with Joey Ragona
Tired of struggling to make sales?
The Truth About Finding a Niche Market So You Can Sell with Ease!
Discover how to pick the perfect niche...
...in this free mini-course
The first thing we need to do is get clear on exactly what a niche is.
A niche is commonly referred to in business to help you target a specific subset of individuals who benefit from your product or service.
For the context of this training, we’ll define niche marketing in two different ways.
The first way to define a niche is by product. It’s when you create one product for a specific group of customers.
For most online businesses, even those who have a service, we are not talking about a product niche.
Usually, we focus on the second method of niching down.
Which is a market niche.
Simply put, a market niche is a single segment of a market. The segment contains a group of people who have the same problems, challenges, wants and desires.
And you speak to that group of people through your niche marketing message.
But first, let me share...
The Difference Between a niche market and a customer avatar;
Before we continue it’s important to understand the difference between a niche and a customer avatar.
This is an important distinction. Because we don’t market to the avatar. We market to the niche.
More on this later - but write that down and paste it somewhere you see every day;
“WE DON’T MARKET TO AN AVATAR - WE MARKET TO A NICHE”
Make no mistake. A niche market is NOT your customer avatar.
A niche market is a GROUP of people with commonalities. And your product or service delivers value to those people.
A customer avatar is a character you make up that represents your most ideal version of a client that falls within that group of people.
For example, men who are balding prematurely is a niche market.
The “official” title of the market niche might be “hair restoration for men.” John might be the avatar you create to REPRESENT the ideal customer in that niche market.
Do you follow me so far?
Another example could be women who recently had a baby. They can’t lose the extra baby fat they put on during pregnancy. This market niche might be categorized as “weight loss for women with newborns.”
And Susie might be the avatar you create for this particular niche market.
To drive this point home I pulled this video from my Niche Marketing Blueprint (formally Product Marketing Blueprint).
Take a look;
Paraphrasing Seth Godin, a market niche is kinda like saying “people like this have this problem”. Or “people like that want that outcome”. (learn more in Seth's book This is Marketing)
The most important part of a niche is finding a group of people who are LOOKING for a specific solution. Like the two examples I just gave you.
A niche market is simply the needs of your customer identified as a whole
Listen carefully; a niche market is NOT your product.
Your product or service FULFILLS the needs of your customer.
This is why you want to understand everything your customers' want, fear and believe.
Because your customer is buying a solution. YOUR solution.
They buy an outcome. They buy a transformation that moves them from something bad to something good. It's a means to an end.
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Because we are talking about the marketing and POSITIONING of your product or service so you can be useful to a group of people.
Seth Godin calls it “the smallest viable market”
But don’t let the word “small” fool you.
There are small viable markets producing 1 million dollars a year.
For a lot of people, that’s enough.
And it doesn’t mean you can’t have 2 or 3 “small viable markets”.
We’ll talk about that in an upcoming lesson.