No Bandwagons: How to Use New Market Information Discerningly

No Bandwagons: How to Use New Market Information Discerningly

No Bandwagons: How to Use New Market Information Discerningly. Image: Freekee on Wikimedia Commons.

No Bandwagons: How to Use New Market Information Discerningly

It’s all too easy to jump on a bandwagon when you’re marketing. We are inundated with information in this area (as in most areas) of our lives.

Here is how not to get overwhelmed and how to use new market information discerningly.

What’s Wrong with Bandwagons?

What’s wrong with bandwagons is jumping right onto them over and over and over instead of happily standing back watching as most of them pass you by.

This is a form of FOMO: fear of missing out.

The problem with FOMO-driven marketing is it doesn’t work (for long), and it’s boring. It doesn’t stand out (for long) and before you know it, the bandwagon and the market you were targeting have passed you by. It can also risk denaturing your brand, and messing up all the hard work you’ve put into it!

The stakes are high: use new market information discerningly.

Take Pride

First of all, take pride in what you offer others!

What you offer others should be the fruit of thoughtful reflection on the intersection between what folks need and what you are good at and at least enjoy if not love to do.

(No, this doesn’t make it your calling! It just means those are my criteria for doing a good job at doing good work.)

If you’ve satisfied these criteria, why on Earth would you throw it away at the first sight of a new bandwagon–a new marketing niche?

My Discernment Story: AWADJ

For my book group, I’m reading this sci-fi anthology. One author defined herself as an “AWADJ (artist with a day job).” I thought,

Wow! These are my people! I’ve found them! They are Artists With A Day Job! Eureka! Everything’s going to get easier from now on!

Riiiiiight.

I sympathize with you if you feel this way, and I have compassion for myself for wanting a shortcut after so many years trying to describe whom I serve. (I spent even more years trying to describe what I do! I’m better at that now.)

Here’s Where It Gets Tricky

    1. I do love and serve many soul-colleagues who are AWADJs. Check that box!
    2. The term is widely used and increasingly popular and recognizable. That would be wonderful, to have a niche I could describe in terms so many people instantly understood. Check that box, too!
    3. The third time’s the charm…what’s the third step before embracing this new niche more formally and explicitly in my marketing? Research.

Research

One little word that makes so much difference. I needed to find out who’s out there already doing it, what they offer, and just how big this phenomenon is.

And so do you if you are exploring a niche and afraid it’s just another bandwagon.

I began researching who was using the term “AWADJ” (hardly anyone).

So I took the time to play around with the search term. (See my posts on carving out the time to do stuff like this that doesn’t immediately bring a return but is crucial to your manifestation.)

Turns out that most people in the AWADJ niche were spelling it out: Artist With A Day Job. Ah! This meant that “AWADJ” itself won’t work for my marketing because not enough people recognize themselves in it who legitimately belong in it.

Continuing my research, I spelled it out and there I found the opposite problem: riches! There are gobs of useful blog posts and videos targeted to to AWADJs. And they are created by artists with day jobs! These people are doing a quality job already serving the AWADJ niche.

Discernment

Here is where you have to use discernment. RAISING CLARITY is cutting-edge. If everyone else is doing it, or even if just the “cultural creatives” are doing it, it’s not RAISING CLARITY’s niche. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Don’t reinvent the wheel. If someone else is already doing it, I want to lift up their wheel, not create a competitor.

Why? I take pride (see above section by that name) in being essential. This is the path along which I advance RAISING CLARITY.

Yes, my work on time, money, focus and mindset is super-useful to artists with day jobs.

But RAISING CLARITY is useful to a larger, different group that includes artists with day jobs.

Drilling Down the Data

If I were someone else, I might stop researching at this point, decide this new niche is big enough for me, a great fit, and start marketing to AWADJs.

But I’m me. RAISING CLARITY is wisdom, not just smarts. Smarts are useful when they’re guided by wisdom. Our own personal wisdom in particular. This is how I cultivate mine, by drilling down the data and continuing the discernment process.

If AWADJs don’t feel like my rightful niche, and do feel like they belong to someone else–why did this information come to me?

Asking Wisdom Questions

Why was I led down this research path?
What have I received that I was seeking?
What am I missing by focusing on the AWADJ niche?

These are wisdom questions. They emerge from trust. Trust in myself, trust in the Universe, trust in RAISING CLARITY, trust in what I already know. The Universe guided me and RAISING CLARITY to new information that must somehow harmonize with what I already know.

This is what I mean by trust!

By staying focused on what originally set me a-researching, I was simply not asking the right question. Yet.

The right questions are the wisdom questions above. I have already received what I was seeking. So, I can stop focusing on the AWADJ niche.

I was led down this path because I need to see my legitimate niche in a new way. Again, as I wrote above:

RAISING CLARITY is useful to a group that includes artists with day jobs.

Realization

If AWADJs are already well-served by their fellow artists, what does my research show me I offer that they don’t offer?

I can use my AWADJ research to help me think better about my true niche. It can help me better describe the people I serve.

Staying True

I already know that to stay true, my niche description has to align with my secret motto I have only ever revealed in my blog once, very recently:

Your spiritual life is what you do.

If you have a spiritual life, you have to do it–live it–in some way. It can’t stay hidden. Or it will fester.

Baby Steps

How about this:

I serve

Spiritual People With Day Jobs.

I love acronyms–and that’s a horrible acronym: SPWDJ. Unpronounceable. But it’s a start.

OK, how about this.

I serve:

Seekers With A Day Job.

SWADJ: pronounceable. Does the acronym mean anything?

“Swadj is a word…[which means] to heal and flourish by way of greening.”

Works for me!

Ultimately

Ultimately, I may work with SWADJ or I may try to come up with a great niche that spells out swaraj, because of its proud history and meaning “self-rule,” or self-governance.

Self-rule is a very very good way of describing what I seek to foster in those I coach and consult to!

So SWARAJ could play out like this:

Seekers

With

A

Regular-

Ass

Job

Or something even better!

No Bandwagons: How to Use New Market Information Discerningly

Is that all it took for me to elaborate this new marketing niche?

Yup! I know my work, I know my brand, and I know what’s consistent with my brand.

Again, if there’s a new niche that works for me, I’m in. (If there’s a new niche, and it’s really not mine but someone else’s, I’m not in!)

Just like regular digestion, information digestion can’t be forced. If you’re consuming stuff that doesn’t agree with you, your brand will let you know. Your clients will let you know. Your body will let you know, in spades. (I have had physical pain when I tried to market my work in a way that was out of alignment for me. It was sharp, clear, unusual, and I stopped it right away!)

I’m not going to market to AWADJs… but I sure as heck am going to talk to my SWARAJs as soon as possible! (Like in this post.)

Please send me and comment your questions, nods of assent, rebuttals, and new information I promise to use discerningly. To your own best brand embodiment!
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