Ever heard of a man being referred to as “jack of all trades, master of none”? It may sound like such a personality is useful for just about every job that comes. Simply put, he’s a generalist who can almost do everything decently. But if you’re looking for a pair of shoes for basketball would you go to someone who knows how to make just about every shoe in town or would you prefer a shoemaker who specializes in basketball shoes? Your guess is as good as ours.
There may be over 32.5 million businesses in America. But if you want to get a specific thing done, you’d rather go to a specialist rather than a jack-of-all-trades. That’s the advantage of serving a niche. You let your business cater to a special segment of the market.
Take, for instance, Nike. You may wonder why it became so successful as the premier basketball sneaker brand in the world. There were a number of brands that dominated that market before Nike did. In the 1920s, Converse hogged the limelight; it was the basketball shoe of America’s first gold-medal-winning Olympic basketball team. Today, 70% of all NBA players wore Nike. While Nike sure throws billions yearly in ads, one thing’s certain. The swoosh brand was able to identify its niche and focus all its guns on taking it.
The good news is finding your niche need not be a tall order. With expert advice, you should be a step closer to your special market segment in no time. Listed below are key takeaways to get you started.
Being Familiar with a Niche Market
A niche market is just a segment of a bigger market and can be defined by its own identity, preferences, or unique needs that separates it from the market at large. In other words, it also is a focused or more specialized portion of a broader market.
By identifying your niche, it becomes easier to excel in your sector since you cater to a more specified product and customers. In short, you get to laser focus your business effort.
For instance, women’s clothing stores target the needs of the women population. Instead of catering to the public, such stores focus on clothing that women can use in different stages of their lives (e.g., getting pregnant, childbirth, nursing a baby, etc.). Also, they adjust their marketing and ads to cater to women only. In the process, they serve that market better than businesses that focus on clothing for everyone.
Forging your Niche Business
Now that you’re aware of what a niche business is, you probably want to create your own. Here’s how you forge your own niche business.
- Choose your target audience. Identifying your niche start by thinking about the general market. Then, focus on an aspect of that market where you are most knowledgeable. When done, create subtopics within that big umbrella. From there, you should be able to identify your target audience faster.
- Analyze an under-served need. It is important to emphasize that identifying gaps and defining your target audience should start with fulfilling a need. In other words, you should be able to soothe a particular pain point. Plus, you can also seek a sector that’s anticipated to grow.
- Research details about your customer. One great benefit of researching information about your target audience is that you can identify their needs. By doing so, more and more strategies can be created to strengthen your business niche. Other than this, knowing your customer’s goals, expectations, motivations, and frustrations are equally important as well.
- Marketing business to a specific audience. If your service or product is a niche, then your marketing effort should also be focused on that as well. You need to target your audience. This can be done through making ads, podcasts, or even blog posts. These all are invaluable tools for delivering your message to your target people who are more likely interested in your business.
- Make a Business Plan. Ask yourself: What can go wrong with your planned initiative? Picture out possible pathways of your niche business towards success. Defining exactly what to provide to customers and what needs to meet is a major consideration. Indeed, fine-tuning your business idea reflects your learning about your target audience.
Making It All Happen
When you already know your business niche, you shouldn’t stop there. You also need to know how to dominate your field. So, it’s important that you find a great niche market so you won’t waste your efforts.
One key element of a good niche is to know if you have identifiable customers. When you can easily identify your potential customers, you’re in luck. This is just a hallmark of a great business niche.
On the other side of the fence, if you can’t put your customers to an identifiable segment of the public, then you’re running around in circles. In addition, a good niche means accessible customers. How can you possibly gain profit if you can’t even access your customers?
Identifying your niche is never a one-day process. It’s a product of thorough research. The good news is you need not be the first to identify a niche; you just have to be better at serving that market — as Nike did.
