Niche Marketing

Just as it's absolutely vital to have a puzzle picture in place while
solving a puzzle, carving a niche for your business is an absolute MUST
for today's successful Internet business. A niche can be defined as a
small targeted and focused area of any business entity that offers a
unique program, or benefit, satisfying a common NEED of like-minded
people.
Identifying a niche requires a particular mindset. You can't come up
with a niche in a flash until you really understand how to go about it.
You can only come up with a well-defined niche by having the right
attitude towards a concrete, and clear objective.
You need to go through a certain hierarchy in order to find your niche.
For example, if you're targeting women in business, your hierarchy
may well be drawn something like this... women -> women's health ->
pregnancy -> nutritional requirement in pregnancy -> semi liquid food
supplement -> finally your product, with a clear and distinct benefit.
Be as specific as possible. Put your entire force towards a single
specific value driven business model, rather than getting generalized
and trying to sell everything under one roof. In simple terms, by
narrowing your business focus you'll effectively broaden sales. You’ll
end up making more money this way.
And in this way, you will establish yourself as an expert in your field.
To be an expert you don't necessarily need to have lot of knowledge or
expertise. Needless to say you can get started right away with what
you already know or enjoy doing in your spare time, and preferably
have a passion for it too. Just try to be a little bit "different" than the
rest.
Once you have positioned yourself online as an expert in a specific
niche, you will outgrow automatically into more related profitable
areas. Your credibility in such areas will carry more weight than if you
would attempt to offer "everything under one roof" approach.
Another great benefit of having a narrow niche is the fact that visitors
to your site will have a greater interest in what you offer. Why?
Because your product or service is highly targeted to them, and you
aim to solve their specific problem. What this means is your visitors
are pre-qualified with a ready to buy attitude, i.e., they are almost
already 50-60% convinced. The rest is your job. Make your Web site
simple and attractive with a killer copy, and with useful content that
further persuades them to make a purchase.
It really makes no sense starting or running an Internet business
without identifying a niche. If you're really determined to get success
on the Net, this is the way to go. Do some positive brainstorming,
relate different things around you trying to get into a specific niche,
and add value. You will eventually come up with a great idea. And a
great idea is the spark for a big explosion.
One Internet marketer started out online with a generalized marketing
site that was lucky to get 500 visitors a month regardless of the
amount of promotion. Then, he did an in-depth review of HTML
compilers for potential ebook self-publishers and the traffic increased
substantially! So substantially, in fact, that he began working
exclusively with ebook marketing and created www.ebooksnbytes.com.
He then chose complimentary affiliate programs for marketing ebooks,
HTML compilers, pricing surveys like the new "Make Your Price Sell,"
and other ebook-related programs, and all were much more successful
at generating sales than from his previous site. Visitors increased from
several hundred to almost 10,000 per month in the space of only a few
months.
The point I am trying to get across is that by analyzing your own site's
statistics, you may notice that you are sitting on a potential gold mine
without even realizing it. Which page on your site is getting the most
visits? Does it happen to be a page giving away free ebooks or
software?
Take an honest look at your own site. Is it unique compared to many
other sites out there? Do you have any original and helpful free
content to attract visitors? What areas of your site are the most
popular? Capitalize on those pages by featuring them or even creating
separate domains with those target markets. Whether you will be
catering to ezine publishers, web designers, people wanting to lose
weight, or even dog breeders, all can be excellent target markets to
cater to. Another benefit to niche marketing is that you may end up
being ranked high on search engines without much effort since your
pages will be specific as well as content-rich.
To summarize: Analyze site traffic... pick your most popular topics and
specialize in those areas by building a highly informative site around
that specialty. Whether it is golfing, nutritional supplements, ebooks,
babies, or even snorkeling... there are affiliate programs and books
that you could sell on the side for extra income. Be an expert in a topic
you love and know well (or learn as much as you can about it) and
then go for it!