Niche marketing is more than just a new-age marketing strategy. It can help you build your business or launch a new product idea and instantly become a successful industry player in a targeted market.
If you’re a business owner, you’ve undoubtedly heard the terms “target market” and “niche market” before, but not many people fully understand the difference between the two. Your target market is the audience you want to sell your product to (e.g. specialized laptop stands for programmers, custom furniture for , ). Your niche market is the specialized product you can provide to your target market (e.g. custom laptop stand, ).
Here are six reasons to build your business in a niche market:
1. Focused Marketing
The natural temptation when releasing a new product, invention idea or starting a new company is to focus your marketing on every person who may become a potential customer, but this can be a mistake. Spreading your marketing efforts thin by trying to target every market will have less of an impact than laser-focusing your marketing to one very specific niche market.
If you’re just starting out or running a smaller business, you won’t be able to serve a large clientele to the best of your ability and may become overwhelmed by customers if you’re offerings too many different product lines. By limiting your market size, you can be sure you’re offering an optimal product to every single one of your customers.
2. Targeting Clients
Once you have narrowed down your target market to suit your niche concept design, you won’t be dealing with as many people, so it will be easier to find potential clients to target. By targeting a smaller group of people, your marketing efforts will speak directly to them. This will help your clients to identify with your business and your products much easier, as if they already know you and you already know them and understand what they need.
This also makes it easier to find potential service partners or suppliers. Getting to know your niche market can only work to your benefit. The better you know the community you’re looking to serve, the better you can serve them.
3. Expertise
Expertise is something that can only be acquired over time in any market but will certainly be quicker to achieve when dealing with a smaller section of the larger marketplace. The longer you work for your target audience, the better you will understand them and understand the breadth of the market itself.
Experience leading to expertise will also allow you to open our eyes to new possibilities for your business. When you understand your customers and their needs fully you’ll be able to see the areas of the market that remain underserved and find ways to build your business around meeting those additional needs.
The goal with niche marketing is never to pigeonhole yourself for the long term. The smaller you start, the more room there is for you to expand. Just remember, successful expansion will always require hard work and dedication.
4. Word of Mouth
Where’s the first place you look when you’re trying to find a new hairdresser or dry cleaner? You don’t! You call a friend or a family member and ask them where they go. People, as a general collective, trust recommendations from someone they know above almost any other source of information.
Word of mouth can be your best friend or your worst enemy when it comes to building your business in a niche market. Since you are offering your clients a specialized product, if they are satisfied with your company, they are more likely and more able to recommend your business to others they know that are seeking a similar new product. The longer you continue to operate in a niche market, the better your reputation will be.
Reputation in niche marketing is a very valuable resource. If you have a good reputation with your customers and employees it will become easier to convince more customers to trust you and your products, in turn earning you an even better reputation. If your customers trust your company and your ability to serve them well, they will tell other people they know, too.
Don’t discount the power of online reviews, either. If you’re new to an area and don’t know anyone to get recommendations from, you’re probably going to read the reviews of a restaurant you’re thinking of trying before you spend your money there. No one wants to miss out on a good thing.
Make sure your business has some kind of online presence, if only for the sake of offering customers the chance to review your new products. This can be as simple as making sure your business location shows up on Google Maps, where people can leave reviews for others to see if they are searching in that area.
Word of mouth can also be beneficial to you when you are looking for suppliers. The world of niche markets is small and there is bound to be someone you meet who knows someone whose cousin is the supplier for the exact product you need to bring your business to the next level. Make connections with the other people in your niche market and they will expand your network of resources ten times over.
5. Competition
In a niche market, the competition for customers is more limited, because there are fewer companies (if any) offering the same product as you are. The whole concept of niche marketing is essentially to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than a small fish in a big pond.
By focusing in on one small slice of the larger market, you can be sure that you’re offering products no one else, or very few others, is. You want to fill a need in the market that your customers already know is there, but maybe haven’t yet been able to identify for themselves. No one realized sweeping was inefficient until someone invented the vacuum.
The more niche the products are that you’re offering, the less likely it is that your competitors will be able to duplicate the results you achieve. The absolute best way to do this is to create your own place in the market by offering a brand new product. If your field is one already saturated with innovation, find a way to specialize the products you’re offering and leave your competition in the dust.
6. Return Customers
This idea combines the last two: word of mouth and competition. If you are providing quality product to your clientele, customers are more likely to return and use your company again. Even if someone doesn’t have the best experience the first time they try you out, they might give you a second chance if they’ve heard good things from people they know or if you have many positive reviews online.
This same logic applies to competition. When you have very little, or no, competition for the products your company provides then your customers only have one choice: to return to your company to fill their needs for the products you offer.
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