“The key to successful niche marketing is to pick a niche small enough to dominate, and large enough to be profitable.” From Niche Marketing: 13 Brilliant Niche Business Ideas.
This article showed up on my Facebook feed recently from @FawnKey. That was the first sentence of the paragraph that was previewed on Facebook and got my attention, so I clicked through to read. The rest of the article did not do much for me, but that first sentence stuck in my mind for a few days and I found myself thinking more about it. Most of my businesses in the past were not really niche marketed, except for maybe one. However, recent opportunities are all about niche marketing, so that’s probably why I found myself thinking about this statement and how to put it into practice. This article will dissect this statement and provide a list of how-to’s for putting it into action.
Niche Markets
Your niche market is all about knowing your target market and knowing ways to reach them.
Hit the target in Biathlon, my favorite sport
1. Identify your target market. There are a variety of traditional market research-based ways to find your target market, including demographics and psychographics. That is all important, but also think about your product/service relative to the following:
A. What compelling problem does your product solve for you’re your target market? We’re talking about a problem that actually causes pain, not a mild annoyance.
B. Do they know they have the problem, and do they care?
C. Seriously, do customers really care? Enough to spend money on a solution?
D. Does your product, without modification or further purchase, solve that problem?
2. Focus your marketing. This includes zeroing in on the channels that are best to reach your target. If its TV, which channel, what time of day, what day of the week and which days to avoid? If its farmer’s markets, which ones, on which days of the week, during what times of the year?
Dominate Your Niche Market
You want to be recognized and have a strong and consistent measure of mindshare with your customers.
If you're on the podium, you dominate
1. Brand pillars you can own. You will want to identify the benefits of your products that you can own which differentiate you in the marketplace. Its usually a series of benefits that, added together, are highly appealing to your customers and which competitors cannot own as a group.
2. “Verb” a noun or create and own an idiom. “To google” is to do a web search. That verb is also a noun and the name for Google, the dominant search engine company. Do the same for your company in your market or create an idiom that everyone in your market identifies with you.
3. You are the expert. Customers and your industry recognize you as the go-to expert. You do this through by writing and posting online, speeches and industry trade show attendance.
4. Interesting, right and timely messaging. Your messaging, whether advertising, newsletters, or social posts is appealing to your market, solves their problem or provides them with entertainment, is timely and consistent.
5. Stay in touch. A customer buys your product but that’s not the end of it. You would ideally want to know their satisfaction level with using your product and their propensity to purchase again. If you sell a product direct, it easier to stay in touch with that customer with their contact data you collected. If you sell through a retailer or other channel, you will want to include call to actions on your packaging to help drive users to visit your website, sign-up for your email newsletter, or visit social networks where you have a profile.
Profitable
When you dominate, you get the profits. In sports, you get the sponsors, which leads to profits
Its more than just profitable. Its a 20% net margin before taxes (including salaries) that is sufficient to allow you to invest a portion of profits to innovate and protect your dominance.
Relevant links from my bookmarks:
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