Niches to Riches in 4 Simple Steps!
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!
