This post is provided by Jason Dirkham
A niche marketing strategy isn’t ever just your run-of-the-mill venture. Some industries require a special touch. Marketing and advertising are more interesting and exciting than it has ever been before, and there are now thousands of tools to help you achieve your goals.
We’ve moved on from the general audience into deep dive profiles, and now we have AI to help us make the most of that, too.
But when it comes to a niche marketing plan – what are the steps you need to take to make sure that your strategy is the one that is going to get results?
Competition
Your competition is the key to your success. We can learn a lot more from our competition than many people think. This is even more the case when they have been around for longer – or seem to have cracked the code for engagement. Without looking at your competition – big and small, you don’t know the full story.
So instead of doing a quick once over of the competition, take time and really pick them apart. What do they do well? Where do they get the most traction? What strategies are they using? Go all out to make sure that you know them inside out.
During this time, you will also spot places where you can improve on what they are doing – and that can be the key to everything.
Go Narrow
It is so tempting to cast a big net and catch and see what comes back. But there are a couple of sayings that apply here. One is that if you are trying to talk to everyone, you’ll be talking to no one. And maybe Brian Chesky nailed it a little more – build something that 100 people love, not something that a million people kind of like.
The difference between love and like is sales – and it is sales that you can’t afford to miss. Conversations in the right place lead to conversions.
The only real way to niche down your market is to make sure that you are testing things. Test your message, test colors, and test adverts on different sets of target customers. Each time you get results, rinse and repeat until you have a fail-proof audience. They will love you for knowing them so well, and that will be fed back into sales and support.
Legals
There are a couple of industries where the marketing can get muddy. You can’t make certain claims, you can’t use certain words, and there are even some places that you can’t sell to. So, whatever industry you are in, make sure that you have a qualified legal expert in that field, everything from a skincare lawyer to a cannabis lawyer – find one in your niche that can help you tread the path of being legal and above board with every message you put out there.
Conversation
You wouldn’t try to have a conversation in an empty room, but many businesses make the mistake of doing that exact thing online. You need to find out where your audience is and go to them.
A lot of these ideas will come from studying your competitors – who are already having valuable exchanges with customers. Your marketing strategy needs to be developed with the right platform in mind.
If you know that Instagram has given you the biggest results to date, then building a huge X campaign isn’t going to be money well spent. Instead, you should look to double down on the space where you are already seeing traction.
Although there is a lot of value in trying out new things, the biggest focus where there is a budget should be where you already know your audience is. It is here that you will get the biggest payoff from your market research – because that will help guide you to where you should be listening.
Smart Launches Start Here: Best Practices in Market Research.
Pay Attention
One of the best things about the internet is that people talk – a lot. And while there are a lot of things said and shared that might not be strictly true – there is a lot to take on board. You have a product that should be solving a specific problem, so make it your permission to trawl the mass of information at your fingertips – and look for where people are talking about the problem.
During your listening exercise, you are likely to stumble across ever more uses for your product and ways to improve upon them. So make the most of it, and set aside some time every day to make sure that you are listening.
A good place to start is social media, but check out forums like Reddit and even Quora for both questions and answers – see what people are saying, what they need, and perhaps more importantly – why they need it. Because the why is something you can use.
Be Unique
In a world with so many businesses, it can feel almost impossible to be unique – after all, everything has been said, made, and done… or has it? When you are in a niche industry, you can block out much of the noise of other businesses and industries and focus on standing out only in the one that matters to you.
Your branding is going to be the meat and potatoes of the operation, and that is where you really need to stand out. What is your identity? What does what you are doing look like in comparison to other businesses in your industry?
What is your brand? What makes you attractive to an audience? What makes you – you?
When it comes to working in a niche market, there are many opportunities that mean you can stand out – because while there might be many other businesses in the area – it won’t be endless. It will be competitive and drive you to do some of your most impressive marketing work ever – but that is the point, isn’t it?
