Friday, November 14, 2008

Great Niche or money hole ?

By Trevor Weir

The other day, my mom shocked me. She asked me what a niche market was, and since she is not an online marketer ( doesn't turn the computer on regularly enough to use email ), this question appeared quite out of the blue. Perhaps I should not have been surprised because in the area of marketing but particularly online marketing, this term is showing up more and more frequently. In truth, one of those late night, "Be the next internet Millionaire" scams that airs at 4 am for those with insomnia, also trumpets this term.

And for the rest of us - What is Niche Marketing ? And why is it so popular?

So how would we define it ? * It's the current fad, but its not ( This one has really long legs ) * It's not going to be a good Xmas present - so don't look for it * It's not going to make anything bigger longer or ... ( u get the msg ) * It's not likely to be a new job opening anywhere soon

Niche marketing example

Here is my own quick definition : Niche Marketing is an examination or sales analysis of a very narrow marketing segment that is being under-served by the competition. Let's see what this looks like.

Marketing to those that - buy running shoes. Niche or not? Not - buy Nike running shoes. Niche or not. Not (What did that surprise you?) - buy marathon capable Nike runners. Niche or not. Uhmm you're getting warmer. - buy high arched marathon capable Nike runners. Niche or not. Yes absolutely!

Congratulations on accurately identifying a niche market area. And it really was a niche, not that broad definition or a marketplace need that we may have had in mind earlier. So, like most others, we could use some extra cash, whats the next move? Do we buy inventory now before the rush?

Not by a long shot. If you are reading this now, thinking that I am holding back, stop, don't do it. Our research hasn't even begun yet.

The little questionnaire is not the process used to find a niche market product or service. You really need a tool for that. It can be done manually but searching hundreds of ideas manually isn't anyone's idea of fun. That was merely an example of what a niche market might look like, but for any number of reasons, I would never enter that marketplace - and I don't much care if 4 of my marathon running friends ask me for those specific shoes next week.

So was that a poor example of a Niche Market ?

So, that was a poor example right? Honestly, we dont know yet. People search using specific key phrases. A lot of people end up using the exact same key phrases. To determine whether this product is a niche product or not we need to plum information that only search engines or search engine tools similar to wordwatcher normally possess. To further quantify all of that data really quickly, we would then need to go beyond even the search engine tools, to a new kind of product that combines the functionality of a search engine tool with niche marketing information

If we know how many people are searching for the product and how many competing websites there are, isn't this enough information to quantify this as a niche product? Wasn't this what groups traditionally used to make their decision in the past? Well, it was, but its not enough anymore. There are tools out there now that can make a newbie 10 times more efficient and powerful than the traditional analysis used just 6 months ago.

You may be someone with experience with keyword usage based on several of the great tools out there like wordwatcher or the excellent google adwords tool that gives you exact number of potential clients for broad, phrase and exact searches. Perhaps even you were like me, thinking that I could use those excellent tools to find Niche Market products. Well, you probably can if you have an enormous amount of time, but a total newbie using specific niche software would blow us all out of the water due to the specificity of those tools now.

A specialty software tool will use those numbers and up to two dozen or more variables, including rating scores on competition based not only on whether the key words show up in the sites ( which is not necessarily competitive ) but also whether the keywords are in the url, the domain or titles. The same tool might also check for commercial or non-commercial articles for article publishing as well as opening clickbank for affiliate products and opening up other affiliate product searches to verify that there are related affiliate products. And this might be 1/10th of what a commercial niche tool based product might do for you.

Finding Niche Products is now so easy, even a newbie can do it. It does not require the in-depth type of intelligence that former adwords professionals used to use. Follow the links back to my site for lists of possible tools that you can use.

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