A niche market is defined as the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. This allows the marketer to satisfy specific market needs in a market segment that many people are not competing in.
Niche marketing is an effective way of separating your firm from the other marketing firms that offer the same services you offer. By finding your own niche in the industry, you create a unique concept to your capabilities and add value to what you provide for your clients. This value allows your content marketing to bring in more views and more interest.
Before finding your specific niche market, you must first decide whether you want to sell to consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B). For instance, if you are selling food and beverage, you are most likely targeting consumers. If you are in legal marketing, you are targeting law firms. Regardless of what you are selling, you must remember that you cannot sell everything to everyone. You must pinpoint your strengths and utilize them to become the best in that market. To be clear, a niche idea should not be forced. It should come to you naturally from your interests and experiences. And that is the essence of niche marketing.
Lynda Falkenstein, author of Nichecraft: Using Your Specialness to Focus Your Business, Corner Your Market and Make Customers Seek You Out, has a detailed outline of seven steps to follow in order to be successful in your niche market.
- Clarify what you want to sell. Your niche is not the same field you work in. Instead, it is a more limited and focused segment of the field. To begin this process of narrowing down your ideas, there are four steps you should follow:
Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses and the skills you have in both
List your previous achievements
Identify the most important life lessons you’ve learned while working in your field
Look for patterns in your work and accomplishments that may reveal a specific approach you use to solving problems
- Make a list of all the different areas or industries in which you want to do business. It is helpful in this step to be as specific as possible. For example, instead of outlining, “I want to sell retail in the United States” say “I want to sell luxury jewelry to upper-class men in New York City.”
- Follow the platinum rule: “Do unto others as you would want to be done unto you.” When you look at the world from your customer’s view, you can identify what needs and wants you would have to provide for.
- At this point in the process, you should be narrowing down your list and getting closer to developing your niche. A good niche has five qualities:
It embodies the long-term vision you have for you firm
It embodies what customers are looking for
It is outlined and planned carefully
It’s one-of-kind and unique
It has the ability to evolve with what you learn and experience as time goes by
- Once you’ve got your ideas down, evaluate them against the five qualities. If you find something about it that you don’t find appealing, such as it doesn’t allow you to travel as much, scrap it and move onto the next one.
- Once you have a niche and a product to match, test-market it. Offer samples where you would want to find your customers, or where you would want your customers to come from. Don’t shell out a lot of money until you understand what is working. Hand out flyers or hold a mini-seminar instead.
- All the planning in the world will mean nothing if you don’t put it into action. Now that you have everything in place, just go for it. Do not be afraid of what will happen. If you followed these steps, entering the market will be a calculated risk, not a gamble.
Once you are in your niche market, it’s up to you to make the most of it and become the best. Do what you know and you’ll have success raining upon your business in no time. Have confidence and be true to your skills.
And if you need help coming up with some ideas, give ENX2 Marketing a call or contact us via the contact form. We can lend a hand.