Niche Marketing: How you can do it?
The golden rule of niche marketing is to “know your market first”. This is where your research begins. You need to find a market before you find a niche within it. What makes a good market?
First, a good market has a large number of people trying to find out information about it. Think about golf, travel, weddings, crafts, etc. All these markets have large volumes of followers.
The people interested in a market must be passionate about it. In fact, they have to be irrational when it comes to this market. Just think of all the golfers you know. They’re usually irrational about learning to make their swing better. They constantly are trying to improve their putting skills. They buy new golf clubs, balls, tees, etc that they think will improve their game. They’re out of their minds about golf.
The people in a good niche market have money to spend on that interest. Look in any fisherman’s tackle box and you’ll realize they’ve spent hundreds on lures and related fishing products. Anyone that’s passionate about a hobby is willing to spend money. Many great niches have their own language and terminology. Look at computer geeks and all their terms and anachronisms. The language of a niche is
known primarily to the people interested in it.
Niches have their own publications. In fact, this is one of the ways you can find a good market. Research publications. If the market is good, it will have magazines, books, courses, ezines, etc. about that market. And it will have profitable advertisements in these publications.
A good market will have its own celebrities. The gurus of the hobby or interest. Golfing has its Tiger Woods. Grape growing has its Lon Romboughs. Good markets have people that are revered in the field.
Another good sign of a good market is that they usually display "community" among the interested. Forums, Yahoo groups, ezines, and newsletters on a topic are a good sign of this. Community is also shown in certain blogs on the internet.
The best place I know to do market research is www.inventory.overture.com . This website is a goldmine of market research information. You can type in a keyword or phrase relating to the market you’re researching and find out how many other people typed in that keyword and related keywords.
When you find what you think is a good niche market, you can then log into www.overture.com and search that niche keyword. When overture brings up the results of that search, click on the "View advertisers Max Bids" link in the upper right on the results page. You’ll be asked to insert a security code that they display and when you continue, a display of the advertisers and their bids will come up.
Take a look at the third bid from the top. I consider this an indicator bid. I believe that if the third bid is between 10 and 30 cents, it is a weak niche. Bids between 30 cents and $2 are potentially great markets. Bids greater than $2 indicate there is too much competition to break into and make good money without it costing you way too much.
The next step is to find out how much competition is in that niche. Go to Google and investigate the top 20 websites for the market you’re interested in. Look at how many PPC (pay per click) ads are on the left side. 10 or more means stiff competition. 1-3 is great. Then look at the websites themselves.
If the PPC ads all come up with long sales letters, long forms collecting email addresses, etc. this is not good. The competition are really trying for sales and business. If they go to corporate looking sites things are looking up. I try to avoid markets where there are a lot of hard working smart people behind the competition. Corporate looking sites are run by not so smart people and don’t generally generate sales.
Also look at those top 20 sites that come up in the search. Are they mostly informational sites or are they meant for sales conversion? Here again, a large proportion of sales letter pages aren’t a good indication. Free information and University sites are. Corporate sites are good too. (corporate sites are no competition they’re for brand name recognition).
Notice that I started out researching the market. Not the product. Products are easy to come by once the great market is determined. Market research and keyword research go hand in hand. This is the most important first step in niche marketing. Building Your Niche Business
The real goal of niche marketing is making your online business an asset. Make everything in your business an asset. An asset is anything that will bring money into your business and pocket. It is your goal to build assets.
One of the biggest mistakes I see when talking to people about getting started in an online business is that they worry about the sales and products before anything. They think of what product they’re going to sell, how to sell it, and how to get the product in front of a customer to buy. If everything goes right, this is the least of you concerns.
The biggest asset any online business can have is its list. Focus on building an Opt-in list first, and view the product and sales as secondary. Why? An opt-in list gives you a number of interested customers that are willing to hear more from you. You can always sell them your product(s) in the future. Be patient. Let them hear from you and begin to trust you. Then hit them with your sales pitch again.
An opt-in list allows you to put your relationship building and back end product sales on autopilot with a sequential autoresponder. This will save you money and time. I can’t stress this too much.
Your list is an asset and it can lead to two important business aspects. First, you can use it in joint ventures. People will enter into deals with you if you have highly targeted lists with lots of people on them to email to. Secondly (one that I hadn’t thought of until I was talking to another marketer the other day), it makes your business saleable. You may want to sell your niche business some day. A large
list is the asset that makes this possible.
What can you offer your visitors to make them want to opt-in to your list? You can offer a special report on a topic in your niche. These are also known as "white papers". Many websites offer a newsletter concerning the niche or an ezine with the hot news in the niche. A good way to entice opt-ins is with an email course on some hot topic within the niche. These can also be given as an ebook containing the course. And you can even supply them with access to an online forum dealing with various topics relating to your niche or some free software that fulfills a need within the niche.
Many of the above options will require you to do some writing. If the niche you choose is one you’re familiar with, you might want to do much of the writing yourself. Especially when you’re known within the community. But in many cases you may want to outsource the work and hire a ghostwriter.
Outsourcing copywriting and software development is common. Many marketers go to www.elance.com to have others write them articles, ebooks, and special reports. They then put their own name on these documents and market them. If your niche is a profitable one, this will be a minor expense when all is said and
done.
Software developers can be found online too. You can put out bids for developers to produce software programs from you at www.rentacoder.com . Be sure you ask to see some of their work before you hire anyone. References are nice too.
One easy way to make an enticement product is to go to the various article directories and compile a series of articles together into a small ebook. You can add your comments and copy in and around these to make a coherent reading document. Article writers want you to use their articles as long as you give
them the credit and use their articles intact. When you sell a product or send visitors to an affiliate site sales you should direct them through an opt-in page, then send them to the affiliate page. Always use every opportunity to increase your list size. You don’t have to make it mandatory that they sign up. Just give them the opportunity. Place a "continue" button at the bottom of the page for those that don’t wish to receive your newsletter or whatever.
Whenever you use an opt-in form be sure to send a verification email that the customer must reply to for the requested information is sent. This will go a long way in satisfying the can-spam laws. And, your customers will respect you for this.
Read more about Niche Marketing in
Go To Niche Marketing Part II