What is Niche Marketing?
Niche marketing is a specific market segmentation strategy that focuses on advertising and marketing products and services that meet very specific needs, demands, and preferences in a very specific part of a sector or market.
Rather than directing attention to a broad audience, niche marketing focuses on exclusively distributing to one sector or market niche.
Why is Niche Marketing beneficial?
Some of these benefits include:
- Competition: there is less competition when a business or company manages to enter a market niche because as companies become more specialized, the chances of other companies competing directly with them decrease,
- Focus: When you are part of a niche market, you increase the ability to focus on perfecting the offering for a select group of people. Instead, when efforts must be focused on a broader audience, this means that products and services sold must be tailored to several different audiences that vary widely in psychographics and demographics.
- Experience: Businesses that offer products and services to niche markets will have more experience in the offering. They will truly understand the audience and how the company offers them value. This experience in niche markets makes it more difficult to attract the attention of audiences outside the niche, but in turn, makes it easier to increase brand loyalty quickly.
How to Find a Niche Market?
Carry out a good analysis of conscience.
A niche should arise naturally from your own goals, interests, and values. The best quality ideas for a niche market will come from your own experience.
You must make an analysis about the skills developed, personal tastes, problems solved that would be good to share with the rest of the people.
Study the target market.
Once you have an initial idea for a niche, you must analyze that market to find weaknesses and flaws. Visit social networks to observe what people are talking about and the problems they are going through. You can offer help to people and go testing the products and services of the company.
You must study the competition.
Regardless of the chosen market niche, the potential competition must be studied to discover opportunities to stand out and differentiate itself over it.
Make an assessment of the potential profitability.
At this point, the benefits that can be achieved from the market niche must be determined.
You can search for keywords in Google and then study the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. If you get strong matches, it is a good indicator of a potentially profitable niche.
Test the idea.
As the last step, the idea must be tested and validated. In principle, it could be done through a network of friends or acquaintances and see if they would be interested in the new product or service. You can use email or Facebook and ask if they want to make a purchase. If you end up with a lot of sales, it’s a great validation of the niche.
Another way to test or validate the idea is by creating a crowdfunding campaign like the ones done on sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo; here you can also raise money in advance to finance the project or business.
Niche Marketing Examples.
Divvies Vegan and Nut Free.
There are many brands that sell cookies, candy, cookies, popcorn, and cupcakes. Although most people have no problem choosing from a multitude of brands to suit their tastes, there is a group of people who cannot. This is motivated by food restrictions or intolerances, or allergies related to animal products and nuts.
This brand realized this segment that had not been covered in the candy industry and created a brand aimed exclusively at this group of people with special dietary needs. Selling cakes and sweets is not an exclusive idea, but targeting groups of people who are vegan or who cannot eat nuts allowed this company to stand out and create a loyal customer base for the brand.
Lefty’s: The left-hand shop.
This company, like Divvies, found a wide and long-neglected community of people who use or prefer to use their left hand.
Motivated that 90% of the world’s population uses their right hand, left-handers have had no choice but to adapt widely to the use of products designed for “right-handeds.”
This company saw this as a great opportunity. They created a store that sells products designed and manufactured exclusively for the other 10% of the population, and they were successful in reaching this smaller, generally ignored audience.