The Power of Niche Marketing

Written by: Gary Horsman

The Power of Niche Marketing

Niche Marketing – for Your Consideration

Successful marketing experts know that it can be more effective to narrow your focus and try to dominate a segment of a market. If you have something to offer this segment and if the segment is not too small (a niche of one for example would be too small) then this approach makes good business sense.

Moreover, the niche of today can become the mainstream product or service of tomorrow – it has happened.

Consider these niche concepts . . .

• Would you rather have a niche job which is perfect for you and totally rewarding and stimulating or any job?
• If you are a classic Mustang enthusiasts would you rather have a 1968 Ford Mustang Convertible with a 4-speed transmission and a 289 in³ engine or just any car?
• When you go to a restaurant you don’t even bother to look at the menu and when the waiter comes you order “food” – just any food. Instead, do you look over the menu and select just what you want. You may even ask a few questions and then explain how you would like it prepared.

We all like being catered to and we like being made to feel special. This is a big part of niche-marketing.

From a business perspective, it becomes even more significant to niche market. Let’s say you are trying to expand your business. Do you want to expand by gaining any new client or would business be much better if you expanded by gaining your ideal client? I know that my ideal clients are always much better to work with (in many ways) than a mediocre new client or just any new client.

Here is an example that you may relate to. Have you ever heard of Chobani yogurt? This is a niche yogurt brand with the niche being Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt was a niche within the yogurt market and a few years back no one even gave much thought to this niche. Such is often the case with a niche and that’s why to niche market can be so valuable as a marketing approach.

Now let’s consider Chobani Greek Yogurt. Chobani is a strained yogurt made in a centuries-old traditional manner – with all-natural ingredients. It was a simple product idea and very natural to Hamdi Ulukaya. The business came out of the great recession and is now very successful because of the niche marketing approach. The approach was so successful that Greek yogurt is now a well-known item in your grocery store. The Greek yogurt market is booming. Moreover, Chobani has now overtaken both Dannon and Yoplait to become the leading yogurt brand in the country. The 2015 sales were a whopping $1.7 billion. Now that looks like a nice transition from niche to big.

A big part of successful niche marketing has to do with positioning.

The niche-pizzeria – where do you go if you want a nice pizza? Do you go to the restaurant that has a wide assortment of items on the menu which include pizza? Or do you go to the small pizzeria that sells only pizza. . . from a wood-burning oven . . . using a traditional Italian recipe?

The niche restaurant always wins out when people are predisposed towards the niche. It is the best option for them. The niche pizza restaurant is perfectly positioned for people who want a nice pizza. The niche pizza restaurant is passionate about one thing. They are specialist in pizza. They are authorities on pizza. Therefore, it is easy for you to decide where to go. You go to the authority – the expert – the connoisseur.

It is important to niche market for your business. Do you want specific (ideal client) referrals or any referral? Do you have solutions for all potential problems or do you focus on solutions for the problems of your ideal client? Why are you valuable to your ideal client? This is an important question.

Win Big by Thinking Niche

Here are some things to consider:

1. Define Things Carefully

Know your ideal audience well. Know also what you can specifically do for your ideal audience. Your offering does not have to be better that other offerings in any absolute sense. However, you must make it clear that your offering is different and a better option for your ideal client.

You need to look for a niche that is being underserved or that is not being served at all.

Solid in-depth research is essential.

2. Do Not Create Complexity

Define your ideal niche client and what problems they have and how you will provide solutions. Then stay niche focused on your ideal client, their problems and your solutions. Stay focused on how to differentiate your solutions. Do not dilute your efforts by trying to offer too much to too many.

Use content marketing to demonstrate your commitment to the niche, your authority and your ability to solve the problems of the niche.

3. Use Niche-Focused Advertising

Traditional advertising is too expensive and is not designed to reach a specific niche audience. Traditional advertising does not make sense for most niche markets. This is where niche focused content marketing and search engine optimization works well. When someone is searching, they tend to have a good idea of their problem and a reasonable idea of the solution. They are also intent on discovering a solution.

To niche focus means that you are working on the long tail of the search phrase / volume curve.

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “big hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches products and services in the tail.

I want to step aside for a moment and explain a key point about the long tail.

If there is a “long tail” then there has to be a head of the tail. The “head” can be thought of as the selection that is available in the largest of the brick-and-mortar stores (Wal-Mart for example). The “tail” is everything else. It is important to note that the tail is mostly available online. This realization makes it clear how important it is to be online with authoritative content designed for your niche. This content needs to be search engine optimized so that when your ideal niche audience performs a search that they find you. The unlimited “shelf space” online means that everything can available there. The key is to be found when soneone searches.

Create content that your niche audience will cherish, put it online, search engine optimize it and encourage others to share it.

4. Create Opportunities to Share

Item number 3 (above) leads to this last approach to my advice on niche marketing. Your ideal audience often knows about and is connected with others in the niche. They know who will most appreciate the value your solution provides. People who are passionate about something often share valuable things related to the niche.

This is an important part of niche marketing. Create wonderful online content specifically for the ideal niche. The audience you engage will help you to grow your audience within the niche. Members of the audience will do some of the marketing for you. This referral marketing is extremely valuable. This means you must be on the right social media platforms and you need to create delightful and sharable content.

5. Products & Service – Cautionary Remarks

It is a good idea to know the profitability of niche products and services and to be ruthless about dropping niche offerings if they don’t fit into your profitability planning. However, be cautious as some products or services which are only marginally profitable or even unprofitable may still contribute to top line sales and overall profits. If a product or service that does not generate profit directly makes the company’s other products more profitable then it may still be worth offering the product or service.

If you found this article useful please share it with your friends and colleagues. Also, you may be interested in other SEO Notebook blog posts. A popular blog category is the SEO Favorites category.