To Find Your Niche Market: Analyze, Analyze, Analyze.
To Find Your Niche Market you must first get to know the guts and the core of your business, then do the same to your competitors. On top of that, you must have a clear understanding of your target market and the consumer. If you can target a Niche more effectively than your competitors, Niche Marketing will give you the opportunity to build competitive advantages over your competitors. Niche Marketing provides a business the opportunity to satisfy customers faster than the competition, and customer satisfaction is the biggest competitive advantage any business can have. Niches become successful despite their small size because they have an intimate relationship with the customer and are better able to meet their needs. In fact, finding your Niche and propagating exceptional customer experiences will give you an opportunity for value-added pricing, which contributes to your overall profit margin.
A Niche Market, as defined by the European Journal of Marketing, is “a small market consisting of an individual customer or a small group of customers with similar characteristics or needs.” The journal suggests that when selecting the Niche, to “realize your sustainable competitive advantages with products in specific markets.” Your advantages must be based on long-term interests of the customers. Customer relationships are one of the most powerful, and profitable, advantages in Niche Marketing.
The research you conduct to find your Niche Market should include an analysis of the short-term and long-term goals of you and your competitor, the financial backing, products, services, website design and functionality, SEO analysis with an emphasis on keyword analysis, pricing, geographical areas, and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of both you and your competition. Once you know what you have to offer, and what your competitors don’t have to offer, you’re almost on your way to creating your Niche. Almost.
After analyzing your business against your competitors, you need to research your market and your consumers. Identify their buying habits, search habits, keyword habits and changes, visit blogs, forums and social community sites, research online and offline resources, narrow down the demographics and analyze their yearly and monthly expenditures and consumer buying patterns, find out what they want and if you can give it to them, or how you can give it to them.
Find a business problem that you can solve that your competitors can’t. Then customize your solution. Decide if you want to focus on the target market, or the product. Then, you are set to develop your Niche Market.
Choose your keywords carefully; use every program and search engine you can to analyze them. Pay attention to trends. Find out the best advertising programs to reach you Niche Market, don’t waste your money advertising to the world. There are over 1 billion Internet users in the world today, 200 million from the United States, according to the Computer Industry Almanac (www.c-i-a.com). You only need to reach the ones that are most likely to buy from your website, that is - your Niche.
To Find your Niche Market, analyze yourself, your competitors, your market and your consumers. Find what you can supply that your competitors can’t, and find out who wants to have that supply. Develop an intensive customer relationship strategy, and a marketing mix specifically targeted towards your Niche Market. Once you find your Niche Market and develop your key strategies, your Niche will always be coming back to you.
