Winning the Marketplace: Find Your Niche
The marketplace is always changing, and in recent years we have moved from a market dominated by creating the “best” product for all audiences to a market dominated by finding the market best suited to your product and further tailoring it to their tastes from there.
Many people think marketing a business is about having the best product, but it turns out the term “best” cannot be applied with the same standard across different audiences. For example, in some audiences the best car is the biggest. Most powerful car, for other audiences the best car is the smallest, fastest car, maybe you can provide a car that is the most powerful and the fastest, but you can’t provide a car that is the biggest and the smallest at the same time, and by taking the middle ground and making the most average sized car, you can end up missing both audiences.
This is where finding your niche comes in. Your Niche is the audience who is uniquely suited to the services you provide and the way you provide them. The Niche is not looking for the most average thing on the market, they are looking for the thing only you provide. To find your niche, first look at what makes you different from your competitors. By looking at what makes you different you find what makes you the best for your niche.
It can be very tempting to tell audiences that you are just the best overall, or provide generic terms like “great,” “reliable,” or “responsive,” but if your competitors can say it too, it won't win over your niche. Instead find out what you offer that your competitors do not. If you are the only ice cream parlor that provides raspberry-pickle flavor ice cream, your Niche needs to know about it! If you are the only hotel that allows dogs, your niche needs to know about it, and if you are the only hotel that does NOT allow dogs, your niche needs to know about that too!
It’s true that sometimes the things that make you different can turn away specific customers, like if you are the only hotel that does allow dogs and a Sally books without knowing this, it she may be satisfied not knowing, or she may have a horrible dog allergy and have the worst stay of her life reflecting badly on your business, but if being pet friendly is advertised as a feature Sally will know your hotel is not the one for her and instead, Martha a dog enthusiast will be able to find your hotel and book a room she will love along with her canine friend. So, by targeting your niche, you can ensure you only get the customers that your business is already set up to help.
Additionally, having a niche can help us make your advertising more efficient. When you tell us about your special niches, we can target those under-reached keywords rather than spending extra ad budget on oversaturated and generic keywords.
If you would like help discovering your niche contact us and we can help you define what makes you special for your unique audience.