The Secret of Niche Marketing

by Donnette Fletcher

In many ways, the process of marketing resembles the old Chicken and the Egg conundrum, as in which one came first. Within the context of marketing, what should you do first decide on what you're selling, or decide who to sell it to? Many entrepreneurs come up with a product that they think is the best thing since sliced bread, only to find that nobody wants to buy it. And if nobody wants what you're selling, all of the marketing dollars in the world won't help you to sell it.

Let's use a fishing analogy. You have your choice of a wide variety of bait and lures to catch fish your products. But there's one caveat there has to be fish in the water to catch them. If you have a pond behind your house with no fish in it, you can sit there all day fishing, and regardless of how hard you try, you'll never catch a thing. Go to where there are plenty of fish however particularly if they're hungry fish and you'll catch as many as you want.

Marketing works the same way, particularly if you're marketing online. The internet is a huge global marketplace that gives you direct access to billions of people. Sounds wonderful but the reality is that not all of them want or need what you're selling. So the secret is to find a particularly hungry niche to market to, and then to use effective marketing build a special lure to reach them.

With the proliferation of websites on the internet, the challenge is to drive your targeted niche market to your website. You can of course buy advertising in many different media to promote your URL. Today, however, more and more marketers are deploying keyword campaigns that help them stand out with the big search engines like Google and Yahoo.

This approach starts by using keyword research, or niche market research. Assuming that you have at least a general idea of what it is you want to sell, make a list of logical words people might use to conduct a Google search for your product. Google in fact makes it very easy to do this. The Google Keyword Tool will give you various iterations and combinations of key words or phrases that you enter. Google Insights will give you a detailed analysis of various keywords or phrases. Wordtracker.com also offers a free keyword suggestion tool that will give you a list of similar keywords or phrases after you enter yours.

By understanding what people are searching for, you can begin to craft a focused message and to position your offering to appeal specifically to that niche. This is the essence and secret of niche marketing. The lesson here is simple don't go fishing until you know where the fish are.


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