By Maddie Carlin, Account Executive
Whether you’re starting your own business or looking for a more impressive way to market an existing product, the most important question you must ask yourself is- who am I trying to serve?
Of course, you want to serve everyone, but that is not realistic. In order to maximize the success of your sales, you must identify your niche market.
A niche market is a subset of your population that would be most attracted to a specific product you are trying to market. Defining a niche market means identifying the demographics, shared interests and values, the common problem you are attempting to solve and so on. Discovering a niche market will help to narrow the focus and ultimately increase the success of your business.
How to discover a niche market? In order to discover a niche market you must ask yourself a few essential questions:
1. What is unique about my business? This is the first question you must ask yourself and an essential question to discover your own niche market. This question separates you from your competitors, do you offer a unique service? product? personal experience? This ultimately will be the first step to discovering your niche market.
2. What problems can we solve for our customers?
Take a deep dive into your products and the services you are attempting to offer. What problems can these services alleviate? How can your business’ interest become a product or service that meets the consumer’s needs? What is the true motive to buy?
3. Where do I see an advantage over my competitors?
Once you have examined your own business you must examine your competitors. Where have the competitors fallen short in terms of the products or services they offer? If you are unable to see a specific point where your competitors have fallen short, look for their niche markets and see how you can serve them even better.
4. What is our true focus? Are we narrow enough?
When designing a campaign or website it’s extremely important to know who exactly you are trying to reach. You want to create trust within your consumer and the only way to do that is to understand your consumer. If your reach is too large, you will never be able to speak directly to a consumer.
DryBar is an example of a company that discovered their own niche market. DryBar was able to dig out a niche in a market by providing affordable, high-quality blowouts. DryBar has set up its atmosphere similar to a bar where you can relax, watch a movie and get a blowout named after a cocktail. DryBar saw the opportunity to set itself apart from typical salons offering haircuts and blow-drys and capitalized on it. DryBar was able to narrow their focus and find a market that their service suited, through hard work and constant communication with their customers their business was able to grow into the exceeding $100 million business it is today.
In order to find your niche market, you must understand that it is impossible to please everyone. However, when you discover your true focus, unique aspects and advantage over competitors you will begin to narrow your audience and find your true market.