One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is thinking that they have to sell to everybody. I know, it doesn’t seem logical to think that by limiting your market that you could actually sell more. But that’s pretty much the way it works.
In a lot of ways it works the same way as a laser. Imagine if you had one of those lamps with the fiber optic lights bursting out of it — thousands of them in the shape of a ball. Each of those lights is a message directed at a specific customer. Now imagine that you had one message, pointed at one target — like a laser. And like a laser, you will slice straight through the clutter and hit your market on target.
Another big mistake is to find a niche market without a lot of competition. If there is not a lot of competition chances are you will not make a lot of money. So as you can see you need to find a happy medium – market that is specific enough and that has a good amount of competition.
A niche market is made up of your target audience or ideal customer. For instance, someone selling swimwear may wish to try and reach out to lifeguards, college and university competitive swimmers, and swim instructors. An individual who is looking to offer daycare in their home should look to get the attention of single parents, pregnant women and working parents.
Once you have decided on a product or service that you are excited about, establish your target market. Ask yourself, within this niche market; is there a demand for your product or service?
Keyword Tools
One way to determine demand is by taking a look a keywords people may use to search for your product or service. A quick search using the Google keyword tool will help you determine the demand of your market and may even help you find keywords that you hadn’t thought of before. With this tool you will be able to look up the search volume for your given keywords. You can narrow down the categories of your chosen topic, and research the amount of times people search for those terms. You can also use Market Samurai, Ubersuggest or Moz Keyword Tool.
Ebay and Amazon
If you are looking to market a specific product, eBay is a good tool you can use to find what aspect of your product gets the most attention. You can also do a similar search on Amazon by sorting by the most popular in a given area.
Magazines
Another more basic method of finding a profitable niche market is to find out if there is a magazine published that caters to that market. In an age where paper publications are declining, the ones that survive have a strong audience behind them. If there’s a magazine out there catering to that audience, then there is money to be made with that niche market.
Online Surveys and Polls
Finally, consider using surveys as magical customer and client profiling tools. You may already be including demographics as part of your survey questions because that is standard. Consider, also the opportunity to use surveys to gather psychographic information such as collecting thoughts, feelings and beliefs that your clients are carrying around with them. While the previous sources of great niche markets are certainly good, surveys give you the opportunity to further target and profile the customers you already have.
