Niche Marketing
Carving out a unique niche for your business is key to growing your customer base. In order to be successful, you will need to understand who your customers are and how your business can better serve them. You will need to connect with them on a personal level and focus on turning them into a team of dedicated followers that will push your business forward. Once you have discovered your niche, you will be able to redirect your efforts towards reaching a larger audience and growing your business.
What is Niche Marketing?
BusinessDictionary.com defines niche marketing as “concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well-defined segment of the population. Niches do not ‘exist’ but are ‘created’ by identifying needs, wants, and requirements that are being addressed poorly or not at all by other firms, and developing and delivering goods or services to satisfy them.”
Many businesses view the idea of niche marketing as a strategy that will cut profit margin or limit sales. This is a common myth; however, niche marketing is not all about finding a small audience and creating a strategy to only serve them. Having a well-defined niche can give your business more power and a serious edge over the competition. The key is to uncover an underserved niche market and create a strategy that makes everyone want to be a part of it. Your marketing messages will also resonate better with your audience and turn them into dedicated fans that buy and rave about your product or service.
Cliff Harris, founder of Positech Games, is a great example of how a business can benefit from niche marketing. In a recent interview with gameindustry.biz Harris discusses the struggle to stand out and survive in the indie community: “what I’m saying is you want to be the only game that does what you do. I don’t think I’m the best in the world at making a complex political strategy game, but I am the only one. I kind of own that space.” Harris also points out one major key to his success: “Market it, nobody markets anything.” For Harris, the importance of marketing is huge and “prosperity is a matter of finding your niche and investing in marketing.”
Businesses that try to target everyone have significantly higher costs, which is why it is important to recognize that you can’t do business with everyone. Otherwise, you risk wasting a great amount of money and exhausting your resources. No one can afford to target everyone, but with a clearly defined niche, you can make sure to stay focused on selling to customers that are the most profitable. Plus, the smaller your target market is, the less competition there will be for the same audience and connecting with them will be even easier.
Think about it this way: would you rather be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond?
If you narrow your focus and market you will be able to serve your customers much better. Niche marketing will help with your positioning and branding as you attract and connect with the right people. As you gain experience in your specific niche, you will also start to develop a reputation as an expert in the field. Once you are known for a certain niche and are seen as an expert, it’s easier to get more of the same type of customers so your business can grow from there.
