A niche marketer is like a fisherman. The angler knows exactly what the ground bait will catch. Because it has the right composition and consistency, depending on the species caught. Niche marketing thus stands in opposition to that targeted at mass audiences. Wide-cast nets will catch a variety of fish, not always the ones the fisherman cares about. Focused marketing aimed at a target group, based on a specialty product or service, is more likely to bring in the right customers and produce higher sales.
What is niche marketing?
Niche Marketing is the name given to a marketing strategy focusing on very specific niche markets. Its essence is to concentrate all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well-defined market segment, not on a smaller share of a larger market. Some people think that the small business market is a niche. They are wrong. A niche market focuses on a very specific and targeted segment of the population. Therefore, successful niche marketing employs a strategy that is very specific and targeted. Here are 5 tips to help you build a solid niche strategy step by step:
- Define the needs of the market.
- Define your specific target market and conduct research.
- Understand your competition.
- SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis.
- Run, test and customize.
Targeted Niche
If a company operates in a niche, it does not mean that all its recipients are clones. The communication strategy still has to take this into account. Niche marketing is not as easy as it may seem. Suppose a cosmetics company narrowed its activities. Now it only distributes organic and fair trade cosmetics. Its customers will continue to be diverse. How is that? They may include, for example, people with high incomes, for whom price is irrelevant and only interested in premium products. Preferably 100% organic.
Clients like millennials may have tight budgets, but they want their money to go to companies that trade fairly and are committed to their values. There is also a group of people who would like to buy ordinary, cheap, drugstore products. However, they cannot do this. They are hypersensitive to the skin or allergic to chemicals found in many products. So they buy the more expensive, ecological ones because they simply have to.
As you can see, the customers of such a company are completely different customer segments. Niche marketing still requires breaking down all of these audiences in order to run effective campaigns for each segment.
The benefits of running a business in a market niche
Being part of a niche market has many advantages. One of the benefits is less competition. This is because as firms become more specialized, they are less likely to be in direct competition with others. So it’s no surprise that companies are always trying to identify the USP (unique selling proposition) of a product that will rank them in a niche. By using niche marketing, they can focus on ensuring that their target group receives a perfectly tailored offer.
In turn, targeting more audiences means your business has to tailor what it’s selling to a wide variety of audiences. These, in turn, differ significantly from each other, incl. demographically and psychographically. Companies offering services in niche markets will offer products or services that are really well suited to their customers. This is possible because they really understand their audience and offer them the value they expect. This knowledge makes it difficult to reach audiences outside of your niche, but it helps you build brand loyalty in the short term.
Niche Marketing – Pros and Cons
Niche marketing, thanks to operating among a narrow group of recipients, avoids competing with large retail brands and their marketing activities, public relations, etc. The messages of “giants” will not be addressed directly to niche customers. Focusing on a narrow segment gives you better insight into the specific needs of your customer segment. Thanks to this, the company can become a specialist in the field of specific brands and position itself in it.
Gaining credibility in one niche market makes it easier to enter other niche markets. Niche marketing has a lot to show off here. For example, if a business sells specialty pet food, it could quickly open up to other related niches. By creating networks and promoting sites that focus, for example, on dog toys or training workshops.
On the other hand, niche marketing has to meet various challenges. Primarily because it targets smaller markets. By definition, niche marketing serves a small segment of a single market. Paradoxically, this segment becomes even smaller as the company improves its product. Brand loyalty in these markets will work to the detriment of a business if its product is not yet popular. Niche marketing is also sensitive to market changes. If these appear suddenly, they can “sink” the niche overnight.
Niche Marketing – How To Do It Right?
Identifying an under-served community in a large market is a smart way to approach niche marketing. One company has found a largely underestimated community of people – those who use their left hand more than their right. As 90% of the population uses the right hand as the ‘main’ hand, left-handed people have had to adapt to a large extent to use “right-handed” products. Those who found it a great business opportunity created an online store. They sell products intended only for the remaining 10% of people. They offer them specially adapted office supplies, kitchen utensils, tools, etc. They have been successful in reaching this smaller, often ignored audience.
There are hundreds of companies that sell sweets and snacks, cookies, cookies, and cupcakes. You might get the impression that everything has already been done in this industry, However, while most people may choose from dozens of brands to find options that suit their culinary tastes, not all of them. There is a group of people who cannot. These people have allergies or dietary restrictions related to animal products or nuts. The company that first noticed this underrated segment in the confectionery industry won a lot. They have created a brand that is aimed exclusively at this group of recipients. Niche marketing has been carefully planned. First thought? Selling cookies and cupcakes is not a unique idea. But selling them as vegan and nut-free options sets such a business apart in an already saturated market.
Niche marketers examples
When creating a business, it’s easy to think that the products or services it will offer can help everyone. After all, everyone needs a TV set or a hairdresser at some point in their life. However, it may quickly turn out that it is more profitable to narrow down your range of services to TV with the internet. Or that only some tech-savvy people are interested in the giant flat-screen TV with 8K resolution. And most customers do not know the difference and do not want to spend an additional few hundred dollars. So maybe it’s worth considering niche marketing. That is the process of introducing a product or service to specific niches.
How to find a niche
One example of how to find a niche is to research and find a product or service that no one else is offering but has high demand by the public. For this particular article, I needed to find the best page title and subject titles that might get found on Google. Search engines aim to return the best result that matches the user’s exact search. I used Ubersuggest to find various search terms related to the niche, the monthly volume of searches, and how strong the competition is. I then took the phrases and put them in quotes and searched Google to find out exactly how many people used that exact phrase anywhere on the internet.
So to create the best NICHE article I can use the highest volume, low competition, and low count of quotes on Google. You can use a similar approach to find a product or service for your business.
Examples Niche Marketing Research
LONG-TAILED PHRASE | VOLUME | COMPETITION | QUOTED |
a niche market definition | 1900 | 6 | 19 |
what is a niche marketing | 1600 | 6 | 174000 |
what is the niche market | 1300 | 6 | 198000 |
what is a niche marketer | 1300 | 6 | 4 |
what is market niche | 1300 | 6 | 29 |
example of a market niche | 880 | 6 | 26 |
examples of a niche market | 880 | 6 | 29 |
examples of niche market | 1000 | 7 | 26200 |
niche marketing with examples | 1000 | 7 | 21 |
niche for website | 590 | 18 | 62200 |
building a niche website | 590 | 40 | 16400 |
What is a niche marketer?
By choosing the least competitive, least used terms we are able to target the article at users looking for what our article is about. The purpose of article writing is brand exposure. By helping people find the information we are able to have more people ultimately view our offerings in web design. Also, the ability to have people find us is part of what we offer as part of our services. If we can do it for ourselves, we can do it for you too. In order for any business to be successful, it has to stand out from the crowd.