Great Niche or money hole ?
The term Niche marketing is bandied about by online marketers like it’s the cure for all ills. You can’t turn around in one of those heavily trafficked internet seminars where thousands meet to “find the cure” without running into half a dozen splinter groups discussing the merits/demerits ( but mostly merits ) of tightly focused Niche marketing.
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 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 High-Top running shoes. Niche or not? Feeling the sun yet ? - Michael Jordan HighTops signed by the great one himself . Niche or no Niche? Jackpot !
This last example sounds like a niche for sure. It has a narrow focus and we have eliminated several wider approaches to our target audience. So, should we run out and stock up on these specialty running shoes in anticipation of the demand?
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.
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, did I just give you a really bad Niche Market example?
It might be and maybe it wasn’t but we don’t know that yet. When doing this kind of research one has to remind oneself that people use specific key words when searching for a product or service. Only the search engines, search engine tools ( like KeyWordwatcher ) really know what is being searched for. And unfortunately only niche marketing software tools can give one the market intelligence needed in order to make a business decision.
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.
You may be someone with experience with keyword usage based on several of the great tools out there like KeyWordwatcher 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.
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. Watch the videos and see what I mean.
One last thing about niche keyword research. There is something called commercial intent. Microsoft’s ad center has an online program that enables one to see if a searched for phrase has more commercial intent than simply mere research behind it.
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