What is Niche & How it Works?

Everything in this world is either under a niche or is a niche itself. Everything we see or touch can be segmented under a niche. In business and marketing, the niche is a unique target market. Various types of niches are used to segment or divide various target markets and the products offered there.

Niche is often a subcategory of a larger market. It has its own particular demands and characteristics, which may be different from the larger market. For example, if we take the whole “Profession” category in our market research, then “Doctors”, “Engineers” or “Businessmen” can be considered as niche.

We can also break down these mentioned professions into much smaller segments, which are called sub-niche or micro-niche. When working with a niche market, we can break them deep down into smaller categories and work with them.

Niche Market – A particular segment of people with similar buying preferences and characteristics over a specific area of interest. It is the subgroup of the market on which particular products, services, and marketing strategies are focused.

Niche Product – Specific products offered and fulfilling the demand of that particular niche market.

Niche Marketing – It is an advertising or promotional strategy that focuses on a specific niche market or a unique target market. The goal of niche marketing is to promote your products to only those target market who demands and not everyone.

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How to Know Your Audience Size?

The key to determining the audience size of any niche is research! Knowing your audience size is important for any kind of niche. It determines a lot of things, i.e., how competitive your niche is, the demographics of your audience, etc.

Basically, it gives the full idea of how you should prepare your marketing strategies and you get to know how many people you are offering your product/services. Here, we will talk about two tools which help us to learn in detail about our niche audience size –

1. Facebook Audience Insights

This tool gives you combined data about your audience size from those who are connected to your Facebook page as well as the general users of Facebook who are not affiliated with your page.

Facebook Audience Insights gives you detailed demographic information on your target audience, such as their gender, age, professional status, educational status, etc. Moreover, you can also obtain information on their likings, interest, and preference.

By summing up their information, you can analyze their lifestyle and learn about the individuals who are genuinely interested in your business. Furthermore, you also get an accurate number of how many people are interested in your business.

2. Google Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner is a tool that is used to gain insight into valuable information relevant to keywords and SEO in general. It’s one of the core tools that is used by advertisers, marketers, and SEO experts alike to know important information like keyword suggestions, keyword trends, search volume information, and so on. However, in order to use Google Keyword Planner, the user must have an account in Google Ads.

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Benefits of Working with Low Competition Niche

There is a phrase that goes perfectly with our topic in hand, i.e., “It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond”. Most of the time, this is true for marketers or designers who are just beginning their careers.

Choosing a niche is one of the biggest decisions a marketer or a designer has to make. That’s because every work that follows after this step is based on your decision. Normally, anyone would suggest going for the niche with the highest number of potential customers.

While it is one of the major aspects of selecting a niche, however, it is not the only one. Most of the “Popular” niche has highly competitive. It means the number of rival businesses and brands is also high.

So, it is difficult for someone who has less experience or is just beginning to compete with an already existing and established brand. The trick here is to choose a niche with a good number of potential customers and fewer rival businesses or brands. Intensive market research is required in order to find such niches, which is why many businesses fail to detect such profitable niches.

Most of the niche has a lower profit margin but it is also a great place to start or build something new from scratch. Furthermore, not only new businesses but also existing businesses search for low competitive niches. That’s because most of the time, these niches are untapped but highly profitable if the right steps are taken to secure the market.

Why Should We Research Niche?

This is a common question, why should we research a niche? Why can’t we just pick something we like and just go with the flow? One of the most common mistakes many new and small businesses make is that they try to be the best at everything. Realistically, it is close to impossible for new businesses to reach such an accomplishment.

 It is even difficult for an established business to be the best at multiple things at once. In order to succeed, most businesses go with a concentrated approach to the market, product, and everything else, instead of going for the mass market.

The key to success is searching and selecting a particular niche. According to the recent census, there is over 30.2 million small business in the USA alone. The highly competitive markets are mostly under large corporations and businesses.

We should research on a niche in order to find where less competition is, where new and small businesses can achieve success. Secondly, researching niches increases our knowledge of that topic. For example, if we are working on “Harry Potter” as a niche. We have to learn in detail what the books are or what it represents.

Therefore, it will make us experts in the niche. “Living inside the niche” is a term that can be used here. It is what the market researcher’ uses. When we become experts on a certain niche by living inside it, our work output improves considerably.

And lastly, researching niches will ultimately determine what we work with. It is the only way to find a profitable niche with potential customers. Based on our research, we will decide what we will work with, what our campaign will be, what our strategies should be, and so on.

Research Niches

What are some of the profitable niches?

Now let’s look at some profitable niche topics that any business can target and work with –

1. Hobbies: People have endless hobbies. Starting from the gardening to stamp collecting to even unique as calligraphy. There are no limits to having hobbies. You can pick any one of them and work on it.

2. Occupation: There are many jobs in the world. You can start working on targeting a specific occupation. Many people feel proud of their jobs. For example, let’s take “Nursing” as an example. You can target campaigns and make designs that empower the nurses.

3. Family: Every person has a soft corner for their family and many are proud to be a member of the family. You can target those people by working on this niche. For example, you can target single moms, you can target dads, you can target grandparents, etc.

4. Sports: Many people in the world are fans of different sports. There is Football, there is Basketball, there is Ice Hockey, etc. You can target those fans and people who are associated with them and create designs accordingly.

5. Culture: Every Country in this world has its own culture and they have their cultural events. For example, Spain has its tomato throwing festival called “La Tomatina” or Mexico has its “Día de Los Muertos”, which is a celebration of life and the dead. So, you can target such cultural events and create designs based on them.

6. Events: More or less every marketer has its event calendar. Countless special events can be targeted all year round. For example, the most common ones are Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, International Peace Day, etc.

7. Causes & Awareness: There are some social, environmental and health awareness events you can target easily. For example, “Global Warming” is a very serious and contemporary issue in the world. You can target such events and make your designs accordingly.

8. Politics: Did you know what markers have spent millions of dollars and generated far more revenue during the last US election? Politics is always a hot topic and that is exactly why it also sells equally as hot.

9. Religion: It is a great niche where you can target the religious and pious customers and make designs accordingly. However, make sure that you do intensive research and put information correctly.

Types of Niche

There are primarily 4 types of niches we can work with. We can break them deep down into further micro niches but these 4 covers more or less every kind of niche.

1. Evergreen Niche: These types of niches are relevant today, tomorrow, and even a year from now. That’s because they exist in our daily lives. These niches have lower investment risk and they offer long-term profit potential. For example, mental health, technology, video games can be considered as evergreen niches.

2. Seasonal Niche: Seasonal niches are basically different times of the year. For example, you can work on your gardening niche during the spring or autumn time. You can work on the new year or winter apparel during the winter season.

3. Event Niche: These are the special days that are being observed every year. For example, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving are the most common event niches. Countless events are occurring in various parts of the world all year round. More the events, the more the event niches.

4. Current Affairs (Trends): These are basically working with trends. They have a very short lifespan. They can last a week, a few weeks, a month, etc. When it becomes old, it becomes irrelevant nice. That is why it is also a risky type of niche to work with. For example, the U.S election was a trendy niche during that election time.

Conclusion

A niche will determine many things about the business – its target market, product design ideas, marketing strategies and promotional activities, and so on. So, it is important to research thoroughly before selecting a specific niche to lay the foundations of your designs. A niche will not only determine your current market segment but also the new ones that can be explored and successfully developed.