Niche Marketing

Category Archives: Niche Marketing

Did you know you can earn more money by marketing to fewer people? The secret is niche marketing. Focusing on a specific group of customers can help you get you more revenue and better results.

The secret of niche marketing is to create a unique selling proposition, develop ideal client profiles, and concentrate your marketing efforts only on those people.

If you’re doing something nobody else can (or will) match, you’re now unique. You’ll stand out better in your preferred markets too.

It also makes your marketing campaigns far easier. Instead of trying to sell everything to everyone, focus on the one thing you do better than anyone else. The thing that your ideal clients want and need to have.

Discover how to find a market niche, what makes it profitable, and how to tell if it’s too big (or too small).

“Targeting Gone Wild
Reach 70 million people at MySpace”

I saw an ad with that headline on ProBlogger, and whoever paid for it has indeed gone wild (and crazy too). That’s not targeting, that’s closing your eyes, praying, and hoping to hit something.

70 million? 70 million what? Does it really pay to market to that many random people?

A better approach would be to create a profile of an ideal customer, and market specifically to businesses that fit that profile. As in archery, the closer you get to the center of the target, the better your score (and your revenue). In archery, the target is pretty clear. There are rings, worth different numbers of points.

You get more points if your arrow hits the center, and fewer points if you hit one of the outer rings; no points at all for hitting the white background (or the haystacks). So, how do you improve your marketing aim?

Develop a biography of your ideal customer

If it’s a business, think about what size company you want to support. Fortune 500 companies work differently (move more slowly and have more paperwork) than smaller firms. However, they also have larger budgets. Think about the kinds of services you want to offer and whether they are more suited to a large or small firm. A small business may not need a sophisticated bookkeeping program, but a large business will.

Where are your customers located?

Worldwide companies will have different needs than local businesses. Public companies have different reporting requirements than private firms. Can you support large companies with branches in many cities or countries? A web designer can easily support an international clientele, but a caterer can’t.

Focus on a specific industry or industries

What areas are you most expert in? For example, establishing yourself as the go-to company providing marketing for electrical distributors or the social media guru for pet stores will help you grow your niche (and improve your revenue).

Who do you want to reach?

Are you looking for the CIO or an HR manager? The CIO will have different problems (and need different solutions) than the HR manager. For instance, while both may be customers for software services, the CIO may be much more concerned about data backup systems, while the HR manager needs software to track employee sick days and vacation time.

What’s their budget?

Don’t aim your $5,000 solution (no matter how wonderful it is) at someone who is only authorized to spend $500. Look for the decision maker. Allow time for a decision. Businesses to business marketing is a bit different that consumer marketing. Generally, the time lines are longer, more specs are required, and more people may be involved in the process.

The better your aim; the better your results.

Photo: matt gibson/

Does your technology business have a marketing niche? Sometimes what businesses think is a niche isn’t really a niche at all. Is your niche a real one? How do you tell?

For example, Alicia on Marketing Professionals said, “I need a domain name, and I’m having trouble finding one. My niche is fitness…can you help?”

Her problem isn’t really finding a domain name. Her real problem is that “fitness” is much too broad. If she opens that gym, she’ll be competing against huge corporations, and established gyms with existing members and clients.

She’s not differentiating herself in any way. “Fitness” by itself isn’t really a niche, it’s a general category.

A real niche isn’t a broad term, like fitness. A real niche is a single slice of the fitness pie.

She needs to focus on that one slice, rather than trying to eat the whole pie all at once.

Why you need a niche

Say, like Alicia, you want to start a gym. You’re going to have a lot of competition. You’ll need to figure out a way to stand out from all those large companies, the ones with gyms in nearly every town, or even more than one location per town. You don’t have their staff, their resources, or their brand recognition.

So, you need to be different instead. Doing that, focusing on just one small piece of an enormous market, will help you in two ways. One, it builds that brand recognition. Two, it helps you focus your marketing efforts.

How to choose your niche

Staying with the gym example, pick something that the other all-purpose gyms don’t (or can’t) offer.

Cater to a specific group of people, and only those people.

For example, say you decide to focus on new moms. Now, instead of trying to sell to everyone (and we know how that works) you could target sites run by mommy bloggers to get the word out.

Have day care for the kids while mom exercises. Or, offer “mommy and me” classes so both child and mom can exercise, have fun, and play together. Your domain name might be stayfitmoms.com

Or, maybe you want to concentrate on stockbrokers. A fitness center geared to them could open very early (for a workout before the market opens), have TV screens playing CNBC or Bloomberg TV, offer massages to relieve stress, etc.

A gym that targeted baby boomers might focus on fitness for aging bodies, offer nutrition help, or 20 minute workouts for busy people.

Once you have that, you can start telling your story and the rest of your marketing falls naturally into place.

Find customers more easily and cheaply

Instead of looking for everybody and anybody, you concentrate on “your” market. You know who they are, and they’ll know who you are. You’ll be “the gym for stockbrokers,” instead of just “the gym down the block.”

If you’re “the stockbroker gym” you’ll have a better idea of what your website and your facilities should look like. You’ll want something that says “Wall Street”, rather than something that screams Disney. No cartoons, no animation. Instead, go for an atmosphere that’s buttoned-down, corporate looking, and geared to people who are driven and hard-charging.

Having a niche geared to stockbrokers also tells y ou what hours to open, where to locate, and what services to offer. You’ll also know where to advertise and what to put in your ads. The appeals to stockbrokers would be very different than the appeals to new moms.

The best part is, you’ll save time and actually make more money marketing to fewer people.

Photo: Daniel Philpott