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
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
70 Comments on “Left-handed marketing secrets”
Ohio State fans: Does Billy Cobham’s #73 jersey have “Dannelley” printed on the back?
A college drop-out. Owned an Internet business for 10 years and still going strong. My background is software engineering, complex database integration, search engine algorithms, health information technology, and I’m right-handed and I do not like Jazz, whatsoever.
We’re glad to have you, too! Don’t let anyone think this is a “left handers conformist society.”
I think another thing we can learn from this post is that once you have found something that people have in common, especially something that makes people feel special, you can create a very closed comunity in no time. That might actually be dangerous for your business, no?
If you’d let it happen, you’d have a left-handed comunity in no time and left-handed people participating in your classes would literally think they´re better just because they´re left handed.
An interesting thing is that the processes behind this are the same processes that create discrimination and racism.
(not saying here that left-handed people are any better or worse than right-handed people. I know that left-handed people have certain advantages in many fields. Soccer for example also shows more left-handed people than the average. I think it has more to do with brain stimulation that left-handed people have more of in a right-handed world. In other words, they have to work harder to addapt and therefore are more likely to find out they have a talent in something.)
The fist few bars reminded me of a Bach fugue. We know Bach was computer illiterate but was he left-handed?
A righty here… and feeling a little left out!
Love the example about the guy whose customers were disproportionately truckers. I’m going to go and revisit my client list. I’ve already targeted them by industry and by size of business… but there’s probably something else that I haven’t considered.
Thanks!
My wife is left handed and is very detailed minded, I am not, sometimes this causes a problem, I really think God puts opposites together so they can overcome what they have naturally and depend on him instead of what they have been given naturally. I cant imagine being married to anyone else. She is my perfect match even though we are totally opposite, sometimes things get tough but this causes each of us to look to God to make us stronger instead of looking to the world for the answer of why dont they do such and such for me because surely I’m right. When someone is opposite you have to look at the why and not at the my self preservation. Its hard sometimes, but if it was easy everyone would be doing it. Thanks Perry, I like reading your thoughts, Mark.
Monkey says: “All generalizations are false, including this one…”
I thought I should say something about it… :P
But the issue is interesting … Thanx, Mr. Marshall.
I always enjoy reading your writings.
…I’m left handed too! And love jazz. It would be a good idea to check our client’s database and throw a quick survey to see what else do they have in common. I’m only concerned about the sample size, some statistics aren’t valid on small samples (i.e. below 255 items or so..)
One base melody that repeats (not periodically) throught the song, surrounded by lots of other, almost chaotic, other melodies. (I’d call this creativity) It lacks a bit of predictability which is something you have to like in adwords as well.
But when you pay attention, you’ll notice that it isn’t as chaotic as it seems. This is the same in adwords.
I’m right-handed by the way and like predictability. Adwords is actually very easy once you learn how to not get burried in too much information. Lots of things that happen cancel eachother out. When you know how to filter out the “chaotic” fluctuations, you’ll see the bigger picture isn’t that complicated at all.
I saw the Mahavishnu Orchestra at a small club in Chicago just after their first album came out. 2 years ago John Mclaughlin played at the Crossroads Guitar festival in Chicago at Toyata Park. By the way do not miss the latest Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago this June.
Like jazz, Adwords optimized has many offshoots while staying and returning on the same theme.
“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.”
Not only that…
Have you heard of Belyaev’s Fox Study? A 50-year fox breeding program where the selection criterion was *behaviour* rather than appearance. Guess what? By selecting only the least aggressive foxes to breed, you also end up with foxes with different *physical* characteristics from their ‘natural’ ancestors and cousins.
…Therefore it turns out that seemingly unrelated *physical* characteristics can be predictors of behaviour!
It seems to be a law of nature… as you said, you just need to notice it :-)