Finding your niche market

I once had a client who was a brilliant consultant with an absolute wealth of information that he was anxious to share with the world. 

Over the course of several months, my work with this client involved focusing his attention and energy on a single niche.  What began as a message geared towards “business owners, sales executives and human resource managers”  was ultimately refined to a message geared solely towards independently owned and operated real estate offices in the Midwest.

When my client began his quest, he thought he had tightened his marketing focus into a narrow niche when in fact he had actually defined THREE separate and very broad niches; business owners, sales executives and human resource managers. 

There’s nothing wrong with having three target markets, but it’s important that each market be drilled down, narrowed and developed separately and independently.

A traditional approach to creating a great marketing message is to focus upon solving the customer’s problems.  Since business owners have distinctly different problems than sales executives (and vice versa) it’s difficult to focus on BOTH areas well.  Indeed, there’s no easier way to generate confusion with your marketing materials (of which your web presence is just a small part) than to try to create an all encompassing "master" marketing message. 

If you believe nothing else, believe that a confused mind says “no”. 

Think about it.  When you were a kid and you asked your mother for something, usually her knee jerk reaction was to say "no".   Many of us, when pushed too hard by a car sales person, pull back and regroup.  We’d rather walk away and have time to "think about it".  Walking away is saying no, just in a more tangible way.  Creating confusion is NOT an effective marketing technique.

Your ultimate marketing goal should be to achieve crystal clarity with your marketing message.  The easiest way to achieve this is by tightly and narrowly defining your target niche market.