Put Your Mouth Where The Money Is

I have humility from time to time, and I appreciate how lucky I am. I get to have great experiences with great people.

Over recent years, I’ve had the privilege of spending some time at Honesberie shooting school. I didn’t know whether I would enjoy clay pigeon shooting at first; I grew up playing first-person shooter video games in my teenage years, but truth be told, because I wasn’t that good at it at first, I didn’t have a strong opinion.

But as I went more and more and started to get better at it, I began to love it!

So much so that during one of my last visits to Honesberie, I noticed they were having an open day. I really wanted to go, and I managed to convince my fiancé to go too. She loved it too! Which is good news for me, as it won’t take as much effort to convince her next time.

It was a great day. They had live music, a BBQ (probably the last one of the year ??), and shooting stations for people to pay to try. So, if you hadn’t been to Honesberie before, it was a great day for people to get a taste of what it’s like.

But after we had a go shooting and went back inside for some lunch, we could see out onto the main field of the school, where a few companies pitched up to exhibit their products. These were companies that regularly worked with and supported the shooting school.

A couple of the companies that were there caught my eye, most notably Porsche and Land Rover, for obvious reasons, of course. These Porsches were very cool-looking cars.

As you can tell, I know nothing about cars, so I can’t tell you what models they were. I presume really fast ones.

But as I passed them, trying not to drool over them, a thought popped into my head. It has stuck with me since and is the inspiration for this article.

I’ve recently been reading Alex Hormozi’s book $100M Offers. In it, he says, “When choosing a market, be in one with lots of purchasing power.” What he means by that is either be in a market with tonnes of buyers (a lot of potential customers) or be in one with rich buyers (potential customers with a lot of money). In the case of Porsche and Land Rover, it is the latter.

They put their product in front of people with lots of buying power. The type of people who can afford to see clay pigeon shooting as a hobby tend to be high-income earners, high-income earners who can afford to drive a Porsche or a new Land Rover discovery.

This is also why Maserati and Bentley only exhibit at Yacht and Jet shows, not car shows. One reason is re-framing, but the other is all about putting your product in places with lots of buying power.

Consider the other end of the spectrum. How often do you see Vauxhall, Hyuandi, or Volkswagen cars displayed outside your local Tesco? All the time! Because they know the people who drive their cars don’t have much buying power, they put their product in places where their audience would likely be.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But truly understanding your audience and their buying power will help you position your product or service for those who have the buying power to pay for it.