Author Archives: emulatelife

“Niche” (market) Q & A!

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bulls eye 3

What is a “Niche”?

A Niche (market) is when a product is focused on a specific group, typically a moderate demographic.

Why should I choose to create a product for a specific niche?

Products that are created for a specific niche are proven to become more profitable than those that are created for a general customer base!

Did you know:

Facebook was originally created to fill the demand of a universal social network for college students…

How can a Niche be more profitable?

It’s quite simple to explain how a niche can be more profitable than a product that is not created with a specific customer in mind. By narrowing your target number to those that fall in a certain group of people, you are automatically saving your company expenses by not advertising to the uninterested! The other positive side of a niche, is that you are only spending your valuable time and money on those people that actually matter. Think of it like this. If my company just created a new high-tech baseball bat, why on earth would I advertise on TV during a football game?!

Does my target niche have to be large?

The answer is, NO! The most important (and obvious) part of your niche, is that the people in it spend money! Say my goal for the month is to make $5000. My niche contains 15,000 people and I’m selling a product that only costs $100. If only 50 (.33%) people buy my product, I have easily reached my goal. This is called “the minimal customer base.” It is not unusual to get a .5%-1.5% response to an ad that is targeted to a demographic! For example: Don’t market to dog owners, but instead market to ONLY German Shepard owners. German Shepard owners are a large enough demographic to make it worth your wild, and the simple fact is, they spend money!

How to find a Niche!

The easiest way to be profitable in a niche market, is to be part of the niche yourself. Think of what social activities you partake in, industries your part of, or professional groups that you belong to.  Pick 2 markets that you’re familiar with. Look for 2 smaller magazines with a readership of at least 15,000 people that is specific to your niche that offer full page advertising for less than $5,000 dollars. Next, brainstorm products that can fill a gap in this niche! Do not create a demand, fill a demand. This is of course easier to know what the demand is since you are part of this specific group!

What Do I Do Next?

  • Digest this information into your think tank.
  • Find what niche you are part of.
  • Find gaps that have a demands in that niche that needs to be filled
  • Brainstorm product(s) that can fill that demand.
  • DO NOT invest money into that product!
  • Instead, run tests ads (click here for tips)
  • Study the response based on the test ads. If the response is good, take it to the next step. If the response is not in your favor, go back to the drawing board and try again.

Hope you found this useful, and as always, I love hearing your feedback and stories of your results!

Being Different ! (For Advertising)

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BeDifferent

 

How can your advertising stand out?? 

The answer is simple, BE DIFFERENT!

How can your ad be different?  Well that anser is also simple, study the advertising industry!

 

One of my favorite quotes that I adopted from a favorite person of mine is,

“Design Is As Vital As The Engineering!”

- Sean Parker, Entrepreneur. 

 

The  A-I-D-A  Model:

A-I-D-A stands for: Attention, Interest, Decision, Action! 

(Yes I go out-of-order, but deal with it :)

Interest:

You see adds all day everyday, right? Well, which ones stick out to you? What commercial stands out to you? Is it that commercial for a $20,000 Hyundai that tries to appeal people’s unconscious (or conscience) desire to live a life of luxury and “Status”, but don’t have the kind of money for their (my) dream Lamborghini? By appealing to people by showing that they can have luxury at an affordable price (without saying it), it shows the “live like a millionaire”  mentality, without actually being a millionaire. It doesn’t even have to be an exotic car, it can be something that has represented having “status” since the early days of cars, and that’s the famous Cadillac. Typically, what is a Cadillac Escalade? A Chevy Tahoe on “steroids” (fancy ones of course). I know I may be getting off subject, but the point is appealing to the customer in showing a SIMPLE  way of how your company can positively benefit their life. This may sound easy but it takes some THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX! Say your product is a service like landscaping. A typical ad may say something like “Let us do your landscaping for you and save you the hassle!” What hassle? maybe a potential customer doesn’t think it’s a hassle. That means they cannot relate to your ad, therefore, they see no reason for why your services are a “necessity”, even if in reality it’s a luxurious type of thing to have. Instead, be different  by saying something like, “If time is valuable, shouldn’t you be spending it with your family?” Notice how there is no mention of landscaping, and that’s because you’re not selling “landscaping” your selling “freeing up time.” And by appealing to how people think of their time as being valuable, and their family being valuable, you have their interest.

 

Attention:

If your advertising by flyers, there’s a simple way to get attention to your ad.. Paper all looks the same, ad or not, so why not make the paper of your ad different? No I don’t mean start your own paper manufacturing company so you can print your special ads on them! Do this simple thing to be different! Be different by using different colored paper! Spend a few pennies extra to buy the colored printer paper and have your ads printed on those. My recommendation is to use LIGHT not bright! Don’t choose a dark color blue or green, but choose instead a light color to get more than average attention with a positive “vibe” because of the lighter colors. Don’t use NEON colors, you may stand out, but not in the right way. Plus it will make it harder to read (no matter the text color). By making it harder to read, it doesn’t matter what valuable information is printed on it because it won’t get read.

 

Decision. 

Not much to explain here because if your Attention and Interest worked, the Decision is made and now it’s time for action!

 

Action!

Action is just as important as getting their attention, and blowing them away with your “outside the box” thinking for interest! You have the customer, now tell them what to do next. Also know as a call to action! With your call to action, don’t ask, just TELL ! Of course tell them in a professional and courteous way.

 

Comment and tell me what advertising ways work for you! 

 

Advertising on Facebook

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facebook add post

-What kind of crazy person would think of something like that?

-Facebook advertising is for big companies.

-Advertising on facebook would cost way too much money !

 

These would be the things you would hear if you were to talk to a small business owner about advertising on Facebook. However, these “concerns” above are absolutely mistaken!

 

Everyone sees the ads on the right sidebar of your Facebook screen that is probably up in another tab as we speak. But have you ever thought about advertising with Facebook? Probably not, and if you did, you probably figured it would be too costly. Maybe you thought it wouldn’t work because your business is not an online company and instead is “offline” and just a few miles from your home, or is in your home. Well I’m hear to tell you that advertising on Facebook for small businesses can be very effect!

 

When everyone in your city is on Facebook, shouldn’t your ad be?? 

 

Recently I spoke with a lady who lives in the small town of Pflugerville, Tx (I’d never heard of it before either). The city poppulation (according to Google) is 48,753. The lady I spoke with, has 27 years in the Optical Industry and tired of working for someone else making them all the money while she was doing all the work! After taking the hardest step in March 2012 and creating her own Opticianry, she is staying a-float, but would love to increase her customers and her income! After speaking with her a little, I started thinking about how many other small business wanted to increase their income too. My discovery was astonishing! Well apparently ALL  of them would like to! Which lead to my second question, how many small businesses do I see advertising on Facebook? I came to this conclusion..none!

 

Why don’t small business advertise on Facebook? Was the question that came to mind. The only logical answer that came to mind was the simple fact is that they are not informed (no, I didn’t say stupid). Remember that whole saying, “Knowledge is power”? Well I feel that the knowledge of how easy and potentially effective advertising on Facebook can be, has not been taught to these small business owners! So here I am to learn you stuff! -I mean “teach”, common mistake, I swear.

I will teach you through an example ad based on the story of the Optician.

Tools needed:

  1. Business
  2. Facebook account
  3. Facebook Ads (can be found on Google)

Location, Location, Location. Probably one of the most common sayings in business and realtors.  Well location is of course the most important thing when it comes to advertising for your small business! Especially if that business has doors, a sign, and a building! Why wouldn’t you only pay to advertise only to people in your area?

Screen Shot 2013-03-14 at 9.12.43 PM

 

Facebook gives you different options of who to advertise to based on location. For my scenario, I chose “by city” because that’s the location of my business. Out of the total population [of Pflugerville, Tx ], 17,920 are age 19+ and on Facebook! I wanted to have a little more than 17,000 people to advertise to, so I chose to also advertise to the cities within 10 miles since that’s not a far distance either.

 

 

Narrow down your customer based on their interests.

 

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For this part of my add, I didn’t add any interest or “Broad Category” for the simple fact of this, not many people are going to “Like” a page called “Glasses” or “Contacts” because that’s what they wear, they just wear them. (Note: I put the age for 19 because typically anyone under that age will be having their parents buy optical stuff for them.)

 

What’s the number of people in my area that I’m targeting?

Screen Shot 2013-03-14 at 9.13.43 PM

 

Not too bad of a number. Not too ridiculously big, but enough to advertise to.

 

BUDGET. 

One of the most important things when it comes to small business, as well as advertising! In my opinion, for your first ad, only spend between $100-$300. Now on facebook you can chose to have your add run continuously (NOT recommended) or for a limited time (Recommended). For my example I chose to have a budget of $20 a day and run the add for 2 weeks (14 days).

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ad length

 

 

Choose your pay method !

Now you can choose whatever pay method you’d like. I personally care for the “optimized for impressions” choice (but who cares what I think?). In all honesty though, either method is a great choice and I’d recommend trying one of the options the first time, and then make at least one other ad using the other and seeing what’s better for you.

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Summing It Up.

In total,

  • I’m targeting 64,180 people
  • My add is running for 2 weeks (14 days)
  • And will only cost me $280

 

WHAT’S NEXT?

Measure how effective your add is, make changes (like description wording) and run another add at the same budget and time frame (maybe try the other pay method this time) and measure that second ad. At the end of the month, see which ad specifically was more effective, and in total, was the month of advertising on Facebook effective. (Note: The “average” return on advertising is 3-5%. So don’t expect a flock of 64,000 people raiding your business all wanting to give you money! The one’s you do get, make sure that when they leave, they are happy customers that will be sure to tell their friends about you!

 

Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing back from you in a month with your results and what seemed to work best (if anything) for you!

Can Objects Increase Productivity?

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(Now you’re hungry)

I wanted  to share a story about a man and his blender.

So last week I bought a blender (no big deal right?). Correct. But, I’ve seemed to notice is that since I’ve had this blender I’m changing my eating habits.

Protein shakes aren’t the best tasting. Anyone who has had even one of them (any flavor) knows this! Because I have multiple protein shakes throughout the day, this would be more like TORTURING  myself! My solution to prevent this constant torture was to  buy a blender. By having this blender I figured I’d be able to mix it up with a little “spice” to my shakes, and by spice I mean fruit. Supposedly fruit makes your protein shake taste much better (the myth is true), and with all the excitement of spicing up my shakes, I’ve even done a crazy thing and make it into a smoothie!

Cool story Matt, but where the heck does productivity come into play? The blender has not only made me change the way I have my protein shakes, but now I see it rubbing off into my eating habits as well. There is not much to choose from as far as food on base, and what there is to pick from, is unhealthy! Since buying my blender, I’ve been saving a lot more money by nor going out because I make a lot more of my own meals. I almost find myself picking at least one thing that I can throw in the blender to have with my meal. I am using my blender for everything and it almost feels as if it’s a game. I even chop up some tomatoes, and cilantro, and other ingredients in order to make some homemade salsa with a recipe I found online (delicious)!

What can be better than enjoying delicious food and eating healthy?  Saving money! And by not eating out all the time, money is definitely being saved! May not seem like a lot of money I’m saving, but that’s more to invest in business than if I ate out! And to me, that’s much more worth it than eating harmful and unhealthy food !

Go buy a blender! #kidding

Am I saying that you live an unhealthy lifestyle and need to by a blender??  NO! (unless you know your lifestyle is unhealthy, then maybe). What I’m saying is that objects have the potential to increase your productivity. Maybe it’s a blender, maybe it’s something for your business, but whatever it is, continue to use and see if there is another product that can be added for additional success. Oh, and by the way, just because you buy a product, doesn’t mean it will do all the work for you. Apparently, just by spending a ton of money on a Mac, doesn’t mean it will magically create you a movie that is automatically a BLOCKBUSTER HIT! (my dream was crushed).

Leave a comment below and tell me what products in life or business have helped increase your productivity! 

Welcome !

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welcomemat

(No pun intended)

Hello and thank you for checking out my blog. I do know as of right now, my blog may seem very empty and plain, and that’s simply because…well it is. But like everything there is always that initial starting point. Mark Zuckerburg did not create Facebook and miraculously have thousands, million, or billions of members,  like it does now.

Who Is Matt Day?

Well, I am currently enlisted in the United States Navy as a Master of Arms (best rate known to sailor)! I have always seen myself as a Businessman and Entrepreneur and whether it be from sports or working, being a leader and a key influencer to make a change has always been something I’m good at.

At age 16, when I got my license, I took over my father small business which I ran by myself (except when I needed some advice), and ran the company until August of 2012  when it was time for me to go to bootcamp (age 18). Simotaniously, I worked as a sales representative at Empereon Marketing starting in March of 2012. In that short time I worked at Empereon, I went from the lowest level campaign, to the top priority campaign within 2 months. I continued to flourish as one of the top 5 salesman on the campaign until I left there in August.

I attended Greenway High from 2008-2012. During high school, aside from work, I played football 3 of the 4 years (not sophomore year), and my freshman year went undefeated. I was in JROTC all 4 years, and participated on the shooting team my Sophomore through Senior year. All 3 years of shooting, we went to Nationals and received 5th in the Nation my Junior year.

What’s the point of this Blog?

Well I’m glad you asked! I’ve been getting more in touch with my business and entrepreneurial side lately. Researched some of the most influential Entrepreneurs, and have read extensive amounts of their stories of their success. It’s my pleasure to share with you how I am taking this knowledge, their stories, and tools they use/recommend, and share it with you. Learn from my mistakes as I strive to make my visions a reality, and even get in a good laugh (hopefully) from the stories I have to share.

Now you may find that I refer a lot about Lifestyle Design. That’s because it’s a term, and lifestyle philosophy that I have adopted from the famous, Tim Ferriss. In this philosophy, he shares how it is possible to work less, yet make more money while living the kind of lifestyle you’ve dreamed of. All you have to do is the design. I do strongly recommend reading his book, The 4-Hour Workweek.

So lets begin our journey, together !