We hear a lot about targeting our email advertising marketing and sales letters to very specific niches. That makes a lot of sense. From a practical perspective there is just so much marketing noise that unless you target your message to a very specific group it will just get ignored.
But here’s something you may not have thought about. The more that you tailor your message to the behavioral type that you are targeting, the more response you will get. This isn’t as difficult as one might imagine.
There are four main behavioral types. You’re probably familiar with these if you’ve ever completed a Myers-Briggs test or participated in a company assessment program. Although the four types are often called different names, for the purposes of this article we will refer to them as Aggressives, Expressives, Technicals and Social Animals. Naturally, there will be some overlap among the four types but what we are attempting to do is to develop a marketing message that will positively resonate with the majority within a particular group.
Much the same way as people have a dominant behavioral trait, business niches have similar characteristics. For example stock brokerage firms, executives recruiting firms and real estate agencies all tend to fall into the Aggressive category.
These businesses are transactional in nature and hyper-competitive. The Aggressive behavioral trait likes its information in bite sized and succinct doses. They like facts and have less respect for opinions unless they are back up by research. Thus when you email or write this group you want to state in your opening sentence why you are writing and what’s in it for them. Using bullet points is very appealing to this group. Close with a very strong call to action and don’t be afraid of challenging their desire to achieve results. “Aggressives” respect aggressive behavior in others.
Market niches that are in the Expressive category would include, sales training companies, motivational speakers, pharmaceutical sales and others that focus heavily on communication skills and persuasiveness. This group tends to be very visual, thus painting a picture of a desired outcome is a very effective way to convince them to do business with you. Using video in your online marketing resonates particularly well with this group.
The “Technicals” niche includes a wide array of companies from IT, to engineering, to many consulting firms. This group respects and requires data in order to make a decision. Lots and lots of data. Unlike the Aggressives, this group wants you to be very specific in your email and sales copy. The longer the better, so don’t be afraid of information overload. This is the group that will print out your emails and ask you very specific questions based on what you’ve written. Thus, the more detailed information that you can include, the better.
Finally, the Social Animals include many Human Resources consulting firms, educational institutions and a large percentage of companies in the not-for-profit world. This group likes other people, but tends to shy away from making decisions that might be unpopular. Thus the use of “social proof” or references is extremely important. They want to be assured that taking a specific course of action will not harm their relationships with others.
Thinking about the behavioral type of your niche can give you clues about what you want to emphasize in your emails and marketing letters. It’s been our experience that the more that you tailor your message to the behavioral type of niche to the greater the response you’ll get.