What are niche markets?
A niche market is a subset of the market on which a specific product or service is focused. (Wikipedia). There can also be niche markets within niche markets. For example: In the Action Sports Industry, Surfing is a niche market. In the Surf market, Surfboards are a niche. In the Surfboard market, Surfboard shaping techniques are a niche. In the Surfboard shaping techniques market, Surfboard shaping tools and materials are each their own niche.
Why are niche markets important?
Niche markets can help you expand your target audience by finding new groups that may be interested in your products or services. Addressing niche markets may allow you to create a more specific and meaningful interaction with a prospective customer. Niche markets may allow you to make a connection with someone about a topic of mutual interest without you shoving an offer down their throats. This type of interaction can lead to more initial connections, and because those connections are focused on building more trust, those people will be more likely to purchase from you when they are ready. Your ability to identify and connect with niche markets can be completely game changing and separate you from the competition. Connecting with niche markets can give you a powerful introduction to your target customers that can lead to sales of your core product down the road.
For instance, if you are selling basketball accessories, you should realize that your target market is more interested in the game of basketball, basketball drills, the NCAA tournament and the NBA, than they are in the actual accessories that you are selling. Each of those topics is a niche market. Creating great content around those niche markets can allow you to connect with and develop a relationship with your target audience that can turn into both immediate sales and a long term relationship with your customers.
From an SEO perspective creating content for the general market and then also creating supplemental content that specifically addresses issues related to niche markets allows your website to demonstrate to Google that it is a valuable resource offering significant depth and breadth in subject matter that is relevant to the general topic. This is one of the best ways to differentiate your website from your competitors based on quality of content.
Advertising To Niche Markets
Niche markets are also important because they allow you to be specific. In marketing, case study after case study has shown that what often separates an unsuccessful advertising campaign from a successful one is the specificity of the message.
For instance (staying with the surf example): A local surf shop put out four different ads to promote an online sale.
Ad #1 “Action Sports blowout sale! Get big discounts while supplies last, sale ends soon!”
Ad #2 “Surfboard blowout sale! 50% off Surfboards, 75% off accessories. Sale ends tomorrow.”
Ad #3 “Skateboard blowout sale! 50% off Skateboards, 75% off accessories. Sale ends tomorrow.”
Ad #4 “Snowboard blowout sale! 50% off Snowboards, 75% off accessories. Sale ends tomorrow.”
Ad #1 received a less than 3% conversion rate. Meanwhile Ads 2, 3 and 4 received conversion rates of 7.2%, 8.68% and 5.62% respectively. Those are significant increases over Ad 1 and these are very typical in most industries that use the correct ad formulas. The only difference was that the ad copy of ads 2, 3 and 4 was specific and addressed specific niche markets.
How can you use niche markets to sell your core product?
The first way you can use niche markets is to identify information that your target market may be interested in, that is related to your core offering, and by becoming a good information resource for them, you can establish a relationship that leads to future sales and referrals.
The second way you can use niche markets is to create very specific offers that speak to very specific needs. While these tend to be relevant to much smaller segments of the total market, they are tremendously more effective in capturing interest and conversions.
Searching For Niche Markets
Are there any niche markets that you may have missed? Now is the time to identify them. Brainstorm all of the niche subject matter that is somehow related to your core topic.Here are some powerful tools for uncovering niche markets
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia is an incredible resource for finding niche markets. First, the table of contents box found on every topic page in Wikipedia demonstrates a terrific variety of ways to explore the subject matter. Many of these are ideal examples of niche subject matter related to the general topic. Then within each section of the page there are typically a number of links to pages that support and expand upon related aspects of the topic. These are great resources for finding niche markets.
- Google’s “Searches related to…”: Over the years Google has changed where these suggestions are found. Currently they are located at the bottom of the organic search results for any search. The “Searches related to…” suggestions represent the most popular next-searched terms that people type into Google after searching for the current term.
- Ubersuggest.org: Ubersuggest takes your search term and systematically enters it into Google, along with each individual letter of the alphabet, and scrapes the Google Instant suggestions. For instance: keyword, keyword a, keyword b… and so on.
- KeywordSnatcher.com: Keyword snatcher is a tool that does the same thing as Ubersuggest.org, however Keyword Snatcher takes it up several notches, but performing the same thing in Google, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and YouTube. It then continues to run every suggested keyword back through each search engine adding each individual letter of the alphabet and number, scraping the results and repeating. Keyword Snatcher can create over 40,000 keyword suggestions from a single term.
- Quora.com: Go to Quora, enter your category keywords and browse through the Questions to find topics of discussion. Repeat the same using Yahoo Answers.
- Google Search Modifiers: For each core topic, take the core topic keyword and enter the following search strings into Google. You will get results for more forums to browse for discussion topics & niche markets.
- “keyword” + “forum”
- “keyword” + “forums”
- “Keyword” + “board”
Example of search for Health Food forums: “health food” + “forum”
Remember to add every niche market to your Aggregated Sitemap in the proper Category, Sub-Category structure so that the information will be well organized.
So, now you know how to
Find and Explore Address Niche Markets!
Next In the next lesson we will take a deeper look at how we are going to look at the process your site visitors will go through on their journey to becoming customers. The goal is to turn as many customers into profit generating clients as possible. To do that, we will need to create and fine tune your CONVERSION FUNNELS.
To do this we will take a look at how we can apply a proven and perfected conversion process to your specific niche. Get ready to learn about…