What Is A Niche Market Anyway?

OK, Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way.  A niche market as defined by Wikipedia is a focused targetable portion (subset) of a market. 

Click here to get your free 30 page niche marketing guide

My favorite example of a wildly successful niche market is the Hannah Montana phenomenon.  For those of you that don’t have 7 to 10 year old daughters at home, let me tell you Hannah Montana was/is the perfect example of niche marketing at its finest. 

Take a look at a Walmart or Target display of Hannah Montana when you are next in one of those stores.  It is amazing.  They are perfectly pitched to little girls who want to BE Hannah Montana, and as a parent I’m just so glad that my 7 year old doesn’t want to be Brittney Spears that I am more than happy to help her be Hannah Montana.  So I buy her shirts and necklaces and all sorts of other things that have Hannah all over them.  That is some niche, and it is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are niches all over the place.  Just thinking about local brick and mortar places here in town, there is a Scuba Shop (in Indiana?), a gourmet chocolatier, a huge mall with tons of niche (specialty) stores, a medical supply shop, a MAC store, several electronics stores, and many others.  These are all niches that various individuals and corporations are targeting and profiting from.

What Hannah can teach you about niche marketing.

First of all, be specific.  Hannah Montana doesn’t target 35 year olds.  She targets 7 to 10 year old girls, and makes a fortune doing it.

Many people attempt to cast to large a net when they first start out marketing.  A big net is fine if you are Amazon or eBay, but otherwise, you will make a whole lot more money if your offer is specific to your target audience.

Second, know what your audience wants.  Hannah doesn’t attempt to get too deep.  She has good values (us parents like that), but she plays primarily to the"I want to be famous" fantasies that every kid has.  She sticks to what she is good at, and rakes in the money.

As a marketer, if you can get inside your customers head and give them exactly what they want, your conversions will increase and you’ll make more money in your niche markets.

Lastly,  know when to move on.  Recently Hannah started releasing albums as her real self – Miley Cyrus.  She is actually pretty good.  You can’t play a 15 year old pop diva forever, so Miley/Hannah figured out a marketing strategy that would let her grow as she got older.

In niche marketing many niches don’t last forever.  There are ups and downs in every market.  If you can spot the trends and react to them, you will be wealthier for it.

These are the three most important things to keep in mind when finding niche markets.  They have helped me make a lot of money online.  For a FREE guide to finding great niche markets click here.  This guide is by the people who taught me how to make money online, Kyle and Carson of Wealthy Affiliate.  I have personally read it, and even though I have been working with them for over a year now, I still got a lot out of it.

Click here to get your free guide to niche marketing.

Wishing you the best.

Heather