Mass Markets
Unless you have a pre-WWII relative living with you, you may not realize that there used to be a world without mass markets. There was a time when everything was invented, produced & sold locally. And these goods and services were strictly targeted to the VERY small audience of a local, regional area. If you search really hard, you may be able to find pockets of this kind of lifestyle in small, localized markets today. We often refer to those areas and towns as "backwards" - a derivation of "backwater". To be more succinct, these places (and the people in them), enjoy "the simple life".

Fast-forward to post-industrial, post-WWII America. The industrial revolution had been in full swing for 60 or 70 years (2-3 generations). People benefited from cheaper consumer goods, for sure, but by and large - folks still shopped in small, local shops, knew their neighbors and behaved like thousands of regional, niche markets. Then - BAM! Everyone - and I mean EVERYone had the same hairstyles, the same clothing, drove the same cars, use the same laundry detergent and ate the same TV dinners. What changed?

TV dinners. Well, no. Not the dinners - so much as TV. TV made it possible to send one, uniform, compelling message to hundreds of thousands, then millions, then 10s of millions of people very cheaply. Mass Marketing was born. That's right. 60 years ago, Mass Marketing didn't exist. Your great grandparents would say things like: "If everyone else jumped off a cliff..." They were used to doing simple things for them selves - not simply doing what everyone else was.

All this SINGLE MESSAGE for a SINGLE MARKET led to one thing: homogeneity & "Good Enough". Think McDonalds. Think WalMart. Think Old Navy. Think Ma Bell. Think GM.

Fast-forward to 1998. The birth of the Internet. Yeah, yeah - I know - the Internet is older than that. But, I'll argue, not really useful or valuable until the advent of Google: 1998.

The Long Tail
The Long Tail describes how markets have fragmented into an infinite number of "niche" markets since the advent of online shopping and "search".

If you have not read Chris Anderson's seminal work: "The Long Tail" - you should. (I "read" all my books on audio on my iPhone using my Audible account these days - but I still prefer print for magazines)

Mr. Anderson describes how, in any given market, if you measure the success of a product or service, there will clearly be front-runners. If you plot these results, you get a curve with a large "head" to the left and a long "tail" trailing off to the right. Mass Marketers only focus on the "head" of the curve - not the long tail trailing off to the right. WalMart only sells the top-selling CDs in it's stores. You won't find any rare, indie, obscure music there. But, they are the number one music retailer. The stuff they carry is "Good Enough" for 80% of consumers. At least, it was...

Micro-markets & being the best
Apple, on the other hand, decided to sell into the long tail. The iTunes Store carries thousands of times more tracks than any music retailer. It doesn't matter if they only sell one copy of a track to one customer. The music is digital & takes up no shelf space. This allows Apple to be the best music vendor for their customers. Not just most of their customers - ALL of their customers. They can sell into ANY niche market. They can carry ALL my favorite songs - and ALL of yours.

Think about that.

Why would anyone want to shop anywhere but the store that is the BEST (for them)?
They don't. They WONT.

This is the dawn of the Micro-Market; the Niche Market.
You can't every be all things to all customers - but you CAN be the best - to a select few.

So get out there! Stake your market claim and BE YOUR BEST.