Great Niche or money hole ?
Written by Trevor Weir on November 1st, 2009 in Network Marketing.
The other day, my mom shocked me. She asked me what a niche market was, and since she is not an online marketer ( doesn’t turn the computer on regularly enough to use email ), this question appeared quite out of the blue. Perhaps I should not have been surprised because in the area of marketing but particularly online marketing, this term is showing up more and more frequently. In truth, one of those late night, “Be the next internet Millionaire” scams that airs at 4 am for those with insomnia, also trumpets this term.
And for the rest of us – What is Niche Marketing ? And why is it so popular?
So how would we define it ? * It’s the current fad, but its not ( This one has really long legs ) * It’s not going to be a good Xmas present – so don’t look for it * It’s not going to make anything bigger longer or … ( u get the msg ) * It’s not likely to be a new job opening anywhere soon
Niche marketing example
Some would say that the definition of Niche marketing is narrowing down a broader need in the market places until one derives at a much more focused segment that has little or a smaller but reasonable number of competitors.
Marketing to those that buy – runners. Niche or not? Not – Nike runners. Niche or not. Not (What did that surprise you?) – Nike marathon capable running shoes. Niche or not? Feeling the sun yet ? – cpu enhanced marathon capable Nike runners. Niche or no Niche? Jackpot !
This last example sounds like a niche for sure. It has a narrow focus and we have eliminated several wider approaches to our target audience. So, should we run out and stock up on these specialty running shoes in anticipation of the demand?
Not even! You have heard this street english term before right? No, I am not keeping this niche area for myself, so don’t think I am holding back. Truth is, our premise of a niche marketplace sounds good but is unproven.
The little questionnaire is not the process used to find a niche market product or service. You really need a tool for that. It can be done manually but searching hundreds of ideas manually isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. That was merely an example of what a niche market might look like, but for any number of reasons, I would never enter that marketplace – and I don’t much care if 4 of my marathon running friends ask me for those specific shoes next week.
So was that a poor example of a Niche Market ?
It might be and maybe it wasn’t but we don’t know that yet. When doing this kind of research one has to remind oneself that people use specific key words when searching for a product or service. Only the search engines, search engine tools ( like KeyWordwatcher ) really know what is being searched for. And unfortunately only niche marketing software tools can give one the market intelligence needed in order to make a business decision.
If we know how many people are searching for the product and how many competing websites there are, isn’t this enough information to quantify this as a niche product? Wasn’t this what groups traditionally used to make their decision in the past? Well, it was, but it’s not enough anymore. There are tools out there now that can make a newbie 10 times more efficient and powerful than the traditional analysis used just 6 months ago.
You may be someone with experience with keyword usage based on several of the great tools out there like KeyWordwatcher or the excellent google adwords tool that gives you exact number of potential clients for broad, phrase and exact searches. Perhaps even you were like me, thinking that I could use those excellent tools to find Niche Market products. Well, you probably can if you have an enormous amount of time, but a total newbie using specific niche software would blow us all out of the water due to the specificity of those tools now.
A specialty software tool will use those numbers and up to two dozen or more variables, including rating scores on competition based not only on whether the key words show up in the sites ( which is not necessarily competitive ) but also whether the keywords are in the url, the domain or titles. The same tool might also check for commercial or non-commercial articles for article publishing as well as opening clickbank for affiliate products and opening up other affiliate product searches to verify that there are related affiliate products. And this might be 1/10th of what a commercial niche tool based product might do for you.
Why anyone would want to search for niche products the old manual way is really beyond me. Save yourself some time have a look at a few potential products that you can use. Watch the videos and see what I mean.
Something new in niche keyword research. There is something called commercial intent. Microsoft’s ad center has an online program that enables one to see if a searched for phrase has stronger commercial intent than research behind it.
Discover what few people know about finding micro niche products quickly. Watch the impressive videos then take action. Uncover the secrets used to achieve startling network marketing success
