When it comes to following our passions in business, there can be a multitude of roads to go down. However, when first starting, it’s imperative to focus on one thing and then allow that passion or niche to lead you to other roads. First, before we discuss how to find your niche – let us define it:
a niche is the subset of the market in which a specific product is focusing. The market niche defines product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, price ranges, production quality and the demographics it will impact.
Have a niche you want to focus on, a particular type of customer, client and more. You have to be selective. We all know we can not please everyone so why try marketing your business to everyone? It will save you time and money to niche down and have a particular target demographic for business.
Your Current Market
Everyone is always complaining the market is overcrowded. Unless you’re the inventor with several patents to protect, it will always be. You have to determine the market you want to be in, or the sector of industry. You could be in the beauty industry but not actually make beauty products, or you could be a consultant, spa owner, content based website, freelancer and much more. When you’ve determined what market you want to be in, you have to define who your business sector. All fortune 500 companies started small and grew. Think no one was thinking we needed new under garments until Sara Blakely created Spanx? Now several companies have tried to emulate her companies success.
Define Your Business
Depending on your type of business you might already be niched down. If not, you can do some simple things to get there. First – who do you believe is your companies ideal demographic? Lets use Imperfect Concepts for the illustration. Here is how it breaks down:
We cater to women, next – to women who own a business, then – it’s women business owners whom are creative. If I want to be super specific, I would say: the creative women-business owner that is transitioning from her 9 to 5 corporate life into the online retail world. If I had to tell someone what Imperfect Concepts is, they would hear it is a content based website that focuses on educating the creative women business owner — because that’s what we do. Yes, we have male readers and I even have some as clients, but the focus remains niched.
Define Your Audience
Our site doesn’t cater to every business owner, but yes, there is general content on the site; because we can advise you on how to start a business. I ran online women’s resale boutique for four and half years. It’s something I know, so I focus the content on the subject matters of website design, creating, payment gateways and much more. If you are selling women’s tight cut out trendy clothes, chances are you do not want to market to me and former first lady Barbara Bush. Furthermore, not even Michelle Obama and I would be considered the same demographic. Yes, I love when she wears brands I like, but those brands aren’t looking for me, the creative, hipster business owner.
Write down what your dream customer or client looks like, but exclude the idea of them having a limitless budget. Be real, what is their disposable income, $50- $5000 a month?
The amount of money that households have available for spending and saving after income taxes should be accounted for.
Because you can not cater to every market, you must be specific. My disposable income is different when I first started my business, and didn’t have one, basically.
Things to consider when defining your customer:
- College educated
- Single, married or married with kids
- Traveller
- Trendy
- Income
- Social media savvy
All of these matter in the grand scheme of the things. My sister and I are three years apart, but we would fall into two different demographics. I prefer high end designers and local boutiques. She focuses on brands like H&M and Target. Nothing wrong with those places but we are different demographics.
Important factors to think about when it comes to your niche, of course there are several more you should consider, but for now, these will get the ball rolling and the mind going:
Is your business niched down or are you catering to everyone? If you are niched down, are you going to use this to pivot your business into other avenues for success?
