Great Niche or money hole ?
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The other day, my mom shocked me. She asked me what a niche market was, and since she is not an online marketer ( doesn’t turn the computer on regularly enough to use email ), this question appeared quite out of the blue. Perhaps I should not have been surprised because in the area of marketing but particularly online marketing, this term is showing up more and more frequently. In truth, one of those late night, “Be the next internet Millionaire” scams that airs at 4 am for those with insomnia, also trumpets this term.
So, to the heart of it - what is Niche Marketing ? Is it another of those overhyped terms or does this fad have some legs?
Perhaps its best explained by first discussing what it’s not. Niche marketing is not marketing to a mysterious marketing segment called niche, nor is there a product called niche that a huge underground swell of people are clamoring over insurmountable walls to get. Nor, is there usually a department within any major corporation that has a position open in their niche marketing department. So don’t call Human Resources at your local City Council and ask for a position in their niche marketing department. Sorry, just had to get that one out of the way, lol.
Niche Marketing - An example
Some would say that the definition of Niche marketing is narrowing down a broader need in the market places until one derives at a much more focused segment that has little or a smaller but reasonable number of competitors.
Marketing to those that - buy running shoes. Niche or not? Not - buy Nike running shoes. Niche or not. Not (What did that surprise you?) - buy marathon capable Nike runners. Niche or not. Uhmm you’re getting warmer. - buy high arched marathon capable Nike runners. Niche or not. Yes absolutely!
Congratulations on accurately identifying a niche market area. And it really was a niche, not that broad definition or a marketplace need that we may have had in mind earlier. So, like most others, we could use some extra cash, whats the next move? Do we buy inventory now before the rush?
If you want to lose your shirt go ahead! That was a joke, don’t do it. Please don’t think I slipped and just told you about my huge money maker and have now decided to take it back. Further from the truth we could not be. We have an unproven premise here.
Don’t mistake an example of what the end product might look like with the actual process used to find that niche market. That was NOT the process, in fact, its not even close to the process. While the process can be done manually, you really need a tool since you want to examine and reject tens and tens of potential niches before settling on one to promote. And by the way, even if one of the niche tools highlighted this particular example and a week later 4 friends asked me for the same product I would still have some hesitations…
Was that an inaccurate Niche Market example ?
So, that was a poor example right? Honestly, we dont know yet. People search using specific key phrases. A lot of people end up using the exact same key phrases. To determine whether this product is a niche product or not we need to plum information that only search engines or search engine tools similar to wordwatcher normally possess. To further quantify all of that data really quickly, we would then need to go beyond even the search engine tools, to a new kind of product that combines the functionality of a search engine tool with niche marketing information
If we know how many people are searching for the product and how many competing websites there are, isn’t this enough information to quantify this as a niche product? Wasn’t this what groups traditionally used to make their decision in the past? Well, it was, but its not enough anymore. There are tools out there now that can make a newbie 10 times more efficient and powerful than the traditional analysis used just 6 months ago.
Perhaps you are experienced and know that this was not the process used to find niches. Perhaps you are still using the tools inside google adwords, or google trends or wordwatcher. They are time tested and have worked wonderfully for the past few years but a newbie using a niche market tool and having little or no knowledge of the existing search tools from Google could blow you and I out of the competitive water in less than 5 minutes.
A software based Niche tool can be an extraordinarily powerful piece of arsenal for someone investigating this area. Most tools gave you competitiveness based on the number of sites that had the keyword in them, but most of us know that our search phrase is already on millions of websites but just a few hundred of those might be competitively attempting to get traffic based on that keyword. A Niche market tool, intuitively understands this and in this specific area searches for keywords in the titles, urls and domain names and comes back with a ranking. It can frequently open clickbank and other affiliate sites with your exact keywords to find affiliate products. Sometimes, these tools also understand article marketing and may directly find you an article for reprint.
At this stage in online marketing, it no longer makes sense to find Niche Market products the old way. There is a list of products on my site. Have a look.
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