If The Parents Hate It, The Kids Will Love It

One good rule of thumb about business blogging is to narrow down the target audience.  To be an effective marketing tool for your business, your blog must to be the result of a well-planned strategy aimed at a specific segment of the market.  I advise picking one area of focus, rather than trying to tell your blog readers about everything you have to offer and about all the things you do.

Just the other day, in Speaker (the magazine I receive as a member of the National Speakers Association) there was an article by Terri Langham about the Alice Cooper rock music group.  By way of reminder for those blog readers not “into” the rocker scene, the Alice Cooper 1972 hit “School’s Out” topped the charts worldwide.  The groups’s tour the following year broke box office records formerly set by The Rolling Stones.  The Alice Cooper stage show was “way over the top” by anybody’s standards, complete with guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, live chickens, and a real boa constrictor.

The point Terri Langham was making about this band was that it had a signature way of doing things, a “brand”, and she advises aspiring professional speakers to develop their own unique brands.  But the point I want to bring out here relates to the thought process the band members used in creating their Alice Cooper brand.  Realizing that having a male (Vince Furnier as Alice Cooper) playing the role of a witch in tattered women’s clothing and makeup and holding a snake would cause social controversy, the band made a brilliant career decision.  They focused on one target audience – kids.  “If the parents hate it, the kids will love it.” became the motto.

I’m no rock groupie, to be sure, but as a professional ghost blogger, I find the Alice Cooper marketing strategy “right on”. Narrow down your target market.  Figure out what those people need and want that you have or that you do.  Then do everything you can to “speak” to those people through your blog. You don’t care if other segments of the market hate your blog – you want your target customers to love it… all the way to your website!