Why you need a niche marketing strategy for your business

Niche marketing means defining a target audience for your marketing message.  Quite simply, a niche marketing strategy is choosing the target audience for your marketing materials.   Using a niche marketing strategy allows you to save money on advertising while increasing your marketing ROI.

Did you know that every content marketing strategy BEGINS by developing a niche marketing strategy?

Your niche marketing strategy lays the foundation for your content marketing campaign.  This is a crucial step in the development of a content marketing campaign.

There’s a marketing myth that , if you choose to embrace it, will destroy your content marketing campaign before it begins.

The Myth of Target Audience Monogamy

There’s no such thing as target audience monogamy!

I’ve worked with small business owners for over two decades.  When I began working with a new client, the first task was identifying their target audience.  It’s a key element in creating a niche marketing strategy.

The niche marketing strategy session with my client would begin well.  My clients were hungry for new customers.  They loved the IDEA of cutting costs and improving marketing performance by focusing upon a tightly targeted niche market.  However, once we began the process, their enthusiasm would wane.

In retrospect could I can see that the root of the resistance was a POV I can only describe as “target audience monogamy.”  My clients were afraid if they targeted their message, they would alienate potential customers. They feared that those not part of the chosen audience would respond like a jilted lover and retaliate in anger.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

To complicate things even further, some of my clients were viewing targeting an audience as a “til death do us part” commitment.  Not only did choosing a target audience mean eschewing all others, it meant sticking with this decision for life!

No wonder my clients dreaded the process of creating a niche marketing strategy!

So, before you begin identifying a target audience for your niche marketing strategy, take a moment to remember the following:

1. Choosing an audience as part of your niche marketing strategy will help not hurt your business.
2. You’ll get a greater ROI on your marketing investment if you target your message.
3. Choosing an audience is not an exclusive commitment.
4. Choosing an audience is not a a lifetime commitment.
5. Choosing an audience is not an irreversible commitment.

You won’t alienate people outside of your target market by targeting your message to a single audience.   When you tightly target your audience, your audience will notice your message.  People who aren’t part of that audience won’t feel excluded, they just won’t notice.

When you don’t target your audience for your marketing message, no one notices it.  At least when you target your message, someone will notice it.

Creating Your Niche Marketing Strategy

Follow this three step process to create your niche marketing strategy:

1. identify the audience
2. identify the problems this audience faces
3. identify the solutions your business offers.

This simple three step process would break down during the second step.   When asked to identify the problems members of this are experiencing, many business owners freeze.  It’s tough when you have no idea what purpose you are serving in the lives of your customers.

If you’re stuck on the second step, it’s time to do some research.  Of course, you could ask your customers directly, but that doesn’t work very often.    It’s not that they don’t want to help, many times they just don’t know why they do what they do.  You also can’t ask them what they want for the same reason.

For example, a furniture store decided to poll their customers.  They asked what the customers wanted from a furniture store.  Almost every customer surveyed said they wanted to be able to custom design their furniture.  The furniture store offered customers they service they said they wanted.  After the big roll out, the results were disappointing. Sales people on the floor reported that the majority of customers changed their mind about custom design when they learned it would take 4-6 months for their furniture to arrive.

One of the greatest gifts social media offers to business owners is the ability to “eavesdrop” on consumer conversations.   Start sleuthing.  Search forums.  Search Twitter.  It’s well worth the effort to discover the problems your target audience is experiencing.