The marketing field as a whole defines “mass” marketing as “a market coverage approach in which a firm decides to disregard market segment differences and use one offer on the whole market”. – (Dictionary.com) “Niche” marketing is defined as “Concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well defined segment of the population.” – (Businessdictionary.com)
Mass marking is essentially the opposite of niche marketing, in which a marketing campaign speaks directly to a particular, but limited consumer public. To explain in a very simple manner how and why mass marketing works, would be to describe it thusly – it is like fishing with a huge net, instead of a pole – you are able to catch many fish all at once, instead of just one at a time. Niche Marketing is like using your pole in a large school of fish, you can catch a bunch of fish, but just one at a time.
When business owners set out to design their mass-marketing campaign, they must first understand the needs and wants of the target audience they hope to reach. For example, if a company were selling baby toys, it would market its product toward parents and families that were expecting new babies, or already had a young baby. It would not be beneficial at all to market their product toward an audience with no interest in baby toys, such as adolescents, or single men. The question then, is how, and where do you find your target audience?
For some time, many business owners and professionals in the marketing field have come to believe that niche marketing had made mass marketing obsolete. They believed that the traditional “one size fits all” direction of mass marketing was no longer applicable in our modern society. In the past, such marketing campaigns used mainly newspaper orNiche marketing involves all types of people magazine advertisements, or television or radio
commercials. Therefore, the promotion needed to be generalized in order to be effective, which meant that they were not very successful. Niche marketing changed that, and ensured that a marketing promotion would be successful because it could be very specific.
However, advances in internet technology, and in social media distinctively, have enabled mass marketing to become useful and practical once again. The internet allows consumers to shop for the things they want and need, or to research their interests with just a word typed into a search bar. Social media also enables brands and companies to place ads for their products on a vast variety of web media, and social networks with any relation to the item they wish to sell. niche marketing and mass marketing each are a piece of the puzzle.Therefore, the company selling baby toys would create an advertisement for their product, which could then be placed on websites that related to babies in any way.
Ads and promotions can also be shared with Facebook fans, tweeted to followers, posted to tumblir, and anywhere else that the company has an online presence. The advertisement would not have to be marketed just toward new or expecting parents, but could be designed to appeal to anyone with a baby in their lives. In this situation, niche marketing would only allow the company to reach a smaller audience of new parents or families expecting a baby, whereas mass marketing opens up a much wider consumer pool.
Today, with the help of the internet, and the ever-expanding platforms of new trends in social media, both mass and niche marketing strategies can be used effectively, and can be utilized in a much broader scope. Moreover, it is more efficient, cost effective, and profit inducing – as the web and social media allows you to reach an endlessly wider audience, rather than just a narrow, specific, objective market.
