You experienced immediate success when you first launched your company. But now that you have a few employees, things have slowed down and sales have stagnated. How do you get past this hurdle and continue growing your business?
The solution is niche marketing. By targeting a small and profitable audience, you’ll set yourself apart from your competitors. This can be the key to seizing your share of the market and drawing in new customers.
Ready to bring your business to the next level? Read this step-by-step guide and discover how to find a niche.
1. How to Find a Niche With Current Customers
Don’t overlook your current customer base. Through all the noise and market competition, you’ve connected with these consumers. That suggests there’s something about your outreach, messaging, or product that sets you apart.
Survey your customers and you may be surprised to learn they share many similarities. Look beyond the traditional demographics of age, finances, and location. What are their interests, hobbies, and lifestyles?
By casting a wide net, you’ll ensure you won’t miss out on some key unifying factors. These can help you identify and target untapped niches that had escaped your attention.
Of course, you’ll still want to continue with market research. Although there may be some commonalities, that doesn’t mean you’ve discovered the largest and most profitable niche.
But it does give you a good place to start.
2. Provide a Solution to an Unsolved Problem
Here’s a harsh reality: Your company isn’t unique. It’s likely selling an iterative product or offering a service already available across the country. So how can you hope to stand out?
Marketers like to think in terms of solutions. Your product is a solution, helping your customers achieve certain goals. The secret isn’t to rethink your product, but to rethink the solutions it can offer.
For example, there are likely tens of thousands of bakeries operating at any one time. And everyone enjoys sweets, so how do you go about finding a niche market?
Well, take a look at the success of Insomnia Cookies. This company, started by a college student, identified an underserved audience and service.
For one, you can get takeout in the form of pizza, gyros, and other savoury items. But what about desserts? Insomnia Cookies recognized the potential of a delivery-focused business and ran with it.
As if that wasn’t enough, it also discovered an audience of college students with late-night sweet tooths. In a fifteen-year period, Insomnia Cookies erupted with popularity and spawned over 100 locations.
That’s the power and flexibility of a niche. Narrow the scope of the solution your product provides. Then you’ll start to key in on an untapped potential audience.
3. Examine Competitor Demographics
Your competitors have an audience, too. You don’t want to go after the same slice of the pie. Figure out who they’re targeting and steer clear of their customer demographics.
What are their messaging techniques? Are they using certain keywords for their SEO? How do your products and prices differ?
You need to have answers for all these questions, and for each competitor. This information is essential to ensure you know how to differentiate yourself in the market. But it also provides an opportunity to emulate potent competitor strategies — as long as you can do them better.
4. Evaluate Profit Potential
You need to know how to find a profitable niche to make any of this research worthwhile. By now, you should have a list of a few potential audiences. So which one is worth your time?
Record some keywords that are relevant to each niche. These should be terms or phrases that your potential customer may enter into a search engine. Process these through a keyword planner and see just how popular these keywords are.
Not every audience is large enough to warrant a personalized marketing campaign. For example, you don’t want to tailor your product to a small group of people, as you’ll limit your growth opportunities.
A profitable niche should have heavy traffic with targeted keywords and little or no competition.
5. Enact New Messaging
You’ve found a niche that seems profitable. But is it really? You’ll have to target your selected audience to find out.
Yes, it’s time to enact a new messaging strategy. But that should stop short of rebranding your product, website, or company. The niche is thus far unproven, and you don’t want to gamble all your resources on a drastic change.
Take it slow. Launch a new website or product with an enhanced messaging strategy. The new messaging should position your product or service as the solution your target audience is looking for.
6. Analyze Results
Set some goals before the marketing campaign springs into action. You’ll rely on your analytics to determine if you’ve found a worthwhile niche. Look for markers like traffic, media coverage, and sales.
If the campaign has reached or exceeded your goals, it may be time to pivot your company image to cater to the target audience.
Failing to meet your goals can be disheartening. But don’t throw in the towel just yet. Ask yourself if it’s the fault of the audience or your marketing strategy.
Reach Your Target Audience
You know how to find a niche, but do you have the expertise to target it? ZipZipe can help.
We’re an industry-leading digital marketing agency. Our social media, advertising and SEO services are designed to enhance your company’s outreach. Contact us for a consultation and competitive analysis.
