IntBus Blog

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

So Let’s Look at 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 - runners. Niche or not? Not - Nike runners. Niche or not. Not (What did that surprise you?) - Nike marathon capable running shoes. Niche or not? Feeling the sun yet ? - cpu enhanced marathon capable Nike runners. 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 even! You have heard this street english term before right? No, I am not keeping this niche area for myself, so don’t think I am holding back. Truth is, our premise of a niche marketplace sounds good but is unproven.

Don’t mistake an example of what the end product might look like with the actual process used to find that niche market. That was NOT the process, in fact, its not even close to the process. While the process can be done manually, you really need a tool since you want to examine and reject tens and tens of potential niches before settling on one to promote. And by the way, even if one of the niche tools highlighted this particular example and a week later 4 friends asked me for the same product I would still have some hesitations…

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

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.

Perhaps you are experienced and know that this was not the process used to find niches. Perhaps you are still using the tools inside google adwords, or google trends or wordwatcher. They are time tested and have worked wonderfully for the past few years but a newbie using a niche market tool and having little or no knowledge of the existing search tools from Google could blow you and I out of the competitive water in less than 5 minutes.

Competitive Niche tool products go significantly further than just how many potential clients are searching and whether the competition has the keyword on their site. They use algorithms that use several additional variables for ranking competition. They can immediately open affiliate sites like clickbank and others with a related product already found and ready for you to use. They can find articles from Private Label Sources for reprint. And this is less than a 1/10th of their abilities.

Why anyone would want to search for niche products the old manual way is really beyond me. Save yourself some time have a look at a few potential products that you can use. There is a list on my site.