Niches to Riches in 4 Simple Steps!

Posted on 04. May, 2010 by Adam in Business, Entrepreneurship, Making Money

Niche Market What if you could optimize your marketing in a way that would allow you to save time and money while increasing your conversion rates and your bottom line? Sounds too good to be true? Not at all. The secret is to identify a specific segment within your overall market and change your strategy to speak directly to this niche. It really is that simple, but of course there are some specific steps to take to make this happen, and they’re listed below.

But first, let’s address why you would want to niche your business. It might seem strange to some people to narrow your market. After all, don’t you want to sell to as wide an audience as possible? While that might make sense at first glance, think about what it means. First, you need to be able to effectively market to that wide audience. The wider the demographics of the group, the more avenues you’ll need to take to get your business name and offerings in front of them. For instance, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s each spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to reach their target markets, because their markets are massive – pretty much anyone who doesn’t hate them. They can afford this kind of marketing, so it works for them, but most of us aren’t in the same boat. Notice also that these companies tend to be low-price leaders, taking smaller margins to appeal to a wider audience.

On the other hand, look at a guy named Fred Gleeck. Fred is a marketing expert who had an all-around, general marketing expertise. Somewhere along his marketing career, he recognized the power of a niche market. He could have targeted his services at anyone in need of marketing, which is pretty much every business everywhere. That would have meant spending a lot of marketing dollars to reach his audience in hopes of converting enough people to make a living, and it would also have meant competing with the throngs of other marketing firms, all trying to attract the same prospects. Instead, Fred decided to niche. He ended up targeting the self-storage industry. He changed all his material to focus on this niche and created products that addressed the specific needs of self-storage facility owners. The result is that Fred became the recognized expert on the topic. He ended up as a sought-after speaker at industry events and even wrote a book about how to market your self-storage facility. Not only that, but because he chose an underserved market, he had literally no competition, so he was able to charge considerably more for his products and services than he ever could have as just another marketing guy.

So you can see that finding and targeting your niche can allow you to stand out from the crowd, save money on marketing, and charge more for your products and services. Now, here are the steps to niche your business:

1. Identify your big target. Who is your overall target audience? You’re going to get more specific, but start with a wider target first. Begin by just nailing down who your overall target audience is, from a big picture perspective. The answer to this question might be “business owners”, or “parents”. It’s probably a very big group and might cover a very wide age range, both genders, and a wide geographic area.

2. Narrow down your niche. Somewhere within your wider target market is a sub-group of people who have specific wants, needs and characteristics that don’t match up with the rest of the market. For example, if your wide target market is parents, within that group is the group consisting of single mothers. While single mothers share a lot of the same wants and needs as all parents, they also have certain wants and needs that married fathers, for instance, don’t have. You’re not done yet though. Within the smaller niche, there is often an even more focused niche. In the example of single mothers, what about single mothers of teens? Want to get really crazy? How about single mothers of troubled teen boys? Obviously, it can get to the point where it’s just ridiculous (southwest Indiana single mothers of troubled teen boys whose favorite color is green…), but the point is to narrow your niche down as far as it makes sense for your business and your market.

3. Analyze your niche market. Get clear on who this customer base really is. If your answer to the first question was “business owners”, and you identified a niche market of retail clothing store owners, now’s the time to ask what those business owners really want and need. Are there universal wants that apply to everyone in your target niche? What are those, and how can your product or service address them? In addition to analyzing who this group is, it’s important to look deeper and determine the habits of the market – even if it’s not related to what you’re offering. Where do they hang out online and in the real world? What’s important to them? What trade associations serve this niche? Getting inside the heads of your target audience is important to be able to effectively market to them. If you’re having trouble nailing down a niche, think of it this way: Chances are the niche that suits you best is the group of people who you can most relate to. For instance, if you yourself are a single mother of a troubled teen, you’re going to be able to more easily create a plan to market to that group.

4. Build and execute a plan. This is the fun part! Now that you have identified your niche, it’s time to figure out how you’ll reach them and what you’ll offer to address their specific needs. This step is very much specific to your business and your niche, so it’s difficult to detail what you’ll end up with. What we can say, is that step 3 is the key to making step 4 effective. Once you know your niche market inside and out, you’ll know how to reach them and what to offer them to solve their unique problems.

Remember, the title of this post indicates these are simple steps, but not necessarily easy. It will take time and effort in the beginning to execute this strategy. The payoff in the end more than makes up for the work though, so go find your niches, and then count your riches!

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Tags: Business, entrepreneur, Marketing, small business, startups

19 Responses to “Niches to Riches in 4 Simple Steps!”

Kelvin Forex Indicator

04. May, 2010

You have indeed summarize niche marketing into 4 simple steps. I think the main problem with most marketer is that they are always trying to get more traffic and forget about the importance of targeted traffic.

Narrowing down to a specific niche group of people does indeed make marketing more targeted and easier to convert.

Thks for sharing

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David Walker

04. May, 2010

Terrific post Adam! It can be difficult to figure out how to target your niche. Thanks to you that will be much simpler now. Four easy steps and you are there. It is very simple and easy to follow these steps.
I never really understood the point of a niche until now. So thank you for that. I was one of those people who thought it better to reach a wider audience, (although I did use a niche for my site) i just didn’t see the point of it.

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Fred Gleeck

04. May, 2010

Hey there! Keep up the good work!! Thanks for using me as your example on this post. In addition to the self storage industry, after that I targeted caterers, limousine drivers, video producers, authors, speakers and consultants. As you say, it is MUCH easier to target a specific niche as opposed to a general, non-specific market!!

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Noritake

05. May, 2010

Niche is really very important in internet marketing.Great post having all the solution related “how to target your niche easily with 4 good points.

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sell your property

05. May, 2010

Absolutely! The simple stuff is the best stuff right now. All the negative news about the economic collapse, etc, etc…it’s easy to get to the point where you feel like there’s NOTHING you can do about it. WRONG! There are huge, huge upshots to this downturn. I wrote a post on this a couple days ago that speaks to this directly.

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Garry

05. May, 2010

True for a business which can select a comparatively less competed segment to market on. Now take the case of a web designer. What would you advise this man?
I think the strategy of starting on lesser served segment and then setting your own prices works well in localized markets.The firms which can and do have markets spreading over the ‘www’ have to tackle this greatest business advantage on an ‘optimum’ basis.
I mean take the case of my firm (web designing firm). I have clients across countries and I cannot go charging my ‘own’ prices and surely my segment is very well (rather cheaply)represented where people are ready to design an entire site for a dime! Here comes my class and output standards and my ‘adherence’ to my rates and production downtime benchmarks. I have to cater to a larger market across different cultures,businesses,ideas with the same ‘excellent’ designs.

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Laptop Briefcases

05. May, 2010

Great post. I agree that far too many businesses make the mistake of trying to appeal to the widest market possible. Instead of being experts in any one specific field they try to cover everything. Not only does it hurt their marketing, but it lowers their credibility. For example, if your fridge is broken are you going to trust a general appliance repairman more or an actual fridge repairman?

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Earn Money Online

05. May, 2010

I think I have been making the same mistake all along. Thanks for this great post. Now I have to think of a plan and probably start a new blog targeting a specific audience.

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Samantha Milner

05. May, 2010

Hi guys,

Great tips. Thanks for sharing.

Kind regards,

Sam
X

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ankara temizlik

06. May, 2010

Narrowing down to a specific niche group of people does indeed make marketing more targeted and easier to convert.

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Komodo Dragon

06. May, 2010

I definitely think targeting towards smaller niches is the way to go, its a great way for the smaller guys to win the big race. You’d be surprised how much you can learn by targeting smaller niches, and with time you’ll be able to step it up as go along.

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Short Loan

06. May, 2010

Agreed. Niche Marketing is the best way to play with the big boys on a little budget.

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Wealth Creation

07. May, 2010

This was the mistake I committed when I was just beginning with money making online. I immediately dived into the niche where internet marketers are preaching – the make money online niche. Result? Failure. I should have not messed with the big boys during that time. Niche marketing is really a must especially when you are just beginning. It is the foundation of your MMO journey and if you have not chosen the correct niche, then you are surely doomed to fail. Great article!

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PHP Tutorial

07. May, 2010

I never really understood the point of a niche until now.

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Wedding Planning Checklist

07. May, 2010

The planning has always been the easy part for me. The hard part is the execution!

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handmade holiday gift ideas

07. May, 2010

You’d be surprised how much you can learn by targeting smaller niches, and with time you’ll be able to step it up as go along.

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TomPier

08. May, 2010

great post as usual!

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Game Critic

11. May, 2010

Some bloggers have problems finding their niche let alone narrowing it down…

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Sumanasa

19. Jul, 2010

Though I managed to decide on the niches couple of times earlier, I found going tough. I guess this was because of lack of a concrete plan. Thanks for the tip.

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Niches to Riches in 4 Simple Steps!

19 Responses to “Niches to Riches in 4 Simple Steps!”

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