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How many of us throw away marketing dollars because our paid efforts reach an audience that is much larger than the target or niche audience we need to reach? Whether it be for publications, social marketing, or even those once-necessary postal mailers, we have tools now that were not available just a few years ago.
So, let’s up our marketing knowledge first with a few short answers to marketing questions…
What Is niche marketing? Simply, it’s offering a specific product or service to a specific group of people.
Why Is niche marketing important? This is easy. Here’s a question to respond to a question: Would you want to throw away advertising or marketing dollars reaching people who won’t buy no matter what? Of course not. So, aiming a brand-new smartphone full of great features but increased complexity using AARP Magazine as your marketing resource just won’t get the job done. Your niche market is younger, and perhaps smaller – especially if the feature set on the smartphone is so radically new that you would need to reach early adapters.
So, what other benefits are there to niche marketing? Here are just a few to consider…
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- You’ll have less competition. If you can find a gap in the market and target a specific group of people that no other business is targeting, you’re onto a winner. Where else are consumers going to find your product, if no one else is offering it or if other companies offer it, but haven’t found the right niche audience?
- You’ll save money. Niche marketing means targeting the right audience at the right time for the right product. That’s easy to say, but once was impossible to implement.
- You’re the expert. By narrowing your audience and product, you’ll be perceived as the expert and there may not be a competitor to challenge you with an adjacent ad or campaign.
- You’ll Think more deeply. If you’ve taken the steps to research your market and niche, the chances are that you’re taking your business seriously. You’ll wonder: ‘’Is this a worthy investment with probable payback in revenues? Will this campaign reach the audience I intend?”
- You’ll Have the Opportunity to expand your market with niche success. You won’t be wasting large amounts of time and money early on. When you do connect with your niche, you will have resources to expand and alter your message for the next niche and then the next.
How to Find Your Niche? So now I hope I’ve convinced you. But you have no idea what to do next. Think about your product or service. Is there anything you could do to emphasize benefits that are unique to the niche? Competition is good, but – if there are hundreds of businesses out there that already have gotten to and penetrated this niche – you’re going to find it hard to get through the marketing noise. So, narrow your message.
Emphasize features and benefits not addressed by others if possible. Find a marketing or advertising outlet that is not saturated with other messages for nearly identical offerings. Create social media posts with links to your site that drive search engine scores and increase search traffic.
Whatever product you’re trying to market, be sure to create at least an outline of a marketing plan and test your targets (niches) before jumping into the effort. You can do that by creating a small subset of the niche, and testing that segment before expanding to even the niche you’ve selected.
Keep your customer in mind. No need to race from unproven plan to large ad placement or social effort. If targeting the small portion of your niche doesn’t yield expected results, revise the call to action, and try another subset. And most of all, never give up!
Here’s a quick nod to the folks at Colour Graphics for urging me to write this insight. – Dave
