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By Amy R. Derr
Though niche marketing has been with us for some time, emerging technologies and the ongoing diversification of markets have made it necessary for us to revisit niche marketing’s very lucrative business model.
Cost-effective and extremely efficient in sustaining growth, niche marketing is quickly becoming every small business’s secret weapon for generating massive profits. It’s easy to tell when you’re dealing with niche markets. Most of the time, they aren’t being served by competing products. But more importantly, you know you’re dealing with a profitable niche market when you discover that it has potential growth with no real competitors.
However, this is where most entrepreneurs seem to experience difficulties. They just can’t seem to paint a clear definition of their niche target market. Their struggle to define their niche markets has unfortunately led them to spending money in all the wrong places. If you find yourself in a similar situation, then fret not. The following tips should help you define your niche market and provide a clear assessment of how far you can succeed with your chosen niche.
Who is your ideal customer?
Let’s assume that you’ve already picked out a niche market to target. Now, it’s only a matter of assessing its profitability.
One really good way of honing in on a potentially profitable niche is to clearly define your prototype ideal customer. If you’re able to identify your ideal customer in your target market, you’ll have no problems defining your niche market. Here’s what you need to do:
- Get as much information as you can get about your ideal customer. What is your customer’s age group, what is his or her taste, what kind of disposal income does he or she have?
- Find out where your ideal customer hangs out online or offline. If you’re targeting the golf market for instance, find out what online golf communities or membership sites your ideal customer is participating in.
- Now that you know your ideal customer and the communities that he or she is involved in, find out what this market wants. Find out what this market desires and seek out the problems it faces. For instance, there may be women golfers looking for ways to improve their golf swing. That’s a tight but very profitable niche you’ve ferreted out.
By identifying the needs of your ideal customer within your target market, you’ll have narrowed down your market to a niche that you might not have otherwise discovered. How many marketers would have discovered that there are women golfers desperately looking for ways to improve their golf swing? This is the kind of information that women golfers will gladly pay large sums of money for, but you would never have known that if you hadn’t worked on defining your prototype customer. Now, you have the easy task of customizing your product or service to solve the problems and satisfy the needs of this niche market.
Theoretically, niche markets shouldn’t suffer from too much competition; however, they still attract a fair amount of it. That’s why it’s also important that once you’ve defined your niche market, you also differentiate yourself in ways that are enticing to your customer.
To stand out from potential competitors, pick an area in your business you think you’ll be able to excel in, like service, technology, CRM, reliability, features, or just something that screams “pick me” to your customers. If you offer multiple products or services, you’ll also do well to avoid competing with your own products in the same niche market.
So, try out some of these ways of defining your niche market and you’ll see that it makes a big difference where investing your time and money are concerned. A well-defined niche market is almost guaranteed to protect you from unpredictable losses.
About the Author:
Amy Derr seeks to help business owners and organizations market themselves effectively online. She is a Professional Web Designer who owns and operates Insiteful Web Design (http://www.insitefulwebdesign.com), a full-service web design firm.
This article may be reprinted as long as the "About the Author" blurb stays in place.
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