A Roadmap to Dominating Your Niche

You have likely heard the term ‘niche’ thrown around a lot. Many companies spend a portion of their time trying to segment their market to better serve their customers. Marketers want to categorize and target their audience more accurately to gain their attention over competitors using offers better suited to the more specific groups.

Niche marketing is the implementation of market segmentation to find an overlooked audience among the larger crowd. It is a powerful business strategy for focusing your efforts where they are needed most by “drilling down” within your market to find a small group whose needs are not being addressed. Often, this niche group has been neglected because their share of the market is also small. However, though the group is lesser in size or reach, their unfulfilled needs and spending power create an opportunity for businesses that are willing to offer them attention.

That’s what all the hype is about, but how can you discover and begin dominating your niche? You don’t have to be an expert to find people in need. The main element of niche marketing is focus. We have created a five-step roadmap from departure to destination to help you find your niche, develop an approach that will trigger a response, and hone in on that untapped potential.

1. Identify Your Niche Before you lead your niche, you have to find it. You already have a general market where you do business, such as the clothing market or electronics. Where is the niche?

What sets a niche apart from any other smaller section of the market is a distinct gap in service. Focus on people’s needs and you will eventually find a small demographic that is not being serviced. There are many common complaints within any market that do not get addressed because many businesses look at the largest segments of a market and don’t pay any mind to the smaller voices. That is where niche marketing finds its place in the world.

To identify your niche, you need to find a group of consumers who want solutions to common problems that only they experience. Narrow the search by focusing on the fields in which you specialize. Within the clothing market, for example, are there complaints from pregnant women who want more options for formal maternal wear? There is a problem that needs to be solved.

Niche marketing is all about solving the unnoticed problems in your field.

2. Use Your Expertise to Fill the Service Gap Your expertise sets you apart from competitors and gives you an advantage that is outstandingly unique. You can use it to do things only your company can do in a way only you can. If you are having trouble finding your niche, focus on your specialties. Take your unique perspective and look at the market in a way that your competitors can’t.

How can you use your experience and influence to help people? Don’t just focus on creating products and services – focus on creating solutions. The most successful companies provided their services not just because they could but because there was a distinct need for them. Start using your expertise to form solutions and add more to the market than just what it already contains – create value for your overlooked niche consumers. This is referred to as ‘Client Facing Branding,’ and it has a unique selling proposition.

To engage in niche marketing, focus your strengths on reinforcing the service gaps in the market. Solve your niches problems. Whether it’s an awesome winter hiking jacket for women or a mobile phone screen repair service, identify the gap in service and use what you know to do what you can. It may take a bit of probing to find those gaps and identify the customer’s needs, but you will have the chance to “corner the market” if you focus on helping people and use your expertise to offer solutions.

3. Reach and Engage Your Target Audience Now that you have identified your niche and worked out some solutions for the service gap, you have to inform your target audience. You can reach your audience in any number of ways – advertising, a brand site, or a wide-reaching press release. Just like a conversation, though, the information should flow both ways. Showing and telling your customers the advantages of your products is important, but equally important to modern consumers is the chance to engage with their favorite brands.

Online, mobile, and social media marketing have reached a level of automation that allows businesses to interact effortlessly and continuously with their audience. Businesses can give consumers the chance to sign up for their campaigns and receive updates, voice their opinions, participate in giveaways and sales promotions, as well as learn more about the brand. This is a major step beyond the usual flat, merely informative media. Promotional media becomes an experience for customers when you allow them to interact. Your potential clients don’t usually want to be advised or otherwise marketing to – until they are certain that you have heard them, and demonstrated that you understand their particular challenges.

Niche audiences are especially tough to identify and convert to customers because of their small size and specific needs. MaxGroup Business Solutions specializes in reaching, listening and engaging consumers, as well as allowing companies to listen and respond to their audience and the data they provide.

4. Listen to Your Customers and Respond

Once you have begun to generate some activity within your niche, even if it is only a small response, you should begin to take the advice and behavior of the audience into consideration. Launching a mobile site or a Facebook campaign may have spurred a response from your consumers, but nothing will come of it if you do not make use of that reaction. Let your niche consumers know that you are hearing them loud and clear.

Every time a customer visits your page, replies to a survey, or scans a QR code the activity and other data can be instantly sent to your database. Updating product streams based on replies, creating new offers based on the success of QR codes, and letting your niche know you are listening can not only help your company refine your campaigns but will create the sense of partnership that many modern consumers want.

Niche consumers are a small tightknit group that have specific problems that are common only to them. They are used to being overlooked and having to deal with their issues with other brands. When you lend an ear and a helping hand, you have a unique opportunity to be the company who finally breaks the silence in the niche and offers a solution. Niche consumers are likely to respond to the attention.

5. Continue to Innovate If you have successfully identified your niche, offered solutions, and given your customers a voice, you are well on your way to dominating your niche. All that is left for your brand is to continue to refine your campaigns, continue to specialize, and continue to innovate. The cliché goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” but will always be true. Focus on the needs within the niche and form your solutions to help the neglected areas of the market.

If you have solved the major service gaps within your niche, what else can you offer those consumers who have not had products and services directed at them? Target more and more specifically within your niche until you have defined the market region where your expertise is most effective. Target smart, not broad – you want to keep the edges of your niche as visible as possible. Niche marketing is all about identifying and solving issues for overlooked consumers, some of which don’t even know they could have it better.

You may want to expand your product line to offer variety, or perhaps there are other problems in the market that need similar solutions. Marketing doesn’t end once you have settled into your niche or sold a product. Who else can you help? Competitors are bound to notice your success and offer their own brands, but while they are trying to form a connection you will already be well-accepted within your position and forming new solutions.

Your brand can own the untapped segments of the market if you follow the 5-step road map to dominating your niche. Identify your consumers by looking for a service gap in the market, use your expertise and unique perspective to form solutions, engage and respond to customers, and continue to develop your niche marketing strategies. Once you are ready to launch, trust MaxGroup Business Solutions to get the word out and create a customer experience that will mark your brand as the leading provider in your niche. If you don’t, someone else will. The business world is not short of savvy marketers who will pounce while you are deliberating. That might just be the reason that Self-Growth.com, the internet’s #1 self-improvement business website said, “MaxGroup Business Solutions might be the most immediate action solutions based marketing company in the past decade.”