Marketing to Verticals

A good marketing campaign to a vertical can produce powerful results. If a horizontal marketing campaign is meant to be generic and provide safe results, then a vertical marketing campaign is meant to be specialized and generate specific results within the target market - hopefully with a higher conversion rate than horizontal marketing.

What constitutes a good vertical marketing campaign? It always begins with a message that speaks to the concerns of the buyer in the target market.

Information cannot simply be accurate and educational; it must also be timely and meet a specific information gap about which the target market is concerned. A successful vertical marketing campaign will provide answers to questions the target market already knows they must be asking. Timeliness and relevance is what will encourage the target market to respond to your campaign.

The information you are providing must be perceived as unbiased, so an effective tactic is to work with someone who is an expert within the target vertical. This person will understand the how the business works and what issues influence the purchasing decisions of buyers within that vertical. That person will be able to convey pain-points very clearly, and enhance the credibility of the message.

The next step is to align your campaign with a venue where the target vertical market is likely to look for information and education. Again, the more focused the venue the better. Remember you are targeting a specific vertical, and while there may be opportunities at venues which cover a range of topics, the more focused the venue on your particular vertical the better.

The webinar has been proven to be an extremely effective delivery system for this content, allowing the content producer to target very specific markets and measure exactly who consumed the content and ultimately purchased the product or service.

A great example of pairing a timely message with an efficient delivery mechanism is a webinar that addresses regulatory compliance. Any institution subject to regulation is going to be receptive to information that helps alleviate compliance issues.