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An observation

Focusing on a target market in a mere 54 hours.

I had a great opportunity to mentor some of the teams at the recent Startup Weekend Twin Cities 2. While I’ve worked with many entrepreneurs and startups over the years, there’s something magical about seeing a rough idea turned into a functioning product in 54 hours. Products and strategies quickly evolve over hours not weeks.

One team in particular reinforced the value of focus for any start up. Their original idea was to use movie theaters to raise money for nonprofits. While I challenge them to reconsider a few key points, I came back the next morning to see that they narrowed their target market focus.

Instead of focusing on all nonprofits, they decided to focus on schools only. That simple step turned a good idea into a very compelling selling point.

School funding has become tighter over the years, and many of them no longer offer critical programs like music or the arts. If you have or know kids, chances are that you know how schools fill in those funding gaps: they sell candy, candles and other crap.

Since kids don’t want to sell it, parents don’t want a haul it, and you don’t want to buy it, SitforSomething.org hosts movie fundraisers within the community. Without going into the specifics, they offer a persuasive method for schools to raise money without worrying about inventory, processing orders or other pains.

Entrepreneurs tend to hedge their bets by focusing on too many markets and in the end of rarely become successful within any of them. So kudos go out to the SitforSomething.org team for they managed to resolve a critical issue that has tripped up hundreds of entrepreneurs before them.

Bigger isn’t better

Most marketers hate direct mail. They hate the big production costs, huge postage bills and small response rates. Or maybe they just forgot this mantra: Use smaller list at higher frequencies…and technology today makes it possible.


I will be honest: direct mail hasn’t been too popular with B2B marketers quite some time. Back in the mailing glory years, we had to cobble together huge mailing list to justify the creative and production costs of any campaign. Big numbers meant more general messages meant an often pitiful response. Many have ditched it altogether in favor of e-mail.

And the shift has been impactful. According to B2B Magazine, the average person got around 5,000 opt-in e-mails in 2010, and that number is expected to grow to 9,000 by 2013.

Consider that your e-mail inbox will be bursting while your mailbox is gotten emptier. At the same time, advances in print production have driven down the cost of full-color print production to remarkable affordability.

Basically, short-run, full-color printing now allows for very effective, small B2B direct-mail efforts. A resourceful marketer can leverage full-color printing for campaigns aimed at less than 500 people.

Recently, I incorporated direct-mail into a demand generation program for a control software developer. They wanted to prospect some design engineers within the semiconductor industry. In the past, this target group proved to be too small and elusive to leverage traditional marketing, and renting e-mail list was out of the question.

While the combined mailing list was large, we were able to segment it down regionally to listen a larger than 600 contacts. Instead of sending out one large mailing to the entire group, we developed micro direct mail campaigns for each segment, increase the frequency over three months, and incorporated some e-mail and inside sales efforts.

After eight months, the campaigns helped develop more than $500K of new business.

Isn’t it time that you reconsider using direct mail?

The Elusive Engineer

Immune to advertising, adept at screen sales calls and able to resist anything that looks like marketing. Life is hell when these people are your target market. Win them over through education.


When I asked one of the company’s applications engineers to explain the science of motion control, he said that it was a “bastard science.” He wasn’t far off. Motion control is a complex combination of electrical and mechanical engineering as well as computer science. Even though this science is routinely applied in many industries, such as semiconductor and medical technology, it is rarely taught in engineering schools.

Technical articles and other information on this topic are scattered across many trade magazines and other sources, making it hard for engineers, let alone professionals within the industry, to stay informed.

Exploring alternatives for corporate branding and product promotions, this information vacuum proved the perfect vehicle for reinforcing in the company and introducing new products. The email newsletter featured articles from the trade press and technical articles from the company’s industry partners and was peppered with brief product features and company announcements. Links from the article summaries were routed to a companion Web site that also featured an extensive glossary and recommended book lists.

With minimal promotion and media relations, the subscriber base quickly grew to over 1,000 monthly readers and also generated significant traffic to the company’s Web site.