High-Achieving Women's Blogazine

When coaching entrepreneurs, I am often asked how to identify a niche market. Before I give you the 4 ways to identify your niche market, I want you to read the blog post: What are the Differences Between a Target Audience and a Niche.

As stated in that post, niche marketing is really about ‘energy’. Niche marketing will help you to focus on two things: 1) Where and with whom do you want to spend your energy; 2) Where and from whom do you get your energy.

Let me put it anther way, your target market is the group of people you serve and your niche is the service you specialize in offering to your target market.

Now that you understand the difference between your target audience and niche, below are the 4 ways to identify your niche market:

1. Who are your currents clients?

What do you really know about your current clients? What specific facts do you know about them (e.g. age, gender, profession or education). Where do they live, what do they read, what hobbies do they have?

Do you know their aspirations, what do they dream about, what keeps them up at night, what do they need help with, what do they read and where are they online?

2. Who are your favorite clients?

Which of your clients do you look forward to seeing again and again and more importantly working with? What are their personality types, values or desires? What are their challenges or dreams?

Start to look at the overlap within your current client groups and then identify what the gaps are between your existing clients and your favorite clients.

3. What are you passionate about?

What do you want to change or improve in the world? What makes your heart sing? What are your special gifts and talents? What are your core values? What specific services do you offer? What is your ‘signature’ topic? Remember to be as specific as you can.

4. What makes you YOU?

Why do you want to be (or are) in business? What’s your short and long-term vision?

What are your demographics? What are your interest, hobbies or life’s challenges that might connect you to a specific audience? What can you deliver, how can you deliver, when can you deliver? What are your ‘genius’, strengths and talents?

In summary, what you are trying to determine is what makes you different and unique? If you can figure this out and communicate it well, then you got something that is very difficult to replicate.

Niche marketing is a combination of you, your talents and what the market wants and needs.

So if I was to ask you: What are 4 Ways to Identify Your Niche Market – what would your answer be?

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There are so many entrepreneurs wondering why they are not making the money they desire, why they are not growing as fast as they predicted and why they do not have a larger footprint in the marketplace.

It may just come down to not knowing your niche well enough or not having a well-defined niche.  So let look at what a niche can do for you:

 1. A niche allows you not to spread yourself too thin

Instead of running the risk of spreading yourself too thin by saying that ‘everybody’ is your potential client; niche marketing will help you focus on a specific group of people and their specific needs, wants and desires.

It allow you to better develop your products or services for a specific group, based on your knowledge and understanding of what they are interested in. 

2. A niche makes it easier to identify and target potential clients and partners that you want to work with in the future

As the group of people you want to serve becomes smaller, it is easier for you to identify potential clients, partners and joint ventures opportunities.

 3.    A niche makes it easier to become an expert and well known in your field or industry

When you have a niche, it makes it much easier for others to understand ‘what you do’ and ‘for whom’.  This, of course, helps to establish you as an ‘expert’, the ‘go to person’ or ‘thought leader’ in your field.

Because this group is more targeted and smaller, you become more visible and  better known faster.

 4.    A niche bring more referrals

It is easier for others to understand ‘what you do’ and ‘for whom’; thereby it is much easier for others to refer people to you.

5.    A niche allow you to be more unique with less competition

Believe it or not there will be less competition when you provide specific services or create specific products for specific people in a specific unique way.

 6.    A niche makes marketing easier

Niche marketing makes your positioning, branding and marketing much easier and you ultimately attract the ‘right people’ much faster.

 7.    A niche makes it easier to identify specific clients

When you have a defined niche, you can identify specific potential clients easier, especially if your clients are other businesses.  When they are a business, you can identify them by name, which makes the communication more personal.

7.5     A niche bring more repeat business

When you niche, you can provide a much better product because you know precisely what your niche wants and needs and you ultimately get more customers buying from you over and over again.

Based on the 7.5 Tips For Why it is Important to Have a Niche — niche marketing really comes down to:  Who would you rather be: a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond?

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When you are looking at marketplace niching, you start by taking an inventory of yourself to determine your natural talents and strengths that you bring to the table.  When you identify your niche and clearly know who they are, it becomes much easier to build a competitive leading edge advantage and gain expert status in your niche.

Your ideal niche will make the best use of your talents, passions and expertise.  Below are the key reasons for niching:

1. It will increase your income. When you are recognized as a expert or specialist you can command higher fees than a generalists.
2. It allows your business to be focused and your efforts can be more streamlined.
3. It establishes your credibility – people are looking to hire most qualified experts.
4. It makes you easy to refer – when others know what you do and who you do it for, you come easily to mind for referrals.
5. It becomes easier to create marketing tools.
6. It is certainly easier to write marketing copy when you are writing for a specific niche.
7. It is easier to develop content for your blogs, articles and newsletters.
8. It will allow you to create a signature product and sell more effectively.
9. It will allow you to get a better return on funds invested in advertising and marketing.
10. It will certainly get you better return on time invested on promotional activities.

Having a true niche also build your confidence, both in your marketing strategies and in your business practices. Finding that niche will help you to perfect your skills. With  perfected skills, you will be able to sell yourself and your services in a positive way to your prospective clients through niche marketing. Marketing to a particular niche will also make you more credible to prospective clients.  Also, by cutting down on the competition, other companies doing other specialized services may refer business to you!

So, as you can see, there are many advantages to niche marketing. Find a specialized skill that can become your signature and tailor your whole business around it.

© 2011 Dr. Laureen Wishom