There’s a saying that I’ve used many times, and I don’t claim any credit for it “you can’t be all things to all people, you have to be something to someone”. In fact, over the years it’s been a bit of a mantra of mine. However its ok for me to say that you have to be “something for someone” but how do you actually go about identifying your niche market? Firstly there’s a fear of being ‘niche’ in that you miss opportunities that would otherwise come your way. This is a common misconception that is simply not true. By focusing on a niche you can target your marketing to a specific audience rather than a generic one. This means that you will resonate with your target who will say, hey that’s me, I have that problem or need.
So how do you go about finding your specific niche? This can be tricky: You could list all of your interests and passions and still come away feeling as if you haven’t hit upon the singular thing you were meant to do. Putting that kind of pressure on yourself to choose the exact right niche can cause paralysis. Certainly, you want to do your due diligence in selecting a viable niche for your business, but it’s better to get up and running than to wait around. That way, you can test out ideas, enter the market sooner and learn from your successes and failures.
If you’re struggling to decide, or you need more data to work with, use the following steps to find your niche.
1. Identify your interests and passions.
This may be something you’ve already done. But, if you haven’t, make a list of what you really enjoy and what really interests you and you have a passion for. Business isn’t always easy, and I guarantee that at some point it will test you. If you are working in an area that you don’t care about, your odds of quitting will increase massively — especially for the first-time business owner.
This doesn’t mean that you need to find a perfect fit. If you are passionate about some aspect of running the business, you will stick with it. If you don’t care about what you’re doing, you may not be able to find the drive within to persevere.
Here are a few prompts to help you determine what your interests and passions are:
- How do you like to spend your free time?
- What do you look forward to doing when you aren’t doing it?
- What subjects do you like to learn about most?
- What websites do you visit all the time and blogs do you subscribe to?
- What clubs or organisations do you belong to?
Of those talents and skills you enjoy, what do people need? This is where doing a little market research will help you narrow down exactly what competencies to focus on, and leads into our next step.
2. Identify the problems you can solve.
With your list of interests and passions in hand, you’re ready to start narrowing down your options. To move into a profitable niche, you first need to find problems your target customers are experiencing or solutions they want, that they don’t have. Then determine whether you can actually solve the problems or provide the solutions. Here are several things you can do to identify problems in specific niches:
Have one-on-one conversations with people in your target market. Make sure to make a list of questions that will help you uncover the problems they’re experiencing that they will pay to have solved. Have a look at online forums. Search Quora, or find forums related to your niche, then take a look at the discussions that are taking place.
- What questions are people asking?
- What problems do they have?
Use Google keywords search tools. Explore different keyword combinations on Google Trends and Google AdWords’ keyword planner. This can help you uncover popular search terms related to the problems/solutions you identified above.
3. Research the market.
It’s all well and good identifying a perfect niche but if there isn’t enough clients or customers in that niche then it’s not going to work out well for you or your business. Start with the keyword search you did in the previous step, how many searches are there for your keywords on a monthly basis? Are there many searches, is the competition for these keywords high or low, what alternative keywords does google suggest?
Research your possible competition, the presence of competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it may actually be showing you that you’ve found a profitable niche. But you do need to do a thorough analysis of competing businesses. Create a spreadsheet and start logging all of the competing businesses you can find.
Then figure out whether there’s an opportunity to stand out in the crowd:-
- Is your business differentiated enough?
- Do you have a unique offer?
There are several signs that you can enter a niche and be successful, even if there are already other businesses operating in it:
- Low-quality content. It’s easy to outrank your competition in a niche where other business owners are not creating high-quality, detailed content that serves the audience.
- Lack of transparency. Many online entrepreneurs have disrupted entire industries by creating an authentic and transparent presence in a niche where other sites are faceless and overly corporate.
- Lack of paid competition. If you’ve found a keyword that has relatively high search volume, but little competition and paid advertising, an opportunity definitely exists for you to upset the market.
4. Determine the profitability of your niche.
You should now have a pretty good idea of what niche you’re going to get into. Maybe you haven’t narrowed your list down to a single niche, but you’ve likely found a few ideas you feel pretty good about. At this point, it’s important to get an idea of how much money you have the potential to make in your niche. Depending on your niche you may use google searches initially, however, if it’s an online business then try using a site ClickBank or even Ebay to start your search.
So, browse top products in your category. If you can’t find any offers, that’s possibly not a good sign. It could mean that nobody has been able to successfully develop the niche. However, it may just mean that you’re the first one to think of this niche. If your search does turn up a decent number of products — but not an overabundance of products — you’re in luck.
A quick note on pricing, if you’re the first then you’re in luck you can determine the market price, if others have got there before you, your price will be a factor of your uniqueness, so make sure that you’ve established uniqueness based on either: product, service or a combination of both. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to enter a new niche with a product offering of your own. You can partner with products creators, advertisers and site owners to begin generating commissions while you’re working on your own unique solution.
5. Testing.
You are now armed with all of the information you need to choose a niche, and the only thing left to do is test your idea. One simple way to do this is to set up a landing page for pre-sales of a product you’re developing. You can then drive traffic to this page with paid advertising, such as google adwords, or facebook ads. Even if you don’t get any pre-sales, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t in a viable niche. It could be that your messaging isn’t quite right, or you haven’t found the right offer yet.
Use split testing (A/B), you can optimise conversions and find out whether or not there is anything stopping your target market from taking action.
6. Launching
Once you’ve confirmed the viability of a niche, start developing a fully-fledged marketing campaign to drive sales, do you need a website, do you need a mobile App. You’ll want to learn how to drive traffic and create sales for your newly created niche. Have a look at some of my other blogs that will show you how to manage these other tasks. Alternatively, you could look at joining the Business Success Club where you’ll find the learning, support and accountability you’ll need to exploit the opportunity you’ve just created for yourself. Click on the link above to learn more.
Final word.
Do keep in mind that there isn’t necessarily a perfect process for finding a niche. You’ll want to do your homework, but if you get stuck in the planning phase, you’ll never actually get around to starting. As an entrepreneur, you need to become a good starter.
Twelve intensive half-day meetings.
