The dream for your business is that you’d have a huge army of devoted followers, spread across the world.
But the problem is that we can’t all have 100 million Instagram followers at the click of our fingers.
In fact, I don’t think we all need to.
For a small business, the best way to tackle your marketing is to start small and think big.
How do you do that?
With niche marketing.
By getting granular with a niche, you will dramatically improve your chances of success.
Read on to find out what niche marketing should look and feel like, along with how you can incorporate it into your small business.
See also: How to get started with influencer marketing for your small business
What is niche marketing?
Niche marketing is pretty simple: it is where you channel your marketing strategy towards one specific segment of the population or narrow market.
The key to niche marketing is to find a unique customer base and tap into their needs.
For further information on what niche marketing is, take a few minutes out of your day and watch the video below.
What are the benefits of niche marketing?
There are many reasons that your business should get involved in niche marketing — but how about these three for starters:
- Much less competition: the very nature of a niche is that the market isn’t flooded with competitors. There might be other brands in your area, but you will have a much greater share of the market than with a broader approach
- Greater brand loyalty: niche items are difficult to find. This makes niche marketing an arresting proposition for your customers — and you can add a lot of value to their lives
- More enjoyable: if you’ve selected your niche based on what interests you, then marketing your product will come with a greater sense of personal reward (along with the financial boon that comes from market monopoly/dominance)
To get even more insight on what the benefits (and drawbacks) of niche marketing look and feel like, check out the video below:
Niche marketing in practice
There’s no better way than to see how an expert has been putting it into practice:
Lefty’s
It’s not hard to guess the niche of this delightful store, which goes after people who are left-handed. It’s a winning niche because while lefties make up only 10% of the population, one-tenth of the people living on the planet is a hell of a lot of customers – 760,000,000 to be precise.
Lefty’s angle their entire marketing campaign around how significant it is to be left-handed and the impact it has on the lives of their customers.
By doing this Lefty’s make their product essential to their customers, as they say themselves…
Make your niche product an essential part of your users’ lives and then you won’t just have a one-off buyer — you’ll have a customer for life.
What does niche marketing look and feel like?
You have an expert-level knowledge of your business, brand, and products. However, just because you have a deep insight of your company doesn’t mean you’ll immediately be at the top of any given niche.
Start with these two things first:
Define your niche company values
What are the things that excite you about your company? What does it stand for? Most importantly, who does it stand for? Picture the customer in your head that your company represents. That’s who you need to talk to.
Establish what niche problems you’re solving
It’s pretty easy really: what concerns does the customer you just pictured have? Summarise them into a 5 second elevator pitch and those are the problems your business should be solving in some way.
How to make your niche marketing come alive
It’s all about selling the value of your business and products. A winning niche marketing campaign should look and feel like your other campaigns – just with your niche as the USP.
This is how you bring it to life:
Engaging your audience with video
Your customers love to learn about brands by video. In fact, it’s estimated that 90% of all internet traffic will be video by 2019.
Your niche marketing needs to employ video, and using a free video editor gives you all the benefits of an in-house editor — letting you create great video marketing on a budget.
Spend time on niche YouTube channels to get a feel for how video works as a niche medium. You are likely to see lots of passion, in-jokes, and a little bit of ‘crazy’.
Video is an emotive medium, so it’s important to push the right buttons.
Email is where the money is made
Niche marketing is about making sure the right people are finding out about your product(s).
Without access to customer data you can’t be sure that you are targeting your campaigns correctly. That’s where email marketing comes in handy.
Email marketing generates the most revenue for marketers – 59% of your peers say so. It’s a great marketing channel that brings together community building and ROI.
Email gives you access to a huge amount of data on your audience, such as:
- Postcode
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Purchasing habits
By using email marketing software that allows for advanced list segmentation, you can use this data to create targeted campaigns that are designed specifically to appeal to your niche (and its subsets).
A starter package like Moosend is perfect for anyone who wants to get the most out of advanced automation on a budget, but there are loads of enterprise options too.
Social media
Frankly, it’s an absolute no-brainer for you to take advantage of social media when it comes to dominating your niche. The key here is to create a genuine sense of community and excitement.
You have what the corporate giants don’t — personality. So use it.
- Create targeted social ads – the benefit of this is that it puts your niche product(s) in front of people who are more likely to be receptive to them. The perfect way to seed a new concept or product with people
- You might also want to look at marketing your niche products by using targeted hashtags – something that is hugely important on Instagram and Twitter
- Partner up with key social media players — reach out and be brave. If they see a genuine value, you may end up with a brand advocate. Just be aware that social media is big business for some people, so be professional at all times.
Finding your own little corner of the world can be tough — but it’s a worthwhile exercise.
Once you find that pocket of people who love what you do — you will find your whole marketing journey becomes a lot easier.
Just ensure that you remain committed to providing value, and review your business and marketing goals on a regular basis to ensure you’re still aligned with your mission.
About the Author
Kayleigh Toyra: Content Strategist. Half-Finnish, half-British marketer based in England. I love to write and explore themes like women in marketing and finding your passion. I manage a small team of writers at a boutique agency.