When Is a Niche Not a Niche in Marketing
“Survival of the Fittest” is not merely a topic for discussion in a science classroom. In a competitive business environment, only the business that is able to successfully market itself and its products and service will survive. Weaker ones will simply lose their customer base and eventually go into liquidation or bankruptcy. This is inevitable.
The Need of the Niche
To gain a top marketing position and remain there, it is essential that the focus be narrow and the commitment to be best be determined. Without this approach, focus can become too broad and it becomes easy to spend time and money on too many things, none of which will provide the competitive edge the business needs to survive. By creating a niche market focus, not only does a business define a place for itself and its products and services, but it is enabled to take advantage of an existing market for that niche.
Many businesses that promote a product or service believe they have a niche market, because of what they are seeking to sell or provide. While this is true to a certain degree, the focus may still be too broad for the marketing strategy to be considered a niche. A true niche is not only the product or service being sold, it is also about the target audience of the advertising campaign. Advertising strategies are specifically pitched to customers who already are interested in the products and services on offer and actively searching to purchase or use them.
Most businesses market a large range of products to broad groups who may or may not be interested in what is being offered. Business strategies are often developed to advertise to a much broader potential customer base. By narrowing advertising strategies through a niche approach to marketing, valuable time, resources and money are not wasted. No matter how well advertising is presented, much of this style of advertising will only translate into a modest increase in customer numbers.
By focusing on the niche approach to marketing, the conversion rate of traffic to customers is much higher than for those businesses that focus on a broader marketplace. The added benefit for those who enter into the niche market is smaller market competition to contend with and therefore a greater opportunity for faster success.
Finding your niche is the key to successful marketing and in the remaining chapters, we will focus on how to identify your niche and how to market products and services to potentiate sales profits. This approach to business also frees the business owner to be passionate about their product or service with people who are going to be interested in it. The niche market is already an interested audience for advertising campaigns. Niche marketing has the potential to give a business immediate online marketing success. Robert Kiyosaki explains why
“The only way one will create wealth is to understand that wealth
comes from us not to us. Wealth is a reward for services rendered.
That is why you must help and truly give value to others and that’s
when you will attract people and wealth. If you focus on a check you
will make just a living but if you focus on relationship you’ll make a
fortune.”
Niche marketing takes this principle and potentiates it in the business environment.
Identifying Your Niche
When you have realized the importance of a niche for your business, you will understand that there are various things that you need to do in order to identify it. Your niche is the narrow area where your business will focus on. It is the green pasture for you… the little area where you have the most lucrative prospects to take your business ahead. This is the area where you know your business has a demand, and hence the prospects are high. Instead of promoting your business to the whole wide world, just concentrating on this little niche market really makes sense, because here even if you market to only a 100 people, there is a chance that more than 80 people will view your business favorably, because you have already tapped into a market that is interested in you.
Let us discuss some methods in which you can find your niche.
1. One of the best ways to get your niche is to follow your hobby or passion and convert it into a business. This is a very easy thing to do and it will mostly come naturally to you because you are already knowledgeable about your hobby and it could be fun to promote something that you are already excited about. So, if your hobby is fishing, you could start a business about something relating to fishing, such as maybe making and selling fishing rods. Who is your niche in this case? Your niche is all the anglers of the world.
Doesn’t it make perfect sense? When you are a hobbyist yourself, it is easier for you to get in touch with the other anglers of the world. You know where they hang out, you know how to get in touch with them, and you know what will arouse their interest. In this case, you are a part of the niche, you are not apart from the niche. It helps you to have a clear focus about what you are going to do and that can certainly help your business prospects.
2. You can also find a niche by finding a specialized area of an existing market. Take this example. The cell phone market is a huge market. Now, if you think of getting into the cell phone manufacturing market, that is a very huge task that you are planning to take up. Are you confident of meeting the demands of this very wide market? That is certainly a tall order! Then, suppose that you are able to narrow down your market. Instead of catering to the entire cell phone using fraternity, you decide that you will focus on a part of it. You decide that you will specialize in making cell phones for students only.
In that case, you do not have to go too far. You only have to take a look at the needs, requirements and preferences of the student community and you create devices for them alone. You are not interested in the other users of cell phones and what they are looking for because that does not form a part of your niche market. You only want to get in touch with people who are part of your niche.
Naturally, you will be able to produce more sophisticated products because you can do research on what this specific market needs and you will be better equipped to provide it to them.
3. Another way to identify a niche is to find out a shortcoming or a lacking in an existing market. When refrigerators were first invented, they were made of wooden or metallic bodies and they did not have the rubber lining that they come with presently. Due to this, these refrigerators were immensely noisy and definitely not a pleasure to use.
Some smart cookie understood this shortcoming in refrigerators and then thought of a method to eliminate the noisy nuisance. Thus, the rubber lining was invented. You see the point… this was an add-on, something that was a failing of a previous product and now it has become a complete industry in itself.
Maybe you should take a look around as well. There are several products out there that need some kind of finesse. Also, there are several services out there that can do with some better planning. You do not need a scientific mind for that. Haven’t you sometimes, after using a particular product or service, felt that if you had designed it, it would have been better? Now is the time where you can use all these ideas and opinions and create a niche for yourself… likeminded people like you who are also looking for those very things that you purport to give to them and make some money in the process.
4. Something that is the need of the hour could be an excellent niche for you to deal with. There are so many things that are lacking in the world that we live in. You should have a keen eye for finding out about those things. Then sit down and think— why are those things lacking? Can you do something about it? Can you provide people with any solutions there?
In such cases, it might be required for you to up your skills a little. You might need to learn new things. You might need to invent something even. But do not let that faze you. The biggest marketers of the world, the most successful people, are those who have identified some unsatisfied need in the world and then provided that to people.
5. Create a need. This is perhaps the most difficult way of finding out your niche. It will take the greatest amount of creativity and effort. But, you can do it if you are given time. What did Bill Gates do? He created a niche, he created a need. He created a whole new niche of people who wanted to use computers. And that created a million sub-niches of its own.
You will need oodles of talent and inventiveness to develop a niche by creating a need. But, you should start by thinking about a new product… a product that will benefit humankind in some way. You may have some ideas on that already. There are a lot more people with such ideas than you might think. If you have something in your mind, do not nip it in the bud. Think about what you can do to implement it, after you have carefully assessed the worth of that idea. If you are sure, then you can go ahead and think about building on your concept… and creating a need in the process.