Recognize your target audience

It is very important to rcognize your target audience and their needs and what gravitates them to be loyal customers of yours. When you have that information, you have the key to optimizing what you do best to draw the same crowd to you, so much so that your product or service becomes entertwined as a big part of their lives. This can also be translated as a niche market where you fulfill the specific needs of this specific targeted group.

Here's a fine example of a big marketing flop. The example clearly shows that if you do not grasp your target audiences' needs well enough, you will in turn lose your customers. These customers come to you for a very specific product/service that they are very accustomed to, altering alittle or a total revamp on your product/service will be an unwise option, as you lose the core reason why these customers are loyal to you in the beginning.

Here's the failed marketing strategy deployed by Pat Boone for a new image makeover:

Pat Boone: Metalhead

Pat Boone is known as a devout Christian and wholesome family man. He originally became famous by recording "white bread" cover versions of R&B hits by performers like Little Richard and "Fats" Domino -- minus their soul, sex appeal and rebellion. Face it, Pat Boone is about as "square" as it gets. That's his positioning!

But despite the fact that Boone has been hugely successful -- with sales of over 45 million records -- that was a long time ago. Outside of the religious community, he has been irrelevant in the mainstream music business since the mid '60s.

His solution was a new group of performers to cover and a radical "image change." So Pat Boone released a "heavy metal" album earlier this year...

Called In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy, the album contained versions of such songs as Paradise City, Smoke On The Water, Stairway To Heaven and, of course, the title track.
Then, to promote the album, Boone appeared in black leather, a studded dog collar, dark shades and fake tattoos at The American Music Awards and The Tonight Show!

Of course, the whole thing was kind of a spoof...essentially, Pat Boone making fun of his own "goodie two shoes" image.

Unfortunately, he forgot that some of his (former) "target audience" has little sense of humor. He received a lot of hate mail. And the Trinity Broadcasting Network actually canceled his weekly music show, Gospel America. TBN said the decision was based on "recent changes in the focus and content of Pat's music."

As for Pat's reaction, he said: "I'm going to wind up losing a lot of fans, but I'll gain new ones who realize I'm not as square as they thought."

Sure.

Moral of the story is, stick to what works for you. If you need to revamp and try to cash in on new market segment, diversify to a new product or service, instead of messing with the product or service that is already working well for you.