Okay, so I don’t know how many of you know about Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, but I think it can show incredible insights into the world of affiliate marketing, especially if you want to reach a certain demographic and want to know how to market to these people. In my opinion the table has a pretty rough outline that can serve as a guideline to indicate the income bracket, and the value of services you can provide to a particular audience.
The first level on the hierarchy is pretty much basic shit. Everything in that rung is the bottom of the barrel. It’s easy to reach people in that market because the market is everybody. The low hanging nature also means it’s extremely easy to fail or get eaten by the competition. Everybody needs to eat. Everybody needs to sleep, everybody needs to homeostate
(for anyone who might not know, homeostasis is basically the body and all its systems working in harmony). The easiest thing to get into in the internet marketing world is definitely the sex industry. Pretty much anyone can get into the sex industry and make money. Bottom of the barrel people willing to pay bottom of the barrel prices.The next level is “safety”… of employment, health, etc etc. This is where all the insurance, credit cards, penny stock, employment, fugal living, payday loans, weight loss/diet and the ‘make money online’ people come in. Slightly higher money to spend than the porn sleaze-balls but often they are one and the same. These people are willing to shell out their last pay-check on anything that will help them to guarantee any of those things or make them easier to attain, etc. Unsurprisingly, this is where the majority of the internet scum hang out. Most of the scams are aimed at these people. You can’t really scam someone with sex on the internet… not that easily anyway, because sooner or later they’re gonna get what they want. These are a large subset of the population. The desperados. These people don’t care about a community, they don’t care about sage advice and they’re not gonna share their problems on social media.
The next rung above these people is the love/belonging rung. This is the domain of the Pinterest-stalking mommy blogs, dating sites, DIY home-improvement/ crafts sites, recipe sites and certain lifestyle blogs. They cross over into the weight-loss industry, but these people aren’t the ones looking for diet pills and the acai berry miracle. They are typically the “health nuts” and try their best to be healthy for their “family”. They’re the ones going paleo and vegetarian, and intermittent fasting. They’re the ones joining crossfit gyms and buying home workout DVD’s. It’s easy to market to these people if you can make them join a “community” and make them feel supported etc etc. They want to feel like a part of something. And when they are, they will tell all their friends about it. Social media is their friend. (and yours).
Above them is the esteem level, they want to be awesome and they want everyone to know about it. They wanna be super confident and they wanna achieve something. They want to go places in life and they want other people to respect them. This is where the other half of the lifestyle blogs fall. This is why books like the Four Hour workweek sell. It aims to help people get on their way to doing something great. These people aren’t stupid, they know it requires work. But they’ll easily lap up anything if it makes that job a bit easier or speeds them up on their path to greatness. It’s these people that fuel the self-help industry. They crave success so they try to mimic other people’s path. They are typically not willing to the nitty gritty work and try to throw as much money at their obstacles and hope they go away. They are the ones paying hundreds and thousands of dollars on courses, seminars, webinars, online consulting etc. They also enjoy communities, but aren’t gonna do much of the social media thing because they feel alone. They feel like they are the only ones who “get it” in their real lives and they latch on to their online communities like a succubus. It’s these people that the top in the internet marketing industry target because once you have these people, YOU HAVE THEM by the balls. You can sell them anything! You pretty much own their lives.
The top of the board are the game changers; the creators. It’s hard to sell to these people because they have seen the light. You can only sell to them what they perceive will further enhance their own businesses. You can’t sell them the dream because they’re busy creating it. This is the zero bullshit crowd. No matter how amazing your copy is, they will see past the marketing and get down to the bottom line. How is this going to improve my life and my business right now?
Obviously this is all just a general guide and in many cases the categories cross over. Sometimes smart people combine them and mix them up to come with brand new things to sell. So they combine the esteem category with sex and you get high-end gentlemen’s clubs. You get where I’m going… the possibilities are endless as long as you use a little creativity.
Let me know what you guys think :1bluewinky:
