What is a Niche Market and Niche Marketing?
By Domain Sam
KBOXX.com is For Sale – a short, brandable, easy to remember domain name great for the gift box niche or the box niche.
If you’ve been on the internet for even a short while you probably have heard of the term niche market or niche marketing. Before the internet it was very rare to hear such terms, but if anyone is trying to make money or even put up a blog, they are confronted with both of these terms. In most cases if you have a blog or a website with content on it as opposed to many other specialty types of sites then the chance of making money with the site is probably much lower if it is not catering to a specific niche.
What is a Niche Market?
A Niche Market is a group of people with a common interest, a group who has the same hobbies, or the same social background, the same or similar desires. They will have the same needs. Each niche needs information and solutions to their particular problems, so it is an extremely targeted market. In most cases it is a market that’s far more targeted than a much larger more general market.
For example, one could consider computers as a niche. It is, but it is so large a niche that it might be hard to make money in it because there are so many kinds of computers along with an almost unlimited uses for one. A much better niche might be “pc computer games.” It is a much narrower niche within the computer niche, and easier to reach people who might be interested in playing, buying or designing computer games.
What is Niche Marketing?
The word ‘niche’ is defined as: “A special area of demand for a product or service”. ‘Marketing’ is defined as: “The opportunity to buy or sell”. If you put the two works together, niche marketing means buying or selling a product or service in a special area of demand. What that really means is that a product or service is being sold to people who are most interested in that particular product or service and not to the general public.
One of the things that make niche marketing so attractive to sellers is that their advertising budgets go further. It costs less to advertise to a specialized market than it does to advertise to a broader market. That’s generally for the offline market, but the same holds true for online marketing but in a different way. The cost may be the same to reach either type of market, but it is far easier to market to a specific group of people interested in your product. When you do, your advertising dollars or hand labor as it may well be, will be more effective, probably far more effective.
Niche marketing must be designed to meet the unique needs of the targeted audience. Niche marketers need to tailor their product to meet those unique needs. If, for example, you have designed a product to make rabbit grooming easy enough for the untrained, ordinary person to do it, those who own rabbits will be most interested in your product. Those who own dogs, cats, or aardvarks couldn’t care less.
If you have written a series of articles or an eBook that will explain how to grow and succeed in cultivating four-leaf clovers in your backyard and selling them as an online business, then those who are looking for that information are your niche market. That might be a pretty narrow niche, but those interested in good luck might also be prime targets. Those who are happy doing what they are doing are not interested at all.
Niche markets may be small or large depending on many factors. Some niche markets may be too small to effectively market to them, or unprofitable because of the small target audience or for other reasons. Other niche markets may have too much competition for a beginner to compete in them. Then there are others that, while there may be a large number of people interested in them it is not worthwhile to market to them.
A good example of this is the niche of Good Luck. This is a large, but unfocused niche. It is possible to get a large following since many people are interested in good luck, but if you try to make money from ads, such as AdSense or similar ads, it is virtually impossible to make much due to the lack of commercial advertising online. In such a niche you might have to make your own product, become an affiliate, or use some other form of monetizing it.
Niche marketing is a very effective and cost efficient way to advertise and sell specific products or services to a specific audience or, hopefully, buyers of that product or service. What you must do if you are interested in making money is find a niche that people are passionate in and are willing and able to spend money for a solution to their specific niche problem or problems.
What else about Niche Marketing?
It is just one of those hard, sometimes cruel facts of life that the big boys or gurus have all the money they need to advertise and sell their products while we little guys and girls are on advertising budgets so small they may not exist. Competing with the big boys isn’t feasible…or even possible, for that matter or is it? What are we ordinary people supposed to do?
Niche marketing is our answer. We can’t advertise our products and services to the world at large but we don’t have to be able to do that to be able to make a pretty decent living… thanks to the Internet.
Niche marketing is selling specific products or services to a limited audience. One person with a computer, an internet connection and a good idea can go into business for himself on the Internet and target the people who would be most interested in what he has to sell and do all of the above on a very limited advertising budget.
In fact one can even do it on a zero dollar budget if they want to do the work themselves of promoting their products or services online using any one, or better yet, several of the methods of free promotion on the internet.
Finding the right niche for what you have to sell isn’t really all that difficult. Just think about whom the people are who would be most interested in what you have to sell. You also need to do some keyword research to verify that the niche is one where it is easy to reach and those in the niche have problems and that you can offer a solution for, whether it is your own solution or you are an affiliate of someone else’s product.
A site within the laptop computer niche.
For example, you have concocted a 3-step method of catching gophers that really works. You could write a short, easily understandable report that the homeowner can follow and easily implement. You may not be able to compete with companies that sell gopher traps or gopher poison, but you can target sales to those who want or need to do it themselves instead of hiring a commercial service.
In most cases using the ordinary methods which, by the way don’t work well, if at all, but your special 3-step method works like dynamite, thus giving you an edge. To capitalize on this you buy a domain, get a hosting service to host your website, and build a website to advertise your information product to people looking for gopher solutions.
In essence, niche marketing is selling a product or service to those who want or need the product the most. You will need to find a niche market first to be able to market to it. This applies to both online or offline marketing.
About Charles Harmon
