Nailing Your Niche

byLoucuddy

92 followers

4 years ago

There is a saying in the marketing world; "The riches are in the niches" which basically means you have to spend some time nailing your niche, which is awesome. But, what exactly does that mean?

What IS a niche?Well, it can mean a noun; 👇

1. a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service.

"he believes he has found a niche in the market".

Or an adjective; 👇

2. denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.

"other companies in this space had to adapt to being niche players"

Or, a verb; 👇

3. Place (something) in a niche or recess.

"these elements were niched within the shadowy reaches".

But that's enough of quoting the Oxford dictionary.

As a person with many interests and passions, nailing a niche for me is fairly easy.

I love horses and all things equine, so I could focus on helping horse lovers to achieve or learn something. I enjoy motorsports and cars, which is a massive industry and a highly competitive one, but again, I could possibly aim my niche at 40+ men in positions of responsibility to relax at the weekends indulging in their favourite motorsport or get a wider range of access to track days, or help them to find motoring themed holidays or great deals on new cars or specialized parts for vintage vehicles. I am hugely interested in gardening. But I also like to feel helpful, to give advice and genuinely have people's best interests at heart. So the site I currently have is a gardening focused one, with my niche being to help people who are already into gardening, to find high quality seeds and bulbs, and high quality equipment and garden accessories and to direct them towards merchants through my blog.

Some create their niche by creating an ideal customer avatar.

You pinpoint a type of person, let's call her Alice. And her approximate age, let's say Alice is 41. Then try to picture Alice as a real person, where does she live, what is her home like, does she work? If that's a yes, then what does she do for work? Is it a high paying executive type job, or is she a part-time worker? Or is she early retired, or does she have a disability?

You create an avatar, called Alice, including her "income" and various responsibilities, her social life, where she "hangs out" online, what activities and groups she would likely be in, then you figure out what products or services she is most likely to be interested in...Then you use all of that information to tailor your marketing to THAT SPECIFIC NICHE.

In the above case, the niche is quite specific, which actually helps you. It reduces competition, it allows you to be very specific with your content, and increases the chances of you being able to establish trust and authenticity quickly, because your not spreading yourself too thinly over many different details, but focused only on specifics.

But, a niche isn't just a person. And whilst the above suggestion on avatar creation is essentially a good one, it's also a very basic marketing method, it can be time consuming, and can also leave you with a wishy washy niche which only works for one specific thing. Because let's face it, everybody on the planet is different and you just can't always pigeon-hole people into avatars. With this method you only market to one group of people, potentially missing out on a ton of other customers that you've missed because they don't fall into your avatar specs.

Now, if you're happy with that and it's going to suit your business model, then by all means, use it if it helps.

But, rather than focusing all your time and energy on who your ideal customer is, think more about the problems you are going to solve. It doesn’t matter who’s problems you are solving, just focus on whatever it is you do and the problems it solves.

Then you can focus on how you're going to solve that problem...

Part of solving an issue is knowing exactly HOW to solve the issue in the first place.

With my website I know that my customers are looking for good deals on seeds, bulbs, plants, furniture and tools, but they are also looking for guidance, innovative things, quirky things and some top end products, I can solve that issue by providing them with links to relevant products from trusted merchants, saving them the hassle of searching for them. I can also help them to save money by knowing where to provide coupons and offers.

And what outcome are you offering?

It's all well and good knowing what problems you solve and how to solve them but you also need to focus on what outcome you are aiming for. It may still be to help Alice to get some great deals on bedding plants and some tomato seeds for her kids vegetable plot, so essentially, it's fulfilling your ideal customers avatar, but it might also help "68 year old Terry down the road" who didn't fit your avatar model, but DID fit the problem/solution/outcome model.

Finding a niche isn't always about finding that ideal customer, the person you can help. Often times, it's about what you can help ANYONE with, within a specific problem.

Focus on the problem first, then narrow it down to a person.

It also helps to be absolutely clear on your business plan. This will help you to be absolutely clear on your niche. The business plan helps you to define exactly what it is that you do. What problem you solve, how you are going to solve it and what the intended outcome is, along with your financial plans and goals.

Once you're clear on your business mission, then you will have nailed your niche!