Finding Your Niche Market

Finding your niche market is an important step in launching your business. By taking the time to define your niche, research your target audience, analyze your competitors, identify your unique selling point, develop your brand, and test and measure your results, you’ll be well on your way to finding your niche market and growing your business.

The first step to finding your niche market is to define your niche. A niche is a specific segment of a larger market. For example, if you’re selling pet supplies, your niche might be pet owners who own cats. This is a much more specific market than “pet owners” or “pet supplies”.

By identifying your target niche market, you can focus upon your customers’ goals, desires and problems.  When you know your target audience’s goals, desires and problems, can you create powerful, compelling and selling marketing messages.  As an added bonus, you can also use niche market products to increase sales and profits.

When you don’t target a niche market, your customers start to like a mob instead of individuals.  It’s a slippery slope to losing track of the goals, desires and problems you need to create powerful, compelling and selling messages.

Finding Your Niche Market

To begin the process of finding your niche market, start with the products or services you offer.  Who needs this product or service?  Be realistic.  This simple starting point is where a marketing campaign can really go off the rails.  Instead of rooting this ideal target in reality, sometimes a mythical creature is created.  This mythical creature doesn’t have any goals or needs.  This creature is fueled with only a burning desire to buy your company’s products and services.

If you’ve already started your business, talk to your current customers.  If you haven’t started your business, take the time to talk to your POTENTIAL customers.  Data without insights is worthless – and conversations can actually provide incredible insight.

Once you have a better understanding of who your target market is, you can start to narrow down your niche.

Marketing for Knowledge Professionals

Most of the marketing strategy and tactics you’ll find online are primarily targeted towards businesses making Minor Sales.

Knowledge professionals – i.e. accountants, attorneys, doctors, chiropractors, consultants, coaches and therapist – are educated and intelligent but they have a big problem.  Much of the marketing advice found online isn’t targeted towards these professionals.  As a result, they are often frustrated trying to promote their business.  They are relieved to discover that marketing can be intuitive and easy, once they know what kind of sale they are making. Neil Rackham in his book Spin Selling categorizes knowledge professionals into the category known as making Major Sales.

Unfortunately,  most marketing advice given online is geared towards businesses making what Rackham defines a Minor Sales. Many effective Minor Sale Marketing Tactics are worthless when used to promote a business making Major Sales.

Research Your Target Audience

Once you’ve defined your niche, it’s time to do some research. This is where you’ll learn more about your target audience. You’ll want to research their age, gender, location, occupation, income level, lifestyle, values, beliefs, and any other relevant information. You should also research their interests, hobbies, and the types of content they consume.

This research should help you discover their needs and pain points.

You can use online surveys, social media, and other online research tools such as Google Analytics and keyword research to gain further insight into your target audience. This will help you better understand who you’re targeting and how you can best reach them with the right message and content.

Don’t view your target audience as a mob – but rather try to see them as individuals.  This will help you better understand who you’re targeting and how you can best reach them.

Analyze Your Competitors

Once you’ve done your research on your audience, it’s time to analyze your competitors in depth.

Look at your competitors’ website, social media accounts, and any other online presence they may have.

Try to identify the strategies they are using to promote their products or services.  Frequent publishing of content means is a sign that they’re doing content marketing.  If their website appears on the first page of a search result, then they have definitely invested in SEO and/or paid search marketing.

See if you are able to identify who their target audience is.  If this lines up with the audience you’ve chose, see how they are reaching them. Analyze their pricing structure, offerings, and customer service policies.

This will help you gain a better understanding of the market and the competition, and will provide you with valuable insights for your own business.

Identify Your Unique Selling Point

Once you’ve chosen your target audience, done your research and analyzed your competitors, it’s time to identify your unique selling point. What makes your business different from your competitors?  What can you offer that they can’t? Consider the features, services, and benefits you can offer that will give you an edge over the competition. Think about the quality of your product or service, your customer service, the convenience of your business, and any other aspect that will give you an advantage. This is what will set you apart from the competition and help you stand out from the crowd.

It’s important to remember that your unique selling point should be UNIQUE.

Finding Your Niche Market to Develop Your Brand

Now that you’ve identified your target audience, done your research and come up with a unique selling point, it’s time to develop your brand.

Your brand is more than just your logo.  A logo and other visual elements are how people will identify your business.  Your brand is how people EXPERIENCE your business.

Be sure to keep your niche market in mind as you develop your logo, website and other marketing materials.

You’ll also want to create content that speaks to your target audience. This can include blog posts, videos, and social media posts. All of this will help you create a recognizable brand that resonates with your target audience.

Test and Measure Your Results

Once you’ve implemented your niche marketing strategy, it’s important to test and measure the results.

Testing and measuring will allow you to see what’s working and what’s not.  If it’s working, great.  If your promotional marketing messages aren’t working, then you may need to head back to the drawing board.

There are many analytics tools which will allow you to track progress and compare your results to your goals. This will help you make sure you’re reaching the right people and that your efforts are paying off.

Additionally, you can use A/B testing to compare different versions of your content and determine which one performs better.

By testing and measuring your results, you can make sure your strategy is on the right track and that you’re reaching your target audience.

Finding your niche market is an important step in launching your business. By taking the time to define your niche, research your target audience, analyze your competitors, identify your unique selling point, develop your brand, and test and measure your results, you’ll be well on your way to finding your niche market and growing your business.