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Target
Marketing Strategy – Find Your Own Niche Market
By Bob
Leduc
What is your target market? When I ask business owners that
question I usually hear something like...
-
Small Business Owners
-
Opportunity Seekers
-
Doctors
-
Homeowners
Do
you define the target market for your business similar to one of
these? If you do, you're working harder and spending more money
than necessary to promote your business. And you're enjoying
only a fraction of the sales you should be getting.
Most business owners recognize the value of targeting a market.
But when you target a broad audience like those listed above,
you're only targeting prospects who CAN use your product or
service. You have to narrow your focus if you want to target
prospects who are LIKELY to use your product or service. One of
the best ways to do this is to find a niche market.
What Is A Niche Market?
A niche market is a narrowly defined group that includes all
of the following:
1. Individuals in the group have the same specialized interests
and needs.
2. They have a strong desire for what you offer.
3. You have (or you can create) a compelling reason for
prospects in the group to do business with you instead of with
someone else.
4. You can easily reach individual prospects within the group.
5. The group is large enough to produce the volume of business
you need.
6. The group is small enough that your competition is likely to
overlook it.
Why You Must Narrow Your Focus
A niche market enables you to target your sales messages
with great precision. The more narrowly you define your niche
market the easier it is to cater to the specifically defined
interests of people in that market.
For example, some businesses describe their target market as
"opportunity seekers". But this is a broad audience.
You cannot cater to specifically defined personal interests of
individuals in this group because it may include all of the
following:
-
Executives
who want to get out of the corporate environment and start
their own business
-
New
mothers who want to start a home based business
-
Students
who want to generate some extra income
Any
promotional message to this group would have to be very general.
But people don't respond to general talk. They respond only when
they feel you are talking directly to them about their
individual needs.
SPECIAL ADVANTAGE: A highly defined, small niche market can
insulate you from competition. Other small businesses are likely
to overlook it. Large businesses will find the market segment
too small to bother with.
How To Find Your Own Niche Market
One way to find a good niche market is to evaluate your
existing customers. Can you uncover a segment of customers with
similar characteristics?
For example, I recently talked with an MLM distributor for a
health products company. About a year ago she noticed that many
distributors in her down line were health or physical education
teachers. She now has a lot of success targeting a niche market
of female physical education teachers who are married, have
children and are members of the same professional association.
Another way to find a niche market is to work backward from the
benefits you offer. Start by listing all the benefits provided
by your product or service. Then list some of the
characteristics of prospects whose current situation can be
dramatically improved by those benefits. You should begin to see
a narrowly defined group emerge as a niche market.
It’s Your Bottom Line
Is your target market specific enough that you can you
develop sales messages so sharply focused that prospects believe
you're talking specifically about them? If not, use the
information in this article to help you find a niche market of
your own. Then tailor your sales messages to the specific
interests and needs of that niche market. You'll see an
immediate increase in your sales and profits.
Copyright 2000
By Bob Leduc
Bob
Leduc retired from a 30 year career of recruiting sales
personnel and developing sales leads. He is now a Sales
Consultant. Bob recently wrote a manual for small business
owners titled "How to Build Your Small Business Fast With
Simple Postcards" and several other publications to help
small businesses grow and prosper. For more information...
Email:
BobLeduc@aol.com
Subject:
"Postcards".
Phone:
(702) 658-1707 (After 10 AM Pacific time)
or write:
Bob Leduc, PO Box 33628, Las Vegas, NV 89133
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