Left-handed marketing secrets
Whenever you target a certain niche of people for a specific type of product, you ALMOST ALWAYS find those customers also share some odd, otherwise unpredictable idiosyncrasy.
The ability to recognize this separates the men from the boys in marketing. Today, three examples:
1) Some time ago I knew this guy Larry from marketing seminars. He ran a "Mail Order Bride" service for Christian men. Lonely men who couldn't find themselves a bride could, for several thousand dollars, get matched up by Larry's company with an eligible Filipino woman.
(This sort of thing is much more common than most people suspect, by the way.)
Larry had a thriving operation, having matched thousands of couples. One time Dan Kennedy asked him: "Larry, are there any idiosyncrasies that your customers have in common? Like being from certain states or working in certain professions or having certain hobbies?"
Larry says, "Gee, I don't really know but I'll check."
Larry digs around for a few weeks and comes back with the following answer:
"50% of my men are truck drivers."
WOW. 50%? That certainly changes his marketing strategy now, doesn't it? Instead of advertising in USA Today ($$$$) he can have somebody drop off flyers at truck stops on Interstate 80.
HUGE marketing insight.
Of course this made total sense *in hindsight*. Truck drivers are a lonely lot and have few opportunities to meet people of the opposite sex.
Nearly ALL markets have quirks like this. What odd secondary characteristic do your customers share?
I'll give you a couple more stories like that from my own biz:
2) This week we're having my Roundtable meetings in Orlando Florida and we've got people from the US, UK, Canada and the Netherlands. The other night we were having dinner and I asked for a show of hands of how many left-handed people we had in the room.
The result:
3 out of 6 women were left-handed (50%, compared to 8% in a "normal" crowd)
6 out of 22 men were left handed (27%, compared to 12% in a "normal" crowd)
In total, my Roundtable members are 32% left handed.
I'm left-handed but I can scarcely ever remember talking about it on my website or in my emails and newsletters.
This makes total sense in hindsight… that the geeks, freaks and misfits in my Roundtable would be 3X more left-handed than the rest of the world.
Well if you believe like I do that left-handed people are more inclined than most to bridge the logical and the artistic, then marketing junkies who love numbers AND psychology would feel right at home on our crazy meetings.
3) Last year I was at Ken McCarthy's System Seminar standing in a circle with three other hard-core AdWords geeks. We were talking about music, and how Ken has noted that an awful lot of extremely talented marketers love jazz.
I happened to mention a fairly obscure jazz band from the 1970's, the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Most people have never heard of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, let alone know who they are, but all four of the guys standing in that circle were familiar.
Is it just pure coincidence that four AdWords geeks at Ken's seminar know about one of John McLaughlin's bands? Or is there a magnetic factor in play that draws like-minded people together?
Well, listen to this song and see if there's anything about this music that reminds you of an ambitious, complex, highly optimized AdWords campaign:
I have a suspicion that you'll see the connection between AdWords and Jazz right away… especially if you're left-handed :^>
Perry Marshall
4-Man Intensive February 17-18
Maui Elite Master's Summit March 1-3
