Posted by: blog

More than 98% of the people trying to do business online, don't know how to choose a niche. In reality, most of them make one of two mistakes:

-Targeting a market that is too broad
-Targeting a niche that is overly saturated
It is possible to reveal one of the most important online success secrets.

Taking on a new niche can be a low-risk way to grow the business, as long as several important rules are respected:
1. Meet the unique needs. The benefits that are promised must have special appeal to the market niche. The unique needs of your potential audience must be identified; the product or service must be tailored to meet them.
2. The right thing must be the advertiser’s content. When approaching a new market niche, it's imperative to speak this new environment specific language.
3. Always test-market. Before moving ahead, assess the direct competitors existing in the new market niche and determine the position against them. For an overview, it's best to conduct a competitive analysis by reviewing competitors' ads, brochures and Web sites, looking for their key selling points, along with pricing, delivery and other service characteristics.

The key for small businesses is to master the art of niche marketing.  Some researches must be done before the start:
1. Profile the customers: who are likely to be. Take an hour or two with a friend or business associate and describe in detail the characteristics they are likely to have.
2. Where the customers congregate? Next, decide where those kinds of people are likely to congregate on the Internet. If you haven't discovered Internet mailing lists and news groups, there's no time like the present. Both mailing lists and news groups are on-line discussion groups; they are highly targeted since they focus on very specific topics. In each discussion group you may find as many as 1,000 to 10,000 regular readers with a special interest in that topic. There are discussion groups on marketing, doll collecting, auto racing, Celtic civilization, management development, cycling in the Himalayas. You name it: it's probably there somewhere. And if you don't find one you like, you can start your own.
3. Communicate your message where they are congregated; you can target-market with Web ads, too. If you're selling Civil War books, you may not get much bang for your buck by purchasing a banner ad on Yahoo's first page. But if you purchased an ad that would appear every time someone entered the search terms "Civil War" or "Robert E. Lee" you'd be advertising to just the right people.

One way of explaining the niche marketing concept is to picture a tree - it has a big trunk which leads to branches leading to even smaller branches and finally tiny twigs. Take the topic of fishing which can be likened to the trunk of the tree having branches leading away from it including:
- Deep Sea Fishing
- Salt Water Fishing
- Game Fishing
- Fresh Water Fishing
The smaller branches leading from Fresh Water Fishing include:
- Fishing Baits
- Bass fishing
- Fly Fishing
The tiny twigs leading from Fly Fishing include:
- Trout Fishing
- Steelhead Fishing
- Fly Tying

This is a good example of niche marketing because people who fish tend to be nuts about the subject. Drill all the way down to the tiny segment of Steelhead fishing and there are still avid enthusiasts who will go to any expense to catch the "big one", including buying books or e-books.

The secret to long-term success online is to find tiny - but popular - niche markets that have little or no direct competition, and then create and sell information products to these niches.

By finding a small segment of a much larger market in which people are actively buying, and where there are not too many competitors, is the best chance you have of making money from selling your own product.