You’ve probably heard of affiliate marketing, Internet Marketing, article marketing, and even forum marketing but what in the world is niche marketing? Niche marketing falls under the category of Internet marketing. Internet marketing is any type of marketing that is done on the Internet. Niche marketing, however, can be done both online and offline.
Niche marketing is essentially the act of targeting a very specialized group of consumers. Look at the topic of weight loss. Weight loss is a market, but it is not a niche market. Within the weight loss market, there are numerous niches. For instance, low carb diets are a niche, as is low calorie dieting, exercise equipment, and vitamins and supplements. These are niches.
The concept of niche marketing is to market to a tightly focused group of people, as opposed to mass marketing to an entire market or industry. Because niche marketing is so incredibly focused, the competition isn’t nearly as fierce. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t any competition – it just means that there isn’t as much.
Historically, it has always been nearly impossible for a small business to compete with a major corporation. While the Internet opened things up massively, and put more businesses on equal footing, it was still hard for small home businesses to compete with corporations or more established traditional businesses. But with niche marketing, everybody is essentially equal.
In many niches, there isn’t any competition at all. There are spaces within markets where the consumers’ needs are not being met. Their specific problems are not being solved by those who are mass marketing to the entire market. These niches – the ones that have not been tapped into – are more profitable than niches that have been tapped into, and possibly even more profitable than marketing to the entire market.
You can choose to market to an established niche, or seek out established niches. The beauty of niches is that you are not required to seek out millions and millions of people in order to be successful. You aren’t required to find an established niche either. With niche marketing, you can market to a smaller group of hundreds, or possibly thousands and make just as much money as you would if you were mass marketing to millions.
You will most likely find more success. You don’t even have to learn new marketing methods. If you already know how to do Internet Marketing, all you have to do is find your niche. The methods of marketing are exactly the same, but more personal in nature. Because the market that you are trying to reach and communicate with is so much smaller, you can easily develop a more personalized relationship with that market.
Marketing to a niche is more economical than trying to mass market to an entire industry market, even though the methods are the same. These savings are especially apparent in pay-per-click advertising. If you are selling an eBook for low carb dieters, and you set up a PPC ad that targeted people who want to lose weight, you would pay a great deal for those PPC ads.
On the other hand, if you wrote your ad in such a way that it only targeted those who wanted to lose weight with low-carb diets, you would have fewer clicks, but you would make more sales. You would be paying less for the PPC ads, yet making more money.
In niche markets, you can promote affiliate products, or you can develop your own product that is especially targeted to that niche. You can even do both – market your own products as well as affiliate products. The important thing is that what you are marketing is specific to that niche, but depending on the product, you can even market products that are of general interest to a niche market.
For instance, in the weight loss market, you carve out a place for yourself in the low-carb dieting niche. Low carb dieters still need exercise equipment and vitamins and supplements, which are often mass marketed. In this instance, you aren’t changing the product to suit the niche. Instead, you simply need to change your advertising to suit the niche.
Instead of using a headline that says that vitamins and supplements are essential to weight loss, you just change it to say that vitamins and supplements aid in weight loss for low carb dieters. It’s all in the way that you present the product, and who you present the product to.
Instead of spending your time participating in general weight loss forums, you participate more in low carb forums. Instead of contacting weight loss ezine publishers for ads and to publish your articles, you contact low carb dieting ezine publishers. Instead of creating a weight loss website, you create a low carb weight loss website. Instead of establishing yourself as a weight loss expert, you establish yourself as a low carb dieting expert.
Of the millions of dieters in the world, only a percentage of them are interested in low-carb dieting. This is true for any market. There is always a percentage of the market that is only interested in something specific within that market. That’s what niche marketing is all about targeting that smaller percentage of a market.