Its targeting time again. Every half dozen years, the industry begins to harp about targeting. Go vertical! they say. Use a rifle, not a shotgun, they say.

The truth is that targeting and going vertical are common sense selling strategies that have been around for decades, but somehow, each new cadre of analysts would have you believe that its something totally new.

Why target? Its simple your ever-present business goal is to increase sales and decrease costs. This is called yield. You want a higher yield more sales for a lower cost. Targeting is always the best way to get that.

Heres a simple example of why going vertical matters. You have a list of one thousand email addresses representing prospects in four different types of people farmers, software developers, musicians, and non-working housewives. Each group has about two hundred fifty addresses in your list. Lets assume an email costs you five cents. Because you dont know any better, you mail your first offer a 20% discount on Microsoft Visual Web Developer to the entire list. It costs you $50 in email fees. You get six orders of $200 each for a total of $1200 a yield of 24.

Then you get smart. You go vertical. You go back in time and mail the same offer but only to the 250 software developers on your list. You get five orders of $200 each for a total of $1000 (who knew that one of the housewives was a closet developer!) at a cost of $12.50 for the email a yield of 80 more than three times the previous yield!

Going vertical using the rifle instead of the shotgun is always good practice because it always results in increases of yield.

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Sean Ray is an accomplished internet article writer, and uses articles to drive online traffic.