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What’s Your Niche? Who’s Your Target?

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Happy Halloween! Can you imagine exploring this Shining-esque hotel for spooks and spirits?! 

This happens to be the Red Rock Inn in Ontario, Canada. We stayed here recently while on our Lake Superior Circle Tour and the local landmark was everything that excites us—historic architecture, eclectic decor, and friendly owners with fascinating stories. On top of that, our room was spotlessly clean and cozy.

Here’s the thing, not everyone would share our opinion. Not everyone is comfortable with the unpredictability of non-chain hotels. Not everyone is enamored with history. Not everyone has a desire to meander off the beaten path. And that’s okay because there’s something out there for each of us. 

What it does say to business owners—small business owners especially—is that you can’t be all things to all people. You need to have a niche. You need to target a specific audience. And both have to match who you are as a business. 

Red Rock Inn regularly hosts Ontario bands and local events.

5 Hints for Choosing Your Niche and Target Market

This article by Entrepreneur magazine is spot on. However, I’m going to reword it based on my own opinion, which is based on my own experience. Take it or leave it.

  1. Identify Your Passion and Skills
    Choosing a niche within your passion and skillset makes work more enjoyable. You’ll have greater credibility, communication, and problem-solving.
     
  2. Like Your Target Market
    Your target market are people you work with every day. Make sure you enjoy them and their demographics. 
     
  3. Research Your Competition
    Knowing your competition helps you brainstorm ways to be unique. It also reveals the profitability of a market—no competition equals no profit.
     
  4. Determine Profitability
    You have to make a living. If your niche or target market have no profit, expand one or the other, or both.
     
  5. Be Flexible
    Remember the Pandemic Pivot? When innovative change was necessary for survival? Always practice that open-minded living.

Want To Learn More of Who You Are?

What I’m Working On This Month

Each year I design a poster to commemorate our Octoberfest Brewery Tour. It’s good exercise for my creative brain and I’m accumulating quite the collection! 

What I’m Tuned In To This Month

  1. Politics of School Food: My granddaughter’s school served pizza every day in September (thankfully, she packs her own lunch).
  2. Must-reads from Milkweed Editions. Earlier this month we celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day. Here’s a list of Native authors.
  3. How Fermented Foods Shaped the World, a new book by Julia Skinner. Food history is fascinating.
  4. The Barred Owl Who Came To Visit, beautifully told by Heather Swan. God sends us what we need.
NOT SUBSCRIBED? LET’s Do This!

Does Your Bandwagon Promote Your Brand?

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June has been a busy month. In my world alone, June is Trails Day, Dairy Month, Pollinator Week, Make Music Day and Yoga Day. I say “my world” because these are my interests, they’re the things I care about. And because I’ve branded my business according to who I am, these are also the interests of my target market. 

Yep, my customers and I are on the same bandwagon.

What’s Your Bandwagon? Does It Promote Who You Are?

A bandwagon is a cause or movement based on a shared passion. We often jump on a bandwagon simply because it’s the current trend, but ideally we should be supporting causes that speak specifically to our brand.

Supporting a cause is a first step. Talking about it is the second. Our customers want to know who we are as a business. They want to know that our ideals match theirs and we are a business they want to patronize. Speak up and let them know what you care about!

If you need help with this, let me know. I’d love to give you a hand.

How 3 Brands Showcase Their Bandwagons

  • Adunate’s target audience are women-owned businesses, sustainable agriculture and more. I’m proud to serve on the board for Women, Food & Agriculture Network (WFAN). 
  • My client Forward Mutual Insurance Company carries a longstanding heritage in Wisconsin agriculture. It regularly supports June dairy breakfasts, tractor pulls and county fairs. 
  • Hope Lake Country targets the unchurched with a goal of changing lives and eternities. Its members regularly show love by donating towards community help organizations.
LET’s WORK TOGETHER

What I’m Working On This Month

My Wisconsin State Park poster is hot off the press and it turned out beautifully! Get yours today!

What I’m Tuned In To This Month

  1. Grow Our Community Resilience: Save the dates for “Together We Rise, Exploring Intersectional Feminism in Agriculture”
  2. Imagine being a survivor of a school mass shooting. Let’s not set this aside. Listen to the message these survivors share.
  3. A Rare Alignment: See all the major planets bunched together in June.
  4. The Art of Fermentation. It’s that time of year when I revisit Sandor Katz and talk fermentation with Wormfarm Institute. Neither ever get old.
NOT SUBSCRIBED? LET’s Do This!

Perfection Not Required

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By August, my garden is a mess. You’ll find pigweed amongst the leeks and purslane in the tomatoes. I used to feel embarrassed by this—apologetic even —until a CSA farmer mentioned an interesting observation. Behind every perfect garden, she said, is a large roster of volunteers or many gallons of Roundup. In other words, a perfect garden isn’t real. 

How often do we demand perfection in our business? We can’t take that first daring leap because we don’t have our startup ducks all in a row? We can’t put up a website because we don’t have our content just right? We can’t do social media marketing because our pictures aren’t Pinterest Perfect?  

Perfection Holds Us Back

Since football is upon us, here are words of wisdom from Vince Lombardi. “There’s no such thing as perfection,” said this highly disciplined man, “but in striving for perfection, we can achieve excellence.” 

Yeah, that’s pretty good.

But perhaps Harriet Braiker said it even better: “Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.”

(Seriously, I needed to make excuses for my garden?)

When it comes to your marketing your business, perfection is not required. Have the confidence to be your natural you. Get out there and go for the gusto! 

LET’S WORK TOGETHER

What I’m Working On This Month

I’m super proud to serve on the board of directors for the Women, Food & Ag Network. We’ve started our membership appeal and will be sending out these postcards. Do join us!

What I’m Tuned In To This Month

  1. Why Perfectionism Isn’t Nature’s Way: Nature has many lessons to teach us about life, leadership and creating environements.
  2. Elderberries Don’t Boost Your Immune System, and Other Coronavirus Myths Debunked: Sadly, a year later, this is worth revisiting. “Preprint or peer-reviewed journal?” and other ways to determine legitimacy of claims.
  3. Big Difference for Small Business Owners: Ten insights into a rock-solid belief in yourself.  
  4. Brené Brown Summer Sister Series on The Gifts of Imperfection: Wrapping up my summer listening, a 6-episode series with lots of sisterly love.
First Step In Marketing Plans: Branding Your Business!

Create a Media Library For Successful Marketing

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Being the visual creatures we are, photography is one of the most attention-getting and storytelling means of marketing your small business. This is true whether you’re posting on Facebook or printing a hardcopy brochure (still very effective, by the way). 

Fortunately for us, smart phones make it easy to put together a media library filled with quality photos. The tricky part is ensuring that “perfect shot” is usable and, haha, findable when you need it.

In this post I’m covering usability. Stay tuned for my next post on findability. 

Photography Determines Project Success

From my experience as a graphic and web designer, here are three tips for success in your marketing project. They will also save you time and money.

Your photos should:

  1. Be Consistent With Your Brand
    Your photography should always match your business values. It should resonate with your target market. Earlier this year I updated a website for The Real Estate Duo. Check out the photo they gave me to use on their Meet the Duo page. It shows perfectly the fun, sassy, and totally capable Realtors that they are. 
     
  2. Elevate Your Narrative
    Storytelling and marketing go hand-in-hand. What stories do your photos tell? When Wisconsin’s Soil Sisters were featured in Modern Farmer Magazine, the photography conveyed the unique relationship these women have with one another. It also enabled readers to feel part of their farms and family. Do you have storytelling photos ready when it’s your turn to shine?
     
  3. Be High-Res
    When it comes to saving you time and money, I can’t stress enough the importance of high-resolution photography. This is especially true when it comes to hardcopy promotional pieces, where professional printing requires 300 dpi or higher (note: photos copied from the internet will notwork). Remember, you can always downsize the dimensions or resolution of an image after it’s taken, but you can never increase it. Shoot your photos in the highest resolution available—in fact, change your camera settings right now! Also, be sure to email photos to your designer in their fullest size. Do not diminish the file for the sake of easier emailing. 

Stay tuned next month for helpful tips in organizing those photos!

What I’m Working On This Month

August is Fermentation Fest month—for the guide, that is. The Fermentation Fest team and I have been researching, gathering, laying out, rearranging, editing, rearranging, adding, and rearranging again. All this behind-the-scenes is culminating an extraordinary gem; a literary/art zine, both beautiful and intelligent. Watch for it in mid-August throughout Wisconsin, Chicago, and the Twin Cities.

What I’m Tuned Into This Month

  1. Turning Personal Pain into Power, Regina Brett interviews Mary Watson on resilience. Good choices determine our life.
  2. The Corner Table, Forage for Your Supper, Wow, talk about creative entrepreneuring! Fermented hot sauce, wild food walks, wild food dinners, and CSA wild greens. 
  3. Bruschetta with Pesto: Fresh tomatoes and basil, hmmmm. My favorite of the gardening season. 
  4. This is Your Brain on Nature: Even more relevant during this summer of Covid.

Thoughtful Marketing During Coronavirus Times

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Wisconsin, like most states, is struggling over the extension of its stay-at-home order. While we each have our own narrative on such news, for the sake of “we’re all in this together,” let’s agree this nasty little virus has everyone needing an extra big hug.

This, my dears, is where small business owners can make a difference. How we care for our customers could very well be the make or break of their day. It could be what they remember most about us long after this crisis is over.

Reassure Them

Make sure your customers know you’re still there for them. How are you responding to this crisis? If you had to change the way you run your business, explain the changes you’ve made and how they will help the customer. Communicate this in detail; over and over, if needed.

Be Available Online

Everyone is home right now and working from their computer. Now is the time to make your online presence its best. On top of that, everyone is feeling isolated. Take extra time to communicate personally, whether by email, text or a good, old-fashioned telephone call. 

Be Empathic in Your Advertising and Social Media

These are sensitive times. Some have lost love ones. Others are struggling financially. Our levels of tolerance are at much lower limits. Now is not the time to argue politics. Instead show love, care and concern. 

Help Your Customers BE Your Customers

How can your customers more easily acquire your product? Can they order online? Can they pay by credit card? Can you deliver to their door?

What I’m Working on This Month

So many events have been cancelled. But I’m super excited to share that Fermentation Fest is still on for this fall. Not only that, it’s the Farm/Art DTour year, with an all-new 50-mile route through beautiful Sauk County countryside. Mark your calendar for this great event!

What I’m Tuned In To This Month

  1. Herbal Academy Introductory Herbal Course. Furthering my fascination with herbs, both culinary and medicinal.
  2. In Her Boots podcast with Inga Witcher, of Around the Farm Table. A great episode on cultivating resilience.
  3. A longtime follower of Smitten Kitchen, I was awed by How I Stock My Kitchen. Life in New York is so different than the Midwest. My heart goes to all New Yorkers right now. 
  4. The Great Family Feast Cook-Off is May 1. If we can’t cook in person, we can do the next best thing. Join us!

Take Care Folks!

May you be healthy and strong. God’s blessings to all.