There’s not a whole lot of point speaking to people who don’t want to speak to you. If you are involved in advertising in daily newspapers, general interest publications, direct mail to diverse mailing lists or even billboards, you are probably wasting a good percentage of your advertising dollar. Unless you’re overall goal is awareness, then this is a luxury best avoided.
A better more lucrative approach would be to begin building niche lists. Niches are finely tuned special interest groups of like minded people. Examples of niches would be Harley owners, runners, trekkies, knitters and new moms to mention a few. In my world, start-ups are a niche I’m keen on. Doing everything you can to first identify the niches that are your focus and secondly, start populating those niches. One way of accomplishing this is to have documents available on your website that would be generally desired. Require the users to sign up for this FREE document. Once in, they would next be required to check off “interests” that they have. Each selection would put that individual into that niche, so in essence, they are building the niches for you.
One new revenue stream resulting from this suggestion would be to cross-promote with other businesses that would benefit from one or more of your niches. I would only suggest that you not release the identities of your niche members, as it took a lot of effort to build them and gain their trust. Damaging that trust damages your brand.
Once you get a healthy number of constituents in your niches, now you can start marketing directly to them based on their common interests. Aim your offers at their unique thirst and build a trusting relationship with them. Develop solutions and content your niches crave. With niche marketing, 100% of your advertising dollars are working for you and with the proper systems in place you can detect exactly who is responding to your efforts to contact them.
I love this post. I have been working to really narrow down my niche and make sure that I am really getting in front of the people that matter to my business. However, I find that when talking to established business owners they sometimes dont want to take the time to really define their niche. I think it is the first step to building any type of strategy. Some business owners, however, dont want to break away from the mass marketing strategy.
Many businesses feel strongly that they don’t want to miss any potential sale. If they did some study even they would see that their typical customer is not everybody, but a niche. Traditional thinking is frightened by this thought, they are happy with “the devil they know”. They are afraid to step out of their comfort zone. They are followers, not leaders.
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Astonishing how much the web has made marketing to a niche, no matter how obscure, possible even to smallest ad budget.
That’s the reality of the web Mike and let’s be thankful for it 🙂
With so much compition in most areas of the internet the only way to make your site stand out either to the user of the search engines is to find a niche and make it yours.
Lots of reasons to to embrace Niches. Thanks for commenting Jonathan.
Ed,
Brilliantly written and extremely well said — you’ve narrowed something that business schools take two years to teach (if they teach it at all) and made it crystal clear in one fantastic article.
Just thought I’d let you know — everyone deserves a pat on the back when they do a good job! Definitely bookmarking this site.
A very good piece of writing. Knowing one’s niche and targetting your business towards the niche is a good idea to promote your business and make it a success.
Thank you Carter, maybe I’ll start up Ed’s 24 Hr. Business School. Your compliment is appreciated.
Tony thanks for backing me up in your commenting.