When is a Great Niche market not a niche Market ?

December 2nd, 2008 by Trevor Weir

by Trevor Weir

The term Niche marketing is bandied about by online marketers like it’s the cure for all ills. You can’t turn around in one of those heavily trafficked internet seminars where thousands meet to “find the cure” without running into half a dozen splinter groups discussing the merits/demerits ( but mostly merits ) of tightly focused Niche marketing.

So, to the heart of it - what is Niche Marketing ? Is it another of those overhyped terms or does this fad have some legs?

So let’s see what its isn’t. - It isn’t something you can buy - It isn’t something you can make ( well not directly ) - It’s not a new job opening so don’t ask your boss for a transfer - And as usual, the hordes of people taking a stab at it are nearly all probably going to fail.

Niche Marketing - An example

Here is my own quick definition : Niche Marketing is an examination or sales analysis of a very narrow marketing segment that is being under-served by the competition. Let’s see what this looks like.

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 prior example was just that. An example of the narrowing market segment that a niche market might end up in. That wasn’t even the process used to find a niche market so please don’t jump on that one. Even if half a dozen sports friends asked me for that product next week, I would neither stock nor drop ship this product for reasons that you will soon know.

So was that a poor example of a Niche Market ?

It wasn’t necessarily a poor example, but the truth is - far more research is required. To start off with, are those actually the keywords that people use to search for this product? In the past, only search engine statistics could tell us that. Then there were great search engine tools that could help further filter that information. But to help determine whether its a great Niche product, even search engine tools like wordwatcher can only go so far.

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 its 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.

Save yourself some time. Don’t try to manually analyze whether or not you think you may have found a niche market product. If you have been in internet marketing or online marketing for some time, its likely that you have used Google’s excellent search engine tools hidden in the adwords product. Perhaps even you have used freekeywords from wordwatcher. Thats how I and many others use to start our search for Niche Market Products - but not any more. These battle tested tools are not nearly enough for this area of internet marketing.

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.

At this stage in online marketing, it no longer makes sense to find Niche Market products the old way. There is a list of products on my site. Have a look.

About the Author:

Discover lots of Great Niche Market information on Trevorweir.com. Follow the link and get free niche marketing reports weekly on tried and true established Niche marketing areas that people are making money from right now.

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