gSPEAKUP - Business Blog

Fast growing amongst the popular terms being thrown around by online marketers is the term Niche Market. It would appear to be dominating their every conversation and for good reason. It is actually where the money is.

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

So let’s see what its isn’t. - It isn’t something you can buy - It isn’t something you can make ( well not directly ) - It’s not a new job opening so don’t ask your boss for a transfer - And as usual, the hordes of people taking a stab at it are nearly all probably going to fail.

Niche Marketing - An example

I am going to make up a definition on the fly here. Niche marketing is marketing that is directed very specifically at a very narrow vertical market segment. So, let’s try this one.

Marketing to those that buy - Basketball shoes. Niche or not? Not - Michael Jordan running shoes. Niche or not. Not (What did that surprise you?) - Michael Jordan HighTop running shoes. Niche or not? Feeling the sun yet ? - Michael Jordan HighTops signed by the great one himself . Niche or no Niche? Jackpot !

So, the warmth of the sun is shining on our face, its going to be a great day. We can now see the light, yaddy yaddy, yaw. So where do we go from here? We have accurately identified a niche right? And isn’t that what everyone is talking about? Do we stock up now or wait for Christmas?

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 prior example was just that. An example of the narrowing market segment that a niche market might end up in. That wasn’t even the process used to find a niche market so please don’t jump on that one. Even if half a dozen sports friends asked me for that product next week, I would neither stock nor drop ship this product for reasons that you will soon know.

So, did I just give you a really bad Niche Market example?

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

Competitive websites and the number of potential clients would have been enough data to help in quantifying this as a niche product — in the past. But not now. The competition has gone considerably further than that in their analysis and so must you - even as a newbie.

Save yourself some time. Don’t try to manually analyze whether or not you think you may have found a niche market product. If you have been in internet marketing or online marketing for some time, its likely that you have used Google’s excellent search engine tools hidden in the adwords product. Perhaps even you have used freekeywords from wordwatcher. Thats how I and many others use to start our search for Niche Market Products - but not any more. These battle tested tools are not nearly enough for this area of internet marketing.

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/Ǫth of what a commercial niche tool based product might do for you.

At this stage in online marketing, it no longer makes sense to find Niche Market products the old way. There is a list of products on my site. Have a look.