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Paul B. Brown Contributor


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Entrepreneurs 1,617 views

You (And Your Company) Are Unique. So Why Is Your Marketing Strategy The Same As Everyone Else?


A few summers back, Esquire featured a gorgeous picture of Tom Cruise on the cover to go with the feature package: How to be a Man: A guide to your 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s…after that you are on your own.

Being squarely in my 50s, I might have appreciated the joke more than most. But then I got to wondering. Esquire is going after males in their 20s to their 50s. So is GQ. And Men’s Health. And Men’s Journal. And Playboy. And Penthouse. And ESPN ESPN the magazine. And Sports Illustrated. And…

If anything, those magazines will tell you they’re targeting readers at the lower end of the 20 to 50 age range—where they run headlong into publications such as Maxim, Stuff, Details, HFM… This is an awfully competitive marketplace.

The exact sort of thing plays out on the distaff side of the magazine rack. There are a huge number of publications—everything from Allure and Cosmo to Vogue and Women’s Day—designed for women 18 to 49.

I am going to stay with the magazine theme throughout this post and use it as a metaphor. My guess is that the way magazines market isn’t a whole lot different than the way you approach it.

Why all the pushing and shoving to reach the same people? As you well know, advertisers want to reach this age group because:

A) There are awful lot of these people;

B) In the aggregate, they have a bunch of money; and

C) If you get a customer when they are young, you stand to make substantial profits.

But does any of this really make sense? Maybe not.

While it is true that there are an lot of people age 20 to 49; some 42% of the population according to the Census bureau, you have to wonder how much money they actually have. When you in your 30s and 40s most folks are raising kids, and there goes the whole concept of discretionary income.

But the bigger question is whether or not you want to fight everyone else to reach the same people. If you ever watched a golf tournament on TV you instantly understand the problem. Every commercial break is filled with ads for Acuras, Audis, BMWs, Cadillacs, Infinities, Lexuses, Mercedes…Sure, if you are selling a luxury car, you want to reach an upscale audience. But if you are just doing what the competition is—advertising where rich people gather—what edge do you have?

Wouldn’t it be better to fish where there are fewer fishermen? No, I am not talking about niche markets. But underserved audiences.

That is exactly what More, a magazine aimed at women over 40, does. With a circulation of 1.3 million readers a month, which is about twice that of Esquire, and this woman’s magazine does a solid job month after month delivering what its audience wants. Articles such as Is it Ever Too Late to Find Faith, and The Joy of Accepting our Curves (where women who are never going to be described as having a model-like figure pose and discuss body issues) are not everyone’s cup of tea. But that is exactly the point. More is fishing in an under-fished pond.

Perhaps the best example of this is Seventeen, the magazine aimed at teenage girls aged 13-16. Yes, you tough-nosed business person you, you are probably tempted to dismiss the out of hand any magazine that has headlines such as OMG! Hair Makeovers. But before you do, consider this by way of perspective: The magazine has a circulation of 2.2 million—more than twice that of Bloomberg Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

The most interesting thing about Seventeen is not the celebrity interviews—Rihanna, the Awesome Reason she is so Happy Now—or the stories on “cute tees; flirty dresses and cool shoes.” It is how relentlessly consistent it is in addressing its readers worries. Questions (like this one from Rylenn, 15) about “how can I get rid of my zits fast before school starts.” are taken seriously.

Since the readers are concerned about having a lack of money—both because they are teenagers and because the economy is taking a toll on their primary source of funds, their parent’s pocketbooks—the magazine talks frequently about finances.

One issue had a banner headline across the top: Exclusive! Coupons & Freebies Inside and two stories concerning money highlighted on the cover as well. (Find the perfect jeans for your butt and budget; and Make more money for the mall.) Inside you could find answer to questions like this one from Danielle, 16: “How can I get a new look for a back-to-school dance with spending a ton of money.”

What makes this so intriguing is the fact that so few other publishers are writing on a consistent basis about the struggles caused by average families.

It just seems logical that you search for (a lot of) customers where your competition isn’t,



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