Niche Marketing vs Knowing Your Customers

I’ve worked with some marketing and sales experts as an entrepreneur and all of them just love niche marketing.  It is that idea that you have a client base or product line that is an inch wide and a mile deep.  The smaller your niche (to some extent) the better you are able to attract the people that are going to buy from you.

I like my hair dresser’s way better.  It is more of an NLP approach to marketing.  Know your customers!  Kat, my hair dresser has a couple of types of clients:

Quick Cut Christine – This is the lady who comes in for a quick wash and cut and might walk out with a baseball cap on.  She is probably a fitness person, a busy Mom, or entrepreneur who doesn’t have too much time and isn’t too fussed about the results.

Chatty Kathy – This is the lady who comes in to find out what is going on in the world of expat women.  She also shares a lot of stories.  For her, getting a haircut is inconsequential to the real reason she is there: connection!

Wind down Wendy – This is a business women with a glass of wine in her hand savouring her 60 minutes of peace.   She wants to be pampered and spoiled.  And this lady wants to walk out looking like a million bucks.

Hiding Heidi – This is the lady who just wants to get away from her children.  She goes to the salon to hide.  She hopes that the hair dresser is running late.  She hopes it will take longer.  She might fuss about something trivial in the cut or shampoo.  She isn’t there to complain, she is there to hide.  She doesn’t want to leave and go back…not yet.

Each client walks in with a different need; to groom, to talk, for peace, to hide. Each walks out with a state change.  And it’s Kat’s job to make sure they get what they need even when they don’t tell her what they need.  It is her job to create a rapport with her client to figure that out.  Which is why it is an NLP approach to marketing.  Kat concentrates on creating the state change her client wants (from the present state to the desired state) using the resources she has available to her.

Oh, and she is amazing at cutting hair too!