“Niche” seems to be a buzz word used by many internet marketers, especially those who work alot promoting products through affiliate marketing. I have spoken with many people who are new to internet marketing and mention the term “niche” or “niche marketing” but unfortunately have not understood the concept completely, hopefully after reading this article that will know longer be the case.
So what is a “niche”? It is a much smaller segment of the population of a larger segment or group of people. For Example, Weight Loss is a very broad niche, within this niche there are many other niches, including for example, diets, exercise programs, supplements, medications, etc. Within these different types of weight loss treatments we can identify much smaller “niches”. For example, there are many different micro niches under the category of diets, you may have your own weight lose success story based on your own diet, which you could write an e-book about, or perhaps you prefer the “cabbage soup diet”, “Atkins diet”, “F-Plan diet” or a diet designed by a celebrity. Diets can be fashionable and many people are looking for the secret to fat loss. Although the main niche (weight loss) is very competitive and almost impossible for a new website without a massive marketing budget to penetrate, there are many small niches within this subject that can be targeted and are big enough to build a successful on-line business. Of course you can work on more than one related niche, however, it is best to focus on niche marketing rather than adopting the scatter gun approaching and listing every affiliate product that you can lay your hands on!
It is also possible to create a niche based on geography and demographics. You may wish to target a particular country, county or state, further reducing the target audience of a new website. This allows internet marketers a greater competitor advantage because they can use keyword phrases that will have greater demand versus lower supply and will assist their website optimisation strategy. It is also possible to identify a “niche” based on gender, or age groups to assist you to target a more defined group.
As internet marketers we always want to focus our marketing efforts on a particular niche so that we can achieve the maximum return on our investment (ROI).
A lot of people resist the effort to focus their marketing on a niche because they feel they are limiting their audience and therefore their profits. Some people prefer to try the “supermarket strategy” which involves throwing up ads and promotions for everything under the sun onto your website in the hopes that everyone who visits their site should be interested in at least one of those things. This strategy may work offline in supermarkets but it’s a big mistake online for a several reasons.
1. People Online Search for specifics.
Through keyword research we can actually see what people are searching for in the search engines like Google. The results? We find that people rarely search the internet aimlessly. They search with a particular need in mind and they’re searches are very specific. For instance, few people type “health” into Google, but hundreds and hundreds each day type in “acne cure”. If your site is specifically catered to that niche the chances that someone will actually buy something or click on one of your sponsored links increases significantly! You will already know what interests the visitors on your site instead of throwing darts in the dark guessing what they might want to buy.
Relevance is a key component of the internet success formula. If your site is not relevant to what people are looking for, they will go somewhere else. This probably sounds very obvious, but it is unbelievable how many people still don’t get it. Searchers don’t have time to search through hundreds of categories to find the one they need, they’ll go elsewhere. You’ll never have this problem if you adopt a niche marketing strategy.
2. Finding a Niche will Help your Search Engine Rankings.
One of the profitable ways to get traffic to your site is from organic listings on search engines. They are free and the supply is nearly endless. But for a search engine to send you traffic they need to know what your site is about. In basic terms, if your site is too general, the search engines won’t send you much traffic because they don’t know who to send. If however, you have a site that shares lots of information about one very specific topic e.g. “Hypnosis being an effective weight loss treatment” then when people type “effective weight loss treatment” there’s a good change the search engines will send you a nice stream of traffic consisting of many people looking for exactly what you are promoting.
3. Finding a Niche Will Lower Your Advertising Costs.
Some of your will inevitably use paid advertising opportunities to drive more traffic to your site and you need to make sure that your marketing budget is spent wisely. If your website does not revolve around a particular niche you will definitely be advertising to people who aren’t interested in most of the products or services that you offer on your website and your conversion rate and return on investment will be very low.
When your product is a specific niche you can avoid those wasted advertising dollars by marketing only to people who have already shown an interest in your product. So if your website and products are only relevant to people with lots of weight to lose then you will receive an extremely high rate of response through PPC advertising on a website that’s already dedicated to that topic.
4. Finding a Niche Makes It Easier to Sell Products and Services.
Let’s face it. Nobody really likes a salesman and nobody really likes to hear a sales pitch. The beauty of the internet today is that you can make money without having to convince anyone to buy anything. If you target a specific niche, you may well be marketing a product or service to a group of people who already want it or need it. Half of your job is done. Now all you need to do is arrange to have your website to appear where they are searching when someone searches for that solution and convince them you really have the best solution at a fair price. For example, once someone has typed “debt consolidation help” into a search engine, we don’t need to convince them that it’s a good idea to consolidate they’re debt. You already know they want that and now all you need to do is convince them that you are the best person or company to help them solve this problem.
So start narrowing your efforts down to using a niche marketing strategy today. You’ll want to do this in two steps. First look inside yourself and see what you enjoy and know a lot about. This will give you passion and excitement about what you are doing and lots of material to work with. Second, you’ll want to look outside at the “real world” and see if that market has potential customers. You can do this by simply typing your main “keywords” into Google e.g. “hypnosis and weight lose”. If you see a sizeable group of people advertising products on the right hand side of the screen (the “Sponsored links) then you’ve located a niche with buyers and potentially a good niche, after all some competition is healthy. Business owners simply wouldn’t be wasting their money advertising on Google if people in that niche weren’t buying products or services in that category. There are many other ways to research a niche including keyword research and surfing the internet yourself trying to find similar products, or employing an expert to do it for you.
It is possible to find a profitable niche that nobody else has ever thought of but it’s highly unlikely. So don’t be scared off by the competition that you may find in your chosen niche, look at it as a sign of health in the market you’ve chosen. Obviously, if it is completely saturated then start researching a new market. If you need help determining a niche market or need assistance research a niche market then contact us to help or advice you.
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