A small but profitable segment of a market suitable for focused attention by a marketer. Market niches do not exist by themselves, but are created by identifying needs or wants that are not being addressed by competitors, and by offering products that satisfy them.
a specialized market
You’d like to sell more, right? More of your product, service, program, offering; whatever it is you are paid to deliver.Maybe it’s because you’d like to make more money. Maybe it’s because you’d like to help more people. Hopefully, you’d like to do both.
A niche market is a subset of the overall market. You can term it as a sub section of the market in general, which has not been tapped to a large extent. Niche marketing is simply the application of all the marketing efforts towards this specific segment of the total market. It involves marketing the firm’s products and services towards a distinct class of consumers.
Targeting a niche market doesn’t imply that you are excluding potential clients. Rather you are focusing your marketing efforts at a specific market segment which is more likely to buy from your business firm.
Layers in Niche Market
To make things easier for you, consider the above diagram. Let’s say the orange part denotes a beverage industry. This industry itself is a compilation of different submarkets like alcohol, cold drinks, caffeinated drinks etc. A niche market would be a market of say energy drinks. But a prudent business would dwell in further and attempt to reach out to the definite section of the population. Thus, it may venture into energy drinks for an age group ranging from adolescence to the late twenties who are involved in sports. This is the micro niche carved out by the firm. If it wishes to go more specific, it may peel out more layers within this small area.
Niche marketing works on the “Smaller is Bigger” mantra. One of the biggest mistakes done by new business entrants is when they fail to cut their coat according to their cloth. Harboring ambitions of capturing 100 percent of industry share is no sin, but it requires an amalgamation of different factors such as time, strategy, workforce etc.
Research Keywords
Armed with an idea of what your customers want more of, you’re ready to start researching which terms they use to talk about these popular topics.
Keyword research isn’t about ranking high on search engines (although that’s a fantastic byproduct of your work). It’s about speaking your customer’s language.
There are many tools out there to help you find the keywords and understand how competitive each one is.
Research Topic Ideas
Now you have an idea of what gets your audience excited and the terminology they’re using to reference these topics. The next step is to dig into the topic ideas and pull out the meatiest parts for your blog.
Researching your blog topic makes you sound authoritative. More importantly, it makes you sound helpful.
When you’ve clearly done the work to cover a topic, your reader will notice. She will appreciate the lengths you’ve gone to answer the tough questions. With all the noise online today, this one step can be the difference between your reader hitting the back button and becoming a loyal fan.
To start your research, go back to the comments sections of the blogs where your readers hang out.
- What questions are people asking?
- What’s sparking debate?
- What’s getting people excited?
The more you can dig into the trigger topics for conversation, the more you’ll attract a reader base interested in following your blog. Ultimately this is the key to building your audience.
Don’t let your only search effort stop with Google (or another large search engine). Go to each individual network and search there, too. Do customized searches on Quora, use search operators on Twitter, ask questions in LinkedIn groups…the places where people are sharing their knowledge is far more extensive than what you’ll find in a Google search. – Julie Neidlinger, CoSchedule
What about helping people more?
Let’s focus there, because helping people more is the secret to helping more people and making more money.
When you help people more, they consume more, refer more and pay more.
Most entrepreneurs try to increase their value by defining a target market, or more narrowly, a niche market. Then they try to figure out what that market wants and needs, and how they can add the most value, based on what they know about that market segment.
That method is effective but cumbersome.
But what we really want to do is to separate the occasional users from the addicts, the fans from the fanatics. We want to define your ideal client or customer by the most narrow and value-based criteria available. When we do that, we increase the value of your product or service without making a single change to what you’re offering.
Who would get the most bang for the buck from what you offer?
That is the one, simple question you need to answer. Let’s take a fitness coach as a case study.
He’s put together a program and he’s fired up about it. It’s a two month accelerated fitness plan. Not just exercise classes, or one-size-fits-all workouts and meal schedules, but a combination of cross training, martial arts, yoga, resistance training, movement integration, home fitness assignments and seated massage, all in a group setting with no more than a dozen people, allowing lots of personal attention and three private training or massage sessions during the two month period.
Anyone could benefit from a program like that, right? But who would benefit the most?
It’s easy at this point to try to get so narrow in your focus that you argue against every answer you come up with. Remember, you’re looking for generalities, not absolutes. Your answers don’t need to be universally true of your ideal prospect, just true of a significant number of them.
Let’s assume his ideal prospect is probably female. Women generally derive more value from the sense of belonging and individual attention. They are more likely to be open to the therapeutic aspects of the program. Let’s say she is probably over 45. She has a history of lifestyle-induced, or illness or injury-related, physical limitations. A person who is in that age range is beginning to experience challenges due to hormonal shifts. Those challenges are aggravated if the person is largely sedentary, engages in repetitive motion or is contending with old injuries or chronic illness.
This woman, with her particular challenges, will benefit most from the customized approach, small group and private interaction, and wide range of activities and therapies included. Since the group will meet late afternoons and Saturday mornings, we can also suppose that the person who will benefit the most will likely be working a traditional schedule. She might also be a wife or mother who needs to be available to the family later in the evening.
Since the cost of the program will be in the $1,000 range, we believe the greatest value will be to someone who can afford it without resorting to borrowing against their life insurance or robbing a bank, so let’s say a household income of $70,000 or more. Since they will be traveling to the gym three times per week, we believe they either live or work within a 10 mile radius of the location.
She probably (based on age range) is either married or divorced, has children and maybe grandchildren, and she most likely struggles with weight and health issues.
Can you imagine what happened for this fitness coach when he narrowed his marketing strategy to focus only on this client profile? He attracted some clients who didn’t fit, and he didn’t turn them away. But he attracted even more clients who are a perfect match. It’s these clients who will become his “addicts,” enrolling in future programs, referring their friends and family, and giving him the opportunity make more money and help more people, because he started by finding the people he could help more.
Consider your own business and ask, “Who will get more bang for buck from buying what I have to offer?” The answer will guide you to help people more, which leads to helping more people and making more money.
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