A Niche To Grow

Entrepreneur:

Most successful marketing tales begin and end with a well-plumbed niche. In other words, the marketer has found the most-qualified group of prospects and motivated them to action. You’ll rarely see a company that’s risen to the top using a shotgun approach–targeting a mass audience indiscriminately–yet this is where many entrepreneurs trip up.

Ready to expand into a new niche market? Here are three important steps to get you started:

1. Sharpen Your Focus
Take a long, careful look at your current customer base and divide it into groups with similar characteristics. Figure out what your best prospects have in common. This will define a niche market of individuals who are more likely to become customers or to make repeat purchases. Fine-tune your media buys and target your marketing messages to have the greatest appeal to the core group.

2. Fill a Need
Sometimes you have no past customer history to go on when choosing a new market niche. In that case, you must make some preliminary assumptions about your prospect base. Focus on the customer you want to reach. Who has an identified need for what you market? Who is buying something similar now? It’s easier to fill a need than to create one, so smart marketers look for potential buyers who know what they want and are buying it elsewhere.

3. Keep Entry Costs Down
There is another significant advantage to entering niche markets comprised of customers who are already buying something similar to what you provide. The fact is, it’s virtually always easier for small businesses to be second (or third, fourth or even later) to enter a market, rather than to be the first. Being first is expensive–there’s an entire educational curve to fund, particularly with new products–and it can take quite a bit of time to break through.

Photo by wlima.

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