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Finding Your Market
For most of us, we have a number of niche markets within our primary markets that we can concentrate on. Niche marketing
gives you the opportunity to:
- Narrow your competition as few of your competitions will be actively engaged in the niche
- Become recognized as an expert within the niche
- Concentrate our marketing dollars and efforts on a smaller number of prospects, making your money and
your time go further
- Allows you to really get to know your market in detail, including the various decision makers, making your networking activities more focused and productive
Despite the advantages of developing two or three niches, few salespeople, professionals and business owners embrace niche
marketing for fear of ‘losing’ the mass of sales outside their chosen niches. That is a false fear because:
- No individual or small company has the resources to compete on a mass scale and do it
effectively.
- The members of each small market believes their problems, issues and needs are unique and they want to work with someone they believe really ‘understands’ their issues and needs
Niche marketing works because it expands your ability to reach potential prospects, but more importantly, it recognizes human
nature and works within the reality of how people think. All members of a particular group believe their problems are unique.
Take almost any group you can think of: retired individuals, manufacturing companies, retail clothing stores, dog lovers, nurses.
Each of these groups see themselves within the context of their group.
- Manufacturing companies believe that most of their particular business issues are unique to them and
can’t be solved with some ‘standard’ business solution. They want to work with salespeople who really
‘understand’ the problems of manufacturers, even though the reality is about 95% of all business are
common to all businesses.
- Retired people believe that their financial and living needs are unique to them and they want to work with
people who really ‘understand’ the unique issues of retired folks--even though 95% of their problems and
solutions are same as everyone else’s.
- The same for retail clothing stores, dog lovers, nurses, and any other group you can name. People tend to
view their problems as being different from other groups and naturally want someone who really understands
the issue and can present a solution that is uniquely geared to solving the issue or need
Where and how do you find your particular niche?
Research. You must research your potential markets and select niches that you find that:
- Have a large enough prospect base within your geographic area to support your marketing efforts
- Have legitimate marketing opportunities, whether those opportunities are cold calling, direct mail,
networking, or whatever. You must know that there are reasonable methods or reaching your prospects
- Where you believe you have or can create some marketing or competitive advantage
- Where you have an interest. If your niche is women’s retail clothing stores and you hate working with them,
you’re asking to be miserable
Your research must answer these questions at a minimum:
- size of the market
- potential dollar value of sales of your product or service within the market
- which of your competitors are currently working within the market
- what marketing opportunities are there within the market
- what advantage do you have or can you create within the market
- what, if any, entry points into the market do you currently have? if you have none, how are you going
to penetrate the market?
- how long will it take to begin to carve out a place within the market?
- do you have the interest and commitment to make it work?
Generally with niche marketing, you need more than a single niche. By concentrating on two or three niches instead of one,
you can insulate yourself from some of the market ups and downs. Looking for two or three diverse markets allows you to
select niches that are opposites in the sense that when one is suffering from a downturn, one or two of the others can be on
the upswing; and while one is a growing market, one or two of the others can be mature markets.
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