The "Divide and Conquer" Publicity Plan: Reaching Niches One at a Time

by Marcia Yudkin 

Years ago, I received a call from the editor in chief of Lawyers Weekly. "We got a press release from you, and I wanted to let you know that it’s one of the best we’ve ever received. It’s so perfect for lawyers!" she exclaimed.

I smiled. What I didn’t tell her was that to sell a booklet I’d created, I had taken one tips-filled release and customized it for about a dozen professions. Where the release for Lawyers Weekly had "lawyer" and "case," the one sent to graphic design magazines had "graphic designer" and "project," and so on. 

The customization took some thought but not a lot of work. Not all of the niches responded, but the editor of a graphic design magazine was also impressed to the point of calling me up and asking me to write a series of articles that earned me hundreds of dollars each time and thousands in fees from clients who hired me from those articles.

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Here’s a long-term publicity strategy based on this experience that works for promoting a product or service that is relevant for quite a number of different professions, special interests or demographic groups. Instead of trying to bunch them all into one general press release, create a version of the release especially for each segment. Furthermore, send readers of each release to a landing page that’s worded especially for them, too.

Suppose you have a super-simple-to-use cell phone that can be pitched to or for the elderly, young children, the mentally handicapped and those of any age who are just averse to gadgets. For each group, you’d identify the top one or two benefits of the phone and highlight those in your headline along with naming the intended audience. For instance:

New Super-Simple Cell Phone Enables Parents to Overcome Fear of Preschoolers Getting Lost

New Super-Simple Cell Phone Gives Gadget Klutzes an Emergency Lifeline Without a Learning Curve

In the rest of the press release and the corresponding landing page, the text for the first of these would discuss the testing that proved kids between the ages of x and y were too young to use a regular cell phone but could use the super-simple one to call a parent. The text for the second would include insights into why some gadget haters can’t figure out how to use full-featured cell phones and how quickly they caught on with the super-simple one. Both versions would explain the limited functionality of the phone, the cost, available calling plans and where to buy it.

Now let’s deepen the strategy. Say you’d identified twelve professions that would particularly benefit from your specialized accounting audit. You could not only proceed as described above, but also set aside one month per niche to solicit testimonials from leaders in that group, set up speaking engagements for that profession and place articles in magazines and at web sites reaching the niche as well as issuing the relevant press release and sending traffic from it to a customized landing page.

Tackling the niches one by one is much more manageable than trying to reach them all at once. And there’s a multiplier effect that can produce even better results for you when you concentrate on reaching target markets in several ways simultaneously when you proceed month by month. 

Do not try to create the documents for this "divide and conquer" publicity strategy through some sort of mechanical substitution of words! Not only do you have to use the appropriate words for each group, you must also key into the relevant motives and benefits – the psychology.

When you create the opportunity to explain why a product or service is perfect for a type of customer, they’re much more likely to respond than when you discuss their needs, likes and dislikes, abilities and goals under a general umbrella.

Copyright 2009 Marcia Yudkin.  All rights reserved.

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