with Joey Ragona
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Lesson 2:
Why a Niche Market is Beneficial to Your Business
Let's talk about why a niche market is beneficial to your business.
First things first...
Choosing a niche is important to your business because marketing to everyone is marketing to no-one!
It's true.
Far too often business owners market to a wide range of people and nothing sticks. And they wonder why they have trouble selling their products.
Years ago, there were fewer brands, no social media and less advertising.
So it was ok to try to be everything to everybody.
But today there are too many competitors. Too much noise. There are literally millions of branded products available. And consumers have more choices than they know how to handle.
So you need to be specific and intentional with who you target and how. Which means you have to take a position that gives you the opportunity to stand out to your specific subset of people - your market niche.
Jack Trout, co-author of industry classic “Positioning - The Battle for Your Mind” says “if you ignore your uniqueness and try to be everything to everybody, you quickly undermine what makes you different.”
In other words... ‘let go’ of the everybody niche.
I know that makes a lot of people nervous. The fear of reaching fewer people by niching down is so common.
So you're not alone.
But I assure you. Unless you already have an established position as being everything to everybody, it’s a big marketing mistake to serve an ‘everyone’ niche.
Let me share a quick example of positioning for a niche market.
We’ll look at one product and one service. Most people use these every day so it's easy to follow.
I’m talking about computers and television.
When computers first came out, the category (or market niche) was simply “computer”.
Essentially, it was a “product” niche.
Soon after, the category split into segments (read: market niches). These market segments were to satisfy different people, with different tastes.
What we see today as PC, Mac, laptops and desktops are actually niche markets. But they’re still “just” COMPUTERS. But they are positioned and marketed to different audiences (with different avatars)
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Still with me?
Good.
Let's keep going.
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What about television? This is basically a service niche called "broadcasting."
When it broke into segments we got cable, satellite and even streaming video on our cool iPhones. Just to name a few.
Again, this is different positioning and marketing for different groups of people.
But it’s still BROADCASTING. :-)
So hopefully you can see how we can position and market a simple product and service as something completely unique to different audiences.
THAT’S what a niching marketing strategy does :-)
Focus on a specific niche
With those simple examples I’m sure you can see how specializing makes EVERYTHING you do with marketing easier.
When it comes to your online business, it’s even more important to specialize on small niche markets with specific needs and desires.
Because you become the “go to” for a specific topic and solution. Which is necessary in today’s overstimulated, over-information age.
Customers need to know who they can trust. And a specialist is better than a generalist.
With a niche advantage you can simply create a marketing message that drills through the noise and connect with your niche market
When you are clear on who you are talking to, what struggles they face and how your product or service can help them, you write better copy. In fact, most of the copy “writes itself” from the niche market research you do.
In fact, one of my biggest ‘copywriting secrets’ is to use the exact language I gather from my research in my marketing SHHH :-)
Then you deliver a precise and compelling marketing message USING WORDS THEY USE. You always want to speak to ONE specific group of people about THEIR problems, wants and desires using THEIR language.
Plus...leads are easier to attract. You have less competition and eliminate pricing wars. Because your focus on communicating how your product is unique compared to competitive products or services.
Not only that, your advertising and marketing dollars go further. Because you don’t waste money broadcasting abstract messages that don’t connect with your ideal customers.
Best of all you create products and services people actually want to buy. And it’s easier to sell without convincing when people are already looking for a solution.
So there you have it. A list of benefits to serving a niche market.
But we're not done.
Because you need to know about the two types of niche markets...