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Identifying a niche market to target your
products is extremely important. Often,
resellers who are just starting out will try
offer general products in order to cater to the
majority of customers on the Internet. However,
they are most likely to fail in their venture,
since the information contained in such general
products is vague and not likely to have much
value. Considering the importance of identifying
a niche market, let us first try to understand
what is meant by niche marketing.
Simply put, a niche market is a group of people
who are easily identified by their common and
specific needs or interests, which makes it easy
to market products related to their needs.
Therefore, when someone says they have found a
niche for their business, they are saying that
they have identified a very specific product or
service which caters to the needs of a
particular group.
The process of finding a niche product follows
certain steps which include the follows:
1.
You should try to identify a product or
service which you have an active interest in or
are highly passionate about. This is important
since it will allow you to understand the
interest and needs of your target market, in
addition to making it an enjoyable, meaningful
and profitable business for yourself.
2.
You should consider a product or service
which you have some knowledge on. An easy way to
do this is to think about the various skills and
interests you have. Or, if you have found a
niche product which you would love to promote,
but are not knowledgeable about yet, you will
most likely be willing to learn up on the
subject and become an expert on this niche.
3.
Once you have identified you potential
niche market, you will need to evaluate it to
see if indeed there is a ready market for the
products you intend to promote. These are some
of the questions which you will need to ask
yourself to do this:
a)
Determine if there is a strong enough
demand for your product. You should ensure that
your product or service offering is specific.
For example, if you choose to market camping
equipment, you could try and target a specific
brand for your niche, such as Coleman or other
popular brand within your niche. If you do not
do this, you might find your business being
crowded out by the many other generic online
stores on the Internet.
b)
You should spend some time doing keyword
research, using a service such as Overture’s
suggestion tool, or wordtracker, which will be
able to highlight trends and give you an insight
into what people are looking for or are
interesting in on the Internet. Coming back to
our camping example, a search in Overture
revealed that the phrase “camping equipment” was
searched for over 75000 times in a month,
compared to a search on Google for camping
equipment which yielded over 1.6 million
websites offering these products. This is
clearly an extremely competitive market.
On the other hand, a more specific search, such
as “Coleman camping equipment” on Overture
revealed that there were just over twelve
hundred searches in a month, in contrast to
about 93000 competing websites offering these
products. While this too is considered
competitive, it is not a bad as the more generic
market. When you performed a seach on Google,
you would have noticed that some of the websites
in their top 10 results do not even contain the
world Coleman or camping equipment in their page
titles. This is an often used strategy to align
your online web store with certain targeted
keywords.
c)
The other thing you could do to help
identify a niche product within your target
market is by conducting a survey for your
existing customers. Often, you will find that
your customers will be more than willing to
share their ideas and will be able to tell you
the kinds of products and services which will
appeal to them. This can prove to be a fast, yet
effective method to determine which products to
target to your niche market.
d)
Finally, you will need to decide what the
Unique Selling Point (USP) of your product is. A
good way to determine this is by taking a look
at what your competitors have defined as their
USP’s and then define your own based your
products and services. This will help you
position your products and services better,
therefore allowing you to stand out from the
competition.
4.
The final step would be to establish and
to market your online store. A good way to
market your products is by providing informative
articles and resources related to your niche,
which will attract visitors to your website, who
will be more likely to trust you and purchase
your products. This will indeed give you a
tremendous boost from other online stores which
purely list their products for sale.
With the right research and knowledge, you will
be able to successfully identify your niche
market and establish an informative online
resource on your niche. This will certainly
increase your traffic and will boost your sales,
making you the expert on your niche.
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