Introduction To eCommerce Niches
One way to help your business succeed is to find your niche. Finding your niche can help guide you in how you should be advertising, what platforms you should be using, and how you can best reach your target audience. If you want to identify your niche and learn the benefits of finding it, here is a guide to help get you started.
What Is A Niche?
A niche is a specialized area of a broader market that offers unique characteristics to distinguish it. Choosing a niche allows you to target a small, specific audience and offer solutions based off of their needs that they might have trouble finding elsewhere.
Why A Niche Is Important:
Choosing a niche and focusing on it allows you to build credibility and loyalty in one corner of a market. You can become the go-to business that your audience trusts to meet their needs. It also helps you develop expertise, as you are focusing most of your effort on providing the best version of a few products or services, rather than trying to crank out mediocre versions of many products. Having a niche and building loyalty with them also helps you increase profits!
How To Find A Niche:
Start by brainstorming your strengths. What is your business passionate about, and what do you do exceptionally well? Once you have a few ideas, think of what kind of audience could benefit from your products or services, and where there are gaps in the market. Price, demographics, psychographics, level of quality, and geographics are all great starting points.
Running a quick search can tell you a lot about what is going on in the market, what other potential competitors are doing, and what your audience is looking for. See if you can find any unsolved problems that you could help with- maybe your niche is looking for a more affordable solution, or they want a longer-lasting product. They might even just want something more fun or colorful!
Google offers suggestions when you start to type in the search bar, so use that to your research advantage! For example, if you type in “best sunscreen”, some suggestions are “best sunscreen for under makeup, best sunscreen for babies, best sunscreen for sensitive skin”. By searching these suggestions, you can see what audiences are looking for, and where you might be able to provide them with a product that they love.
Searching social media is another quick way to find out what people are looking for. Instagram and TikTok offer hashtags that you can search to see what people are loving, or what they are looking for. Reddit is another good resource- there are many subreddits where users can ask for advice or product reviews.
Once you have an idea of what you want your niche to be, see how much of a need there is for what you are offering. If you have a great idea, but the market is already very competitive, you might have a slower path to success. If a market is too niche, you might struggle to get enough business to stay open. You can ask potential customers if they would be interested in your product before you get started to see if they have any feedback, or if they seem excited about your idea!
If you have an idea you think would do well with a niche market, don’t be afraid to pursue it. Drybar gained rapid popularity by becoming a one-of-a-kind salon that only offers hair styling, without offering cuts or colors like traditional salons. Because of their limited offerings, they can perfect what they do. Nomatic was started with a crowdfunding campaign after targeting people who wanted good quality, efficient travel equipment. PupSocks offers silly, personalized products for pet owners who want to show off their furry loved ones. Niche markets can change and grow over time, so build a great relationship with your audience and listen to feedback so that you can grow together. Do you sell to a niche market? Have you ever shopped for something niche? Let us know in the comments!
