Location, location, location.  Are you there when your customers crave?

In marketing, location means you – or your branding message – is where your audience is.  It may mean being at the top of SEO for vital keyword searches.  Or a Pinterest page that perfectly aligned with a popular hobby.  Or a restaurant on a corner that’s a natural hang-out.

Often, business owners think of marketing locations in terms of the obvious.

Obviously you want to be on top of search results.

Obviously you want to be on social media popular with your target audience.

Obviously you want busy spot for your physical location.

You can’t ignore the obvious.

However, if a location is obvious to you, that means it’s obvious (and over-targeted) to your competition as well.

Savvy entrepreneur does the obvious!  This is not a headline you read often.

But here is a headline from the LA Times:

Girl Scout sells cookies outside pot dispensary: 117 boxes in 2 hours

A savvy girl scout is setting cookie sales records by trying a new location:  outside a marijuana dispensary.

The choice is targeted, but not obvious.

It’s targeted because pot smokers are known to get the “munchies“.  Girl scout cookies qualify as a great munchy snack.

It’s targeted because nobody else is selling any type of food outside the dispensary (good chance that will change as stories like this get out).

This is a blue ocean strategy.  Instead of fighting it out in front of the grocery store, she’s moved to where there is no competition.

Her choice is not obvious.  Though marijuana is sold legally at dispensaries, the “pot head” has pejorative connotation.  Most wouldn’t think of having their daughter sell cookies to drug users (In fact, the Girl Scouts of Colorado expressed their disapproval).

But you can’t deny her sales numbers.  And there is a clear lesson here for entrepreneurs.

Sometimes the most obvious business locations are not the best – because they are so obvious.  You can sell hot dogs in front of the ball park, but you won’t be the only one there.

The blue ocean – away from the competitive frenzy – requires that you move to someplace no one else has thought of before.  It requires risk.  This girl scout is taking some risk – the Colorado response shows not everybody approves.

It also has to be somewhere the target audience is.  Selling cookies outside Weight Watchers probably wouldn’t work so well.

But when you do it right, word will spread.  The pot dispensary posted about the girl scout on their Facebook page, spreading the word to all their followers.  They even did a post spoofing the Dos Equis beer “most interesting man in the world.”

Marketing geniuses know their audience and find innovative ways to target them.

Damn, I just found a really great hot dog stand…just around the corner from Weight Watchers.