Niche Marketing: Definition, Examples, Ideas, Strategies and Steps to get started. A Complete Guide.

Rather then jumping around I would like to start with the topic and stick to it. After you read this blog-post you will be able to understand what is niche marketing, why it is important to have your niche, niche marketing examples, how to find your niche and generate some highly profitable niche marketing ideas.

NICHE MARKETING

Basically Niche Marketing means marketing and trying to build business around a very specific group of people i.e. we are targeting those potential customers who live in a specific area or they share some common likes, dislike, demand, need or problem, or they have a specific age group or anything that collectively defines a concentrated group of people.

To understand this lets take a couple of examples of niche marketing -

- Let's consider you have a need, you are thirsty,while choosing an option to satisfy your need is 'want', one can fulfill his urge of thirst either by either drinking water or juice or beer whatever option you want to opt for. So if there is a brand, we know there is a vast number of juice consumers, and the brand wants to target more specific group of juice drinkers, let's say very health conscious consumers who want to drink juices which are more concentrated with less preservatives, so 'concentrated juice' would be considered as the niche, marketing and building business in a particular niche is called niche marketing.

- Let's take another example for a better prospective, suppose there are two markets 'red ocean' and 'blue ocean', you do not want to do business in both the water-bodies, you prefer mastering over one then move on to the second.Suppose through your research you concluded that working in blue ocean would be much more beneficial for you as compared to the latter option, red ocean is a big NO to start business in as it has cut-throat competition, less profitable, more investment and way too much of hard work which does not match with the returns you are going to get. Whereas doing business in blue ocean is more profitable in accordance with the resources you have- also there is less competition, availability of USP and chances to make good profits. So rather than working in either both the oceans or red ocean you choose to establish yourself in blue ocean, perhaps blue ocean is the 'niche' while its marketing is called niche marketing.

HOW TO DECIDE YOUR NICHE ?

Most resourceful tool to figure out initially and completely in some cases is the internet. Everything is digital nowadays, one can easily extract data from the internet using some tools which we are going to discuss about in this section, using the internet you can extract basic data from the internet or completely well- researched reports depending on the nature of your business, but whatever may be the nature of your work you are surely going to have authentic base reports to start shaping your plans for your business.

If your audience is an active internet user, which in 2020 most probably they might be, chances are you would get accurate data, thanks to google and its services ! What we are going to do is simply search on google for 'Google Adwords' and then click on to the 'Keyword Planner' where we could type the particular niche keyword and observe the results- how many people search that particular terms, terms related to them, if the graph of a particular type of keywords is good that means there is a business opportunity in there and if you work on your strategies right, do the maths and everything seems good enough you are sure to excel if you put calculated efforts. If google adwords is a bit tough for you to understand you can also check out Neil Patel's UberSuggest, its an excellent tool to understand the  the consumers and when researching about a particular niche.

IMPORTANT FACTS ABOUT NICHE WHEN WORKING ON A PARTICULAR NICHE-

-Your niche is the main concept for your website.

-Having decided a niche helps you focus on your target audience and the product development process.

-The niche is not something that cannot be changed, you can have a collection of niches, and if you are starting small then preferably have one or two niches at a time and then expand this would help you pay proper required amount of attention at each niche you are working in.

-Work on those niches which you are comfortable working with and which has proven statistics of growth.

-Try working in the niches which are not overcrowded, you enter an overcrowded niche you better be really interested in working in that niche, and have a very unique approach to be able to stand out.

-Other side of the coin is if you select a niche which does not have much of search volume your earnings are going to be pretty low, which means selecting a niche of interest and researching about the niche and its development is very crucial.Use google trends, google adwords and Ubersuggest to figure out your niches.

NICHE MARKETING IDEAS

Niche marketing can be done for possibly every product, the important question here is-

Which niche can help you generate maximum profit ?

Well the answer to this question is if there is demand of a particular type of niches which of course is the primary parameter for niche selection , keeping that in mind every niche is profitable depending upon your interests, ability and resources etc. While deciding the niches there are some factors that the niche must be fulfilling to be able to generate good profit margins for you, which are as follows-

1. The buyers and consumers must be passionate about it, there must be a sense of enthusiasm among the target audience.

2. Low competition for your particular niche, there must be pretty handful USPs that you can tap to, to make your brand stand out.

3. There must be either need or want in the market for that particular niche.

TYPES OF NICHES-

There are typically three types of niches,

1. PASSION - these are some hobbies that with time have become intangible part of a person's life with time. e.g. fishing, golfing, photography and horse riding etc. People with specified passion are willing to buy new items to support their passion frequently.

2. LIFESTYLE - some external activities that people indulge themselves which becomes part and parcel of life, those activities kind of defines the type of life that person is living perhaps referred to as the lifestyle of the person. e.g. eating habits, outdoor activities such as cycling, trekking, profession, all of this comes under lifestyle niche. People of a certain lifestyle would rearrange all aspects and plans in their life to stick to their lifestyle as it defines them and when they stick to it they feel accomplished, relaxed or positive about it.

3. PROBLEM / SOLUTION - when there is something which is not good for a person or for people around him that becomes a problem; there are several type of problems- healthcare, occupational or grooming etc., providing products and services to overcome those problems is referred to as solutions. People facing problems will buy products, information and services to get rid of them.

Take a note many top level niches are too competitive finding an under served segment within a niche is a key. For example - if you are a photographer you can start clicking portrait photographs for parents, photography for pregnant women etc., another example could be if you help people by providing solutions for their problems of weight loss you can target 'weight loss for new mothers over 30' etc.   

IDEAS TO AVOID WHILE SELECTING A NICHE

Be aware that deciding a way too concentrated niche could be fatal for your business. Do not segment down the niche too much ! Lets understand this with a couple of examples-

1. Iphone portrait photography for parents- this kind of niche is likely to fail , while deciding a niche make sure you have pretty handful options to work with.

2. Weight loss for new mothers of triplet over 40- this segment is ridiculously small and likely won't be able to generate sufficient profits, it sounds like there has been no prior research while deciding the niche.

Till now you must have understood why niche marketing is important ? - Using this form of marketing and identifying your niche helps in creating opportunities even in the markets that look completely saturated.

CONCLUSION 

Niche marketing helps you to stand-out attract attention of people towards your product or services, all you need to do is identify the problem and develop a business around your idea, how you are going to solve the problem or fulfill an unrecognized demand. If you successfully decide your niche  by doing your research right you can easily establish a brand that will be recognized among your target audience.

I hope this article was worth reading and you gained some important knowledge, do share the article with your colleagues and help them understand Niche Marketing.