Who's Reading Your Books?

We've all heard a lot the last few years about niche events; about how the popularity of online social networking has given rise to vast, specialized communities with untapped potential for face-to-face marketing; and about how tapping this potential requires really knowing an audience.

Recently, I got a personalized lesson in what it all really means.

Goodman Media Group unveiled a new event, a conference and expo for yoga and Pilates practitioners, teachers and studio owners. It's scheduled Aug. 7–9 at the Hilton New York, and the headline sponsors will be Goodman magazines Fit Yoga and Pilates Style.

Most Tradeshow Week readers probably don't know that I teach yoga in my spare time. I've been practicing yoga for about eight years and am starting to spread roots in the yoga community.

At first I was excited to see an announcement about a new yoga event come across the wire. Then I saw who was sponsoring it and realized I would never attend — at least not in my yogini capacity.

Don't get me wrong: Fit Yoga and Pilates Style are good magazines with vast followings. They're just not the types of publications that people who belong to the school of thought I subscribe to would read regularly. I'd explain why, but it would require getting into a bunch of boring philosophy and history. You'd really have to a yogi to understand ...

Which is the point.

Goodman's event will undoubtedly feature the kinds of sessions and products that appeal to its magazines' readers. Whether or not the event succeeds is irrelevant to those who prefer, say, Ascent (a Canadian, and more esoteric, yoga read). What's more, even if the Goodman event does succeed, that wouldn't necessarily preclude someone else from launching another yoga event that would attract hundreds or thousands of attendees that prefer Ascent. And the success of those two may not preclude another successful event for people like me (I prefer Yogi Times).

That is the nature of niche events: They're highly specialized. Unlike the mainstream, this world isn't mastered by pleasing all the people some the time, or some of the people all the time. Instead, you have to please all the right people at the right time, by knowing — exactly — who they are.