter with absolutely nothing to do, so how had she managed
that. She said she started thinking about what kind of
person would really love being in a cold and barren place in
the middle of winter and realized it would be a masochist.
So, she looked up societies and found the Masochist Society
and sent them a promo on travel to Nantucket in the winter.
Lo and behold, a bunch of them made reservations!

Now, of course this was meant to be funny, but I thought how
brilliant her idea really was. Talk about targeting your
advertising! This was a perfect example of a person truly
thinking about her target market.

And that's what you need to do to be successful in your
business. If you spam or just send out ads anywhere and to
anyone, you are wasting your time and money and resources.
Stop and think about it: You would get many more sales if
you target your market and send to those who would be
interested in what you are selling. Would you rather send an
email out to 50,000 horse lovers when you are selling dog
shampoo or send the same email to 5,000 members of the
American Kennel Club? Which one do you think would get you
the most orders for dog shampoo? It's not always the number
of emails you are sending that gets you the best results.

Don't forget, your time is worth something. Spend it wisely
and you will reap the benefits. Building a business online
or off is hard work and takes more time than you think.
Don't waste it spamming people who will either report you or
at the very least, delete your email.

Big business hires market research companies to tell them
where to send their catalogs and direct mail. There is a
reason they do that! They don't want to waste their money
and efforts advertising to people who won't be interested.
They want the best odds they can get, and you should be
thinking the same way. Hey, maybe you aren't big business
yet...but if you don't start thinking like big business, you
never will be!