What is Niche Marketing According

to a Digital Entrepreneur?

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Video Transcript

If you are in that stage of a startup, when you're just trying to figure out what kind of business you could have online or come up with a business idea, a niche market is going to be the place that you start.

This video is not about how to find niche markets. I'll talk about that later.

And if you use our free tool called IdeaBot.ai, you can uncover lots of great niche markets.

Check out the top Pandemic Growth Markets to start an online business in!

But what I want to do right now is I want to define what a niche market is.

What is a Niche Market?

If you go to the good old dictionary and look up niche market, it gives you a very general explanation of a niche market.

It's funny - it's one of those terms that if I say to an audience of people, and I've done this many times where I'm speaking at a live event, and I say, "Okay, who here knows what a niche market is? Put your hand up."

A large percentage of the room is going to put their hand up. I say, "Okay, great. Can somebody tell me what a niche market is? Define it for me."

What I get back in responses are typically these very general and vague answers. People say things like, "It's a group of people that have something in common or similar demographics." And they come up with vague definitions.

Here's the problem with that.

If you don't have a clear definition, a clear set of parameters as to what a niche market is, how the heck are you ever going to know if you found one?

There's the problem. 

This is the criteria when I'm either working with somebody coaching people or when I'm looking for a niche market myself to start an online business:

I look for a niche market that is a group of people, obviously, but the thing that ties them all together is not their age, race, or career.

Instead, it is that they all have a common need or want. Or best of all, a problem they're trying to acquire or solve is a common need scarcity or difficulty that ties them together. 

In the best case, I want to find people that have a problem, and they're out there seeking a solution.

How Do I Find My Niche?

This could be people that want to buy a new fishing rod. People who are looking to buy a new fishing rod could be my niche market.

Could be people that are looking for a way to invest their money at low risk or a group of people with a specific health issue that they're trying to remedy. It could be people who want to start their own YouTube channel and need help creating it.

That's the starting point of a niche market. Now, here's the mistake.

Most people stop researching when they find a general niche market.

They stop at the dictionary definition I just gave you.

Check out why people fail to launch businesses!

My niche market is people looking to buy a new fishing rod, or my niche market is people who are starting to want to create a YouTube channel and need help.

You might think that's a niche because those are people that all have something in common, but that's still too general to find a niche market.

It should be something that you can laser-target online, with an offer that they feel so congruent to what they're looking for. Their only logical conclusion is to buy it. 

To get to this level to define our niche market at that specificity is we need to go deeper.

Niche Marketing Scenarios

Let's take the fishing rod as our example. We know there are people out there and they want to buy a fishing rod.

But here's the thing.

There are all kinds of different fishing rods you can buy and depend on what type of fishing they want to do and where in the world they want to do it.

They may need a different type of fishing rod. Our niche market may not be people who want to buy a fishing rod because that could mean many other things.

We need to dig deeper. How do we dig deeper?

In this specific niche, one way is to find a way within that niche. There'll be intuitive ways that you can be more specific.

Instead of saying a fishing rod, we could say we want our niche market is people who need to buy a fishing rod for salmon fishing in rivers or people who are going deep-sea digging for a halibut, and they need a particular type of rod.

Now we've gotten very specific!

There are thousands or even millions of people, probably every year around the world, buying salmon fishing rods for rivers. We need to get that specific.

Let's take the YouTube channel example.

Maybe our market is we help people build YouTube channels and market YouTube channels.

Here's the problem.

There are all sorts of YouTube channels that exist out there, from purely entertainment channels to influence our media to business channels to educational channels like mine.

We want to slice and dice this niche and go deeper by a specific segment of that market.

Maybe our niche market is small businesses that want to create a YouTube channel to drive more business to their local physical locations. That's who we work with.

Now we have something particular that we can focus on a particular market that we can craft a particular offer to and target.

When we get to this level of detail, defining our niche market. Everything else gets easier. The ability to create a compelling offer that's in line with what they want to find them online to speak to them online, all gets a heck of a lot easier.

We can also slice and dice niche markets and get more specific by adding other elements. I gave you two examples, or we talked about fishing.

We said, let's go deeper: what type of fish and what kind of fishing? What about YouTube channels? Let's pick a segment of small businesses trying to use YouTube to drive local businesses to their physical location.

Great, we've got some precise criteria there.

There are specific niches that even that can be broad.

Let's try a broad niche category.

Let's take weight loss, for example. Weight loss is a massive niche. How do you compete in a weight loss niche? Then you're against things Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig.

These billion-dollar companies target the mass market, which is where we need to go deep when it comes to weight loss.

For example, I would go deep and find a specific type of person trying to lose weight, that could be somebody who is pre-diabetic, that could be somebody looking for one particular kind of weight loss.

A quote by Derek Gehl about niche markets that should be designed specifically for the market

The other way to slice and dice a lot of markets is with the standard demographic criteria. So you could say age and gender. I help men over 50 lose that hard-to-lose belly fat that so many men have that horrible stuff. And that's my market.

And then maybe I could go even deeper than that. I could say I help men over 50 in the US or a specific area. Again, I've seen people small players go into these competitive markets but carve out a niche by saying I make weight loss.

But I do it for working moms in Singapore. So they're taking a very, very specific market and connecting with that market.

The moral of the story is when you go out there to find a niche market; you need to have a clear vision of what makes a good niche market. 

The long and short of it is, the more specific you can be, the better when you're looking for a niche market.

Do this challenge.

When you think you found a niche market, I will challenge you to be even more specific. What segments could exist in that market that you could focus specifically on and craft a message that speaks precisely to them?

The reason this works so well is it's almost common sense.

People want to feel like the offer that you have has been designed specifically for them. 

Imagine a middle-aged man who's a working professional work 60 hours a week, has a high-stress executive job, has told they're pre-diabetic, and it's this stupid extra belly fat that's causing these problems, and they need to get rid of it.

They get an offer for 30 pounds in 30 days - we see those offers all the time.

Offer A: 30 pounds in 30 days, anybody can do this, and then offer B: are you over 40 working 50 to 60 hours a week need to Lose Stubborn Belly Fat? Well, if that's you, we have an answer.

What do you think will capture their attention to make them feel like it was meant for them? Offer A!

Conclusion 

And that's the whole point when, as a small business, we dig into these niche markets. We are going to uncover people that want that level of specificity.

They want to feel like you are handling their specific situation. And when you can craft an offer that speaks directly to them, they will make the buying decision very quickly.

Once you found the niche, can you be more specific?

Now you have a better grasp of a niche market. If you need help finding niche markets and researching niche markets, I would 110% recommend that you check out IdeaBot.ai.

That's a tool I built with my team that I give away for free.

That's going to allow you to tap into literally thousands of niche market ideas to take the ideas with the click of a button with the type of a keyword, instantly analyze niche markets, drill down, expand on ideas, find product ideas, and it costs you nothing to use. 

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