How To Find A Niche In The Market?
Then Finding Your Potential Customers To Sell To
How To Find A Niche In The Market and Then Finding Potential Customers To Sell To
Most marketing experts will advise you to choose a niche or target audience. That you cannot be successful by marketing to “whoever is paying attention.”
Why is this the case? Consider this: how do you know what to talk about in a conversation with a complete stranger? Unless you can find some common ground, the conversation will most likely be brief.
Because neither of you understands the other, you must find a way to connect in order to engage each other in the conversation.
The same can be said for marketing. You must connect with your audience if you want them to pay attention and stick around to learn more about your product or service.
And, in order to connect with them, you must first learn something about them. You must understand what problems they are experiencing and how you can assist them in resolving them. You must comprehend them.
That is why it is critical to choose a niche or a clearly defined target audience. Because once you’ve identified a specific group of people you believe you can best assist, you can conduct research on them to gain a better understanding of them.
Only then will you be able to communicate effectively with them. And that is what marketing is all about: communication.
However, once you’ve determined your target or niche, you must be able to locate and market to them.
The first step in accomplishing this is to define them more precisely. How?
To help you develop a very clear description of your target, I recommend asking yourself the following ten questions. Then it will be much clearer to you where to look for them.
When answering these questions, you may need to make educated guesses, which is fine. It’s a start, and you can always improve your responses as your company grows and you learn more about your target audience.
As I go through these ten questions, I’ll use the example of a client of mine who is a life coach and wants to help adults who were maltreated or victimized as children improve their health and wellness.
Why am I using this particular example? Because it is a clearly defined group, but these people do not wear a sign around their neck identifying themselves. As a result, they can be difficult to locate and market to. As a result, it serves as an excellent example.
10 Questions Regarding Discovering Your Niche
You can apply the same ten questions to any business or niche. They are general questions that apply to any type of business or target audience.
1. What is their primary issue that you can assist in resolving?
Our life coach must clearly identify the current issue that her potential clients are dealing with as a result of their childhood maltreatment. That is the issue she can position herself to assist them with. Is it a problem with your relationships? Is it a problem with your job? Be as specific and focused as possible.
2. Are they primarily male or female?
Our life coach has identified females as her target demographic.
3. What are their ages?
According to our life coach, they are high-functioning professional women. In that case, I’d say we’re primarily discussing women between the ages of 25 and 45.
4. Do you know where they live?
What kind of community or neighborhood do you live in; urban or suburban? Also, do you have any geographical constraints (real or imagined) in terms of where you can market or deliver your services or products?
If they are high functioning professional women, they most likely live in a nicer suburban or urban area. Our life coach will need to determine where she believes the majority of the women in her area live and whether she wants to work only with women in her immediate geographic area or if she wants to do distance coaching.
5. What do they do for a living? And where are they most likely to work? Their business type, as well as their geographical location.
Professional women can work in corporations, as doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, or as sole practitioners. Our life coach will need to decide which fields she wants to focus on, taking into account which ones she believes will include the greatest number of her target clients.
6. What is their socioeconomic status, as well as their annual household income?
High functioning professional women are likely to be financially successful, putting them in a higher socioeconomic class. They most likely make a good living and enjoy the finer things in life. Money is most likely not an issue.
7. What do they do in their spare time?
Do they go to the gym or a health club? Do they frequently go to the movies or out to eat? Or, if they have small children, do they spend their time at elementary school functions, family picnics, children’s birthday parties, or weekend soccer tournaments? Based on what she knows about her target, our life coach may need to make some assumptions here. Again, that’s fine to begin with. She can always fine-tune this as she gets to know these women better.
8. What is the family structure or home environment like for them?
This group of professional women is likely to include both single and married women with children. As a result, their living environments may differ. They might not have any family or friends to lean on. They might have a lot of family support. Alternatively, they may be having problems with their family as a result of their past. Our life coach must keep this in mind as she chooses marketing channels and writes marketing messages. She’ll want to concentrate on what they have in common and avoid areas of ambiguity.
9. Do they belong to any professional or trade associations?
If our life coach chooses one or more industries to focus on, she should be able to easily identify the associations or professional organizations to which these women belong. These are excellent venues for networking and speaking opportunities once identified.
10. What are their media preferences?
Do they get their news from the newspaper or magazines? If so, which ones are they? Do you listen to the radio? If so, what formats are they most likely to listen to? Do they watch television? If so, what programs are they most likely to watch? Do they have access to the internet? If that’s the case, what kinds of websites do you think they’re looking at? Where do you believe they are getting their health and wellness information now? These are all potential avenues for your marketing message to reach your target audience.
Yes, our life coach may have to make some assumptions once more. All of these media, on the other hand, can provide you with detailed demographic profiles of their audience. So, if we’re looking for professional women in a specific geographic area, we’ll be able to see if they’re part of the audiences for these various mediums.
Fill in the blanks with the best answers you can think of for each of these ten questions. In order to gain insights, speak with current clients. Talk to friends or colleagues who fit your client profile to learn more about who they are and where they are.
Once you’ve created this target client profile, you’ll have a much better idea of where to look for them.
The next step is to create a marketing message that speaks directly to them and their situation. The more you learn about them, the better you’ll be able to craft a message that will resonate with them. That message will act as a magnet, attracting those who can most benefit from your assistance.
