George Blogs!

Today, I would like to share with you a strategy that is nothing short of miraculous. If applied correctly, it can make you a small fortune with very limited investment in terms of time and effort. And, in the process of applying it, we are going to practice the art of STP marketing (Segment, Target, Position).

Frequent readers of my blog know that it is marketing, rather than content, that sells a product. No matter how great your info product really is, no one but you (and, possibly, your ghostwriter) will appreciate it if no one’s buying your e-book. Further, you will also recall the importance of segmenting your market and targeting your product to appeal to a specific target segment, rather than the market in general.

But here’s something interesting to consider - how much difference is there between market segments? For example, for a divorce-prevention e-book, we can use the following criteria to segment the market:

• Gender (whether the book is aimed at men or women)
• Causes (whether the book deals with divorce prevention in general, or specific causes in particular, such as infidelity, finance, etc)
• Age (recently married couples will likely face difference divorce issues than those who have been together for 20+ years)

Let’s assume now that we segment the market using the Gender criterion, which, for the most part, is the safest way to do it (you don’t want to target a segment that hasn’t got enough prospective customers). With that done, ask yourself the following question - if you were to produce one divorce prevention e-book aimed at women and another aimed at men, how much difference do you think there would be between the two in terms of content?

And the answer is - not a whole lot. To be sure, there will be minor differences - but, for the most part, the real difference between the two products will lie not in content, but in packaging - in other words, the graphics of your site and the style and content for your sales copy. You will want to hit different emotional buttons and appeal to a different audience - but the content of the book will not actually change that much!

Using this trick, you can easily turn a single product into two without too much research on your part. Remember, the product itself is nowhere near as important as how you market and position it to your prospective customers. Better still, a product that is positioned to appeal to a well-defined market segment - rather than the entire market in general - will almost always have better appeal - and, consequently, feature higher conversion rates - than a product that attempts to be mainstream in a segmented market. By splitting your product into two, you’re not only making more money with two products instead of one, but you’re actually making each one of them convert better. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is!