Seth Godin's blog

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I highly recommend subscribing to Seth Godin's blog on marketing.

Here's today's blog post:

Deeper or wider

If you want to grow the size of your customer base, you need to confront the buffet dilemma.

Any decent buffet has foods that please 85% of the population. Meats, cheeses, potatoes... the typical fare.

Once your business hits a natural plateau, it’s tempting to invest in getting more people to come. And what most buffets do is double down. Now, they have bacon, plus they have beans with bacon and turkey-wrapped bacon. Now, instead of one chocolate cake, they have three.

This is essentially useless. You haven’t done anything to grow your audience. The base might be a little more pleased, but not enough to bring in any new business. And the disenfranchised (the vegans, the weight watchers, the healthy eaters, the kosher crowd) remain unmoved and uninterested. And one person like this out of a party of six is enough to keep all six away.

So, there are two ways to go. Much deeper, or a bit wider.

Deeper would mean a bacon-focused buffet, a dozen bacon dishes, including chocolate-covered bacon. Deeper would mean a chocolate-obsessed dessert bar, ten cakes, fondue, everything.

Deeper gets you people willing to drive across town to visit you. It’s remarkable. It’s not like every other buffet but a little bit bigger. It’s insanely over the top. People will bully their friends in order to get them to come.

The other choice is wider. Instead of adding a handful of dishes that mildly please the people you already have, why not add brown rice and tofu and vegetarian chili? Now you’ve opened the doors to that last 15%.

This thinking isn’t available only to buffet owners. It works for summer camps. Resorts. Conference centers. Spiritual institutions. It works for any business that seeks to attract customers that come in groups where people have different wants and needs.

[kbeus21]

Ok so become more specialized in your niche (deeper) or less (wider) is there no such thing as an equilibrium? Where you post for your audience and have a large enough target where you don't need to become more specific or less? Good thoughts though.

[regska]

great post. it goes something like this, "if you want stability go deep, if you want prosperity, go wide".

[Abbey1]

Sometimes people push back on posts of mine they don't like by telling me I'm out of bounds. Somehow, they say, I've crossed the boundary of what I'm allowed to write about. They are angry that I'm now writing about something outside my defined area.
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[jstevenson]

Yeah, his blog is great.

[entrabnetworks]

Thanks fro post but there is his blog link?

[succeedemail]

Here is the link for Seth Godin's blog

Lots of good stuff on there.

[gifswfconverter]

its not easy