How often have you seen fishermen fishing near the edge of the sea?  I’m not talking about hobbyists now, I’m talking deep sea fishermen.

They know that if they want to catch either the big fish or a lot of fish, they have to go out into the deep.

Likewise, if you want to catch the big fish, valuable clients, you have to go deeper.

But here’s the rub … it’s sometimes rough out in the deep, and it might mean getting your feet wet and yes, for the ladies, we might even get our faces wet and end up with running mascara.  But it’s where the big fish are.  

Going into the deep requires that you have a different mindset (anyone can paddle), that you have the right equipment, that you know how to navigate the sea in all weathers and you understand the terrain.  But a real deep sea fisherman, knowing what his catch will be worth, is willing to go out into the rough.  

Before he embarks on his fishing trip, he’s already made his mind up about why he’s going and what he intends to catch.  He also knows that even if he doesn’t catch a big one today …

where there are big fish, there are also plenty of smaller ones.  

So now where do you want to fish?

If you’re happy with your catch of one and two at a time, then keep fishing near the edge.  However, if you want more and bigger, you’re going to have to navigate further and go deeper. 

When it comes to marketing with content online, the question is, should you go deep or wide?

I seem to be having this conversation with clients a lot recently especially when it comes to whether their new topic will fit into their existing site.

Now, there is no absolute right or wrong answer on this, but in terms of market reach, my experiences and observations over the years have not led me to deviate from the fact that you need to stick with a theme for your site if you want to attract the best clients,

You also have to remember that reach is defined by the user and not you, the supplier of the goods and services.

Therefore, your first question when deciding whether to go deep or wide should be, “who do I want to reach, and to what extent?”

Once you have decided the who and the intensity of your focus in that market, it should lead you to decide whether to apply laser focused (deep) marketing or more of a scattered (wide) marketing approach.

An example of laser focused marketing would be building a theme based site around a primary keyword term and then creating useful content that you know your target market want and can use and then distribute that content online to all the content sharing sites where you know your target market hang out.  The other plus of being purposefully directional with your marketing is that if you have chosen your keywords correctly, your target audience will find you via the organic listings in the search engines.

Contrast this to television advertising …

Television networks have a wide reach because unless there is a specific targeted channel such as the food network (deep), television networks have to serve different tastes, a little at a time, over a wide network of channels.

Content marketing on the other hand allows you to go both deep and wide at the same time and, by theming your site you can attract a very specific group of people to your business at less cost and with less marketing effort.

Alex Mandossian, my mentor used to say, “people ask me how big is your list … I tell them, they should ask, how responsive is my list.”

Playing the numbers game in marketing isn’t wrong, but it’s not necessarily effective and I’d rather go for quality (go deep) over quantity (going wide) every time.

Until next time,