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It is difficult for any small business, especially those starting in a new market sector, to break through the noise of established competitors. This is the case when you start a business without knowing who your target market is. You want to get started with your new business quickly and efficiently. At the same time, you do not want to waste time and money creating awareness for your business. The most effective way to start building a customer base is by identifying a target audience that would provide a profitable niche market that can help support your company.
What is a Business Niche?
Business niches are specific submarkets within a larger market that your company targets for selling its niche product and services. Differentiating your business from the competition and excelling in your sector requires targeting a particular area of your potential niche market. Within this market, you must ensure that the customer profile would be willing to pay for your product.
Most markets can be further subdivided into more specific categories according to their constituent’s particular needs and preferences. For example, some of the more popular methods for defining a niche include:
- The Price you are aiming to sell into the luxury, premium, average or discounted sectors.
- Demographics of your potential customers are based on several variables, including gender, age, income and education levels.
- Quality of products are to looking to sell within your niche premium, craft or discounted products
- Geography defines the target customers regions you will promote within by countries, cities or specific areas within your city or town.
What are your Interests and Passions?
Make a list of your interests; aim to create a list of 10 or more ideas that can be potentially turned into a niche business. For example, suppose you start a business in which you have an interest. In that situation, it is more likely that you will have a passionate interest in the subject matter, which is necessary to sustain you through the peaks and troughs of any online business.
You can run a successful business without being interested in the subject matter; however, you must have a passion for business, such as marketing strategies or sales, which will drive you to develop the business.
Here are some questions to reflect upon about what your interests and passions are:
- Are you a member of any clubs and societies?
- What are your hobbies?
- What magazines do you subscribe to?
- Member of any Facebook groups
Once you have an idea for potential niches, your next step is to identify your perfect niche audience.
Who are they? What do they want? How much time do they spend online?
Look in forum groups on Quora and Facebook groups to identify the key influencers, the topics which interest them and the problems they face in the interest you have specified.
Keywords research is essential in understanding the needs and potential of the business niche you consider developing into a business.
Using keyword tools such as Google free tools. You can explore the current trends using Google trends, which will give you an overview of the interest in a specific topic in a defined geographical region. For example, the chart below shows the topic of cycling in the United Kingdom and further refines the topic by mountain bikes and electric bikes. It is helpful to gain an overview of the current interest in any topic.
The Google Keyword Planner will show you the keywords which people are using when searching for solutions to their problem
From your research, you have identified some business ideas. What are the problems your target niche faces, and how can your interest become a successful business which meets their particular needs.
Many potential customers like to read reviews to see what other buyers think of the product before buying something. And will read reviews to know if there are any complaints about a particular product or service. Still, others want to know if anyone else has purchased the same thing.
Competition for the niche market for your business
If there is some competition in your chosen niche, this does not necessarily mean that there is no room for you. However, if it is a profitable niche, you can look for areas that can be more compelling to the potential customers.
I would create a spreadsheet and add all competitor websites to identify and outrank these sites with your keywords. Will you be able to define a unique selling proposition for your site (USP)? Access the sites using the following criteria: –
Quality of the content: – It’s easy to outrank your competitors in a niche where other businesses are not creating high-quality, detailed content that serves the audience.
Value of the website: – Many online entrepreneurs have created businesses that disrupt entire industries by creating an authentic and transparent presence in niches where others are faceless and overly corporate. These new companies often generate value by being more honest and transparent than their competitors.
The Keywords:- you’ve found a keyword using Google with relatively high search volume but little competition and paid to advertise; an opportunity exists for you to upset the market.
Profitability
You should know what niche you want to focus on. At this point, it’s essential to figure out how much money you can potentially make in your niche. Although there are several affiliate network sites you can investigate, including Share A Sale and Rakuten marketing which both have affiliate programs for hundreds of companies across most marketing sectors, you need to research the potential of any programs which interest you.
If you have a favourite product you are using and would like to promote, you can easily search to see if they have an affiliate program. Simply Google product name and add an affiliate program, e.g. Dyson affiliate program
Another helpful site to investigate is Clickbank to review the available popular products in the niche, check that they are selling in reasonable numbers and that the commission is sufficient income level to create a profitable business. If there are few products available, it may mean that the niche may not have the demand you had expected and may not have the profitability you require.
What Next?
Once you have completed your research, your next activity is to build your niche business plan to detail your niche market definition, niche marketing strategy, and a detailed cash flow forecast. This will ensure the business plan key goals can be monitored and changes can be implemented quickly to improve the likely success of your niche business.
Evaluation
While market research helps you understand your niche audience and what they want, it doesn’t tell you whether your niche is viable. To find out, you need to test your niche in real-time. You can do this by creating a landing page that promotes your free info product. Then drive the search engine traffic to that landing page using Google Ads. You can use any landing pages; use that if you are already subscribed to a favourite landing page. If not, look at the Card landing page, which gives you the features you need to run an A/B campaign.
Measure the traffic going to your landing page; if you are getting good traffic levels without many signups, it would suggest you need to edit your landing page. Once you are happy with the conversion rate and know how interested people are in your niche, you’ll be better equipped to decide whether it’s worth pursuing this single niche and creating a profitable niches business.
