Niche Market Ideas: How to Find, Research and Define a Niche Market, and Which Niche Marketing Tools to Use

We’ve spoken before on this blog about the necessity of a Niche Marketing strategy, in order to increase your chances of your Internet Business being searched for and found near the top of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), as well as generating enough website traffic, and thus achieving your ultimate purpose: making sales. If you’d like to check out what’s been said, go here: Advantages of Niche Marketing, and how to find a Niche Market in 2 Easy Steps.

Now many of you have already chosen your online business, which may be your own company, with you selling your own products or services (such as plumbing services, consulting, or selling/hiring out DVDs); or an Affiliate or Network Marketing business, selling other people’s or companies’ products. You may also already have your own website and/or blog up and running for your business. In all of these cases, looking for a Niche Market, or a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors, will obviously need to be closely related to your existing business, products, services and customers. If you’re looking for a new business opportunity, or one to supplement what you already do, then you will need to start the Niche Marketing process from scratch - by which I mean search for a Niche, research it, and market to it. In essence, although not the only way to do it, this 3 phase method is the most logical.

So let’s look at the 3 phases of the Niche Marketing process for you, the business owner and marketer…

1. Searching for, finding and choosing a suitable Niche Market. Really this is down to you scribbling ideas on paper, waking in the middle of the night, sudden insights you have when on the toilet or the bus, or whatever sparks your most creative ideas! You can get ideas from speaking to customers and other people, things you may have seen or heard, and possibly the most important – your own talents, experiences and preferences. Without your knowledge and passion for a particular market or product, your Niche will be a no-no.
2. Researching, defining and refining your Niche Market. You will not only need to be searching the Search Engines for keywords and other websites already catering to your Niche, to give you further ideas; but you will also need to do some specific keyword/phrase research with a tool like Google Adwords Keyword Tool, to identify:
   - Numbers of monthly searches for those keywords/markets,
   - Competition for those keywords with paid adverts (indicating popularity),
   - The number of other websites coming up in Search Engine search results (showing you the number of other online businesses catering to those keywords/markets).
   Visit some of these websites to see how they do it, then choose to incorporate some of their best ideas - but do yours differently, so you stand out and have improved on what they do - from the customer’s point of view.
   The final part of researching your Niche Market is a consideration of the amount of money you need to make, and the reality of how often customers in that Niche will buy, and how much they’ll spend.
3. Targeting, reaching and marketing to your Niche Market. By definition, a Niche Market is a subset of a larger market, which in turn is a subset of all consumers. Thus your Niche might be small and difficult to reach. You’ll need to think carefully about how to target and engage them. You probably need to set up a website or blog, appropriately linked to a set of the relevant keywords. Then you’ll need to know where your potential customers go and what they do on the Internet, so you can advertise and place comments and back-links there, and write articles and blog posts they’ll want to read (and also use offline marketing methods, if appropriate).
   You’ll also need to think of ways to capture their contact details for follow-up - such as using a web-form/squeeze page, and possibly offering a free and relevant product in return for them volunteering their details to you.

What can you do if you simply can’t think of, or find, your own Niche Market?

Luckily, there are a number of resources available online, some free, some you pay for, that will help you with things like:

• Suggesting actual Niche Markets that you could market to,
• Doing keyword research and providing stats for these Niches,
• Giving you links to, or the actual downloadable Ebooks/products/services, related to your Niches, for you to promote or sell.

As they say, you can get anything on the Internet!

The beauty of using these tools is that you don’t necessarily need any of your own products/services to sell, and sometimes you don’t even need a website (often Affiliate companies provide you with a link and/or a website squeeze page). However I would recommend that you do have a separate website, appropriately named with use of keywords, for each Niche Market you’re going for. Many of the domain and hosting companies will allow you to register a number of domain names without paying additional hosting costs, once you’ve bought one domain and hosting package from them (this is certainly true for JustHost, the hosting company I mainly use).

Let’s look at one of these Niche Market online tools and resources sites: a membership site called Daily Niche Idea. I first came across Cindy Battye’s site a while back while researching stuff for my blogs, and am a member myself. You get a weekly suggestion of a Niche Market theme, for example, this week’s theme is “Affiliate Marketing” (although suggested Niche themes could be anything, for example: baby care, gardening, weight loss, etc). By the way, the basic membership package is free!

This is a screen shot of a weekly Niche theme:

You’ll notice the “Click Here To Download This Week’s Article/Content File” button, and the “Daily Niche Ideas” section, listed by days (I haven’t shown all 7 because in fairness, it is a membership site).

Even with the Basic Free package, you get 7 daily Niche ideas (displayed as 7 days) for each weekly Niche theme, and all these pieces of information and items – to use, promote, add to your website, sell, or whatever you desire:

For each Niche Market idea/day (eg. “Day 1: Clickbank Affiliate” – see screenshot above):
~ Stats indicating the number of times that keyword has been searched for in popular search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, within the last month ( = “Estimated Traffic” for that keyword/idea).
~ Also an indication of how valuable those keywords are, that is, the value that other businesses are placing on that particular Niche idea when advertising (= ”PPC (Pay Per Click) Bid Price” for that keyword).

A suggestion for monetizing each Niche idea:
~ The best converting affiliate products (= “Affiliate Product”) and the links you need to promote these right away (= “Product Address”, which I have blanked out, as it is a membership site),
~ An indication of the % and amount of commission paid per sale for these affiliate products, so you’ll see the money you’ll earn from each (= “Pays (% – $USD)”).

Within the downloadable “This Week’s Article/Content File”, you’ll get additional bonus materials, useful tips and resources to get the most out of your time and money, for that Niche theme:
~ You’ll usually get PLR (Private Lables Rights) packages – which often include items such as Ebooks you can use as free giveaways or to sell, and 10-25 articles about that certain Niche theme, so you can get started straight away with populating your website or blog.
~ Some of these packages include full, ready made products for you, such as ready to use website graphics (eg. colourful Ebook covers for the PLR products) and ready made sales pages too, to use as you wish.

Incredible, isn’t it? Somebody has actually done all this work, and you’re entitled to use it, for free! What are you waiting for? I say, go and register at Daily Niche Idea now!

Further reading

Shifting your mindset from thinking your customers are everyone, to Defining Your Niche Market, by Laura Lake at about.com (Marketing).

Niche Marketing versus Mass Marketing, why is Niche Marketing effective, and Three Steps to Defining Your Niche Markets, by Ivan Delman at about.com (Marketing).

May your Niche Markets be real, unique and profitable!

P.S. Just so you know, if you register at Daily Niche Idea and then decide to upgrade to the Premium package, I will get paid a commission (the Premium package offers you more lots more options, including the chance to promote Daily Niche Idea as an affiliate). Thank you, if you do.

P.P.S. If you choose to buy one or more Niche domain names (and hosting for one domain) from JustHost, I will also earn commission. To say thank you, I am offering to install and build a 2-3 page WordPress.org blog for you on your new JustHost Niche Market website, that will be up and running and ready to use, for a very reasonable price. See more Website/Blog and Internet Marketing offers here, or Contact me if you want to take up this offer.

(Blog set up excludes writing of blog posts. I can write your first or a few blog posts for you at an agreed fee. Alternatively I can populate your new blog with articles provided by Daily Niche Idea, if you’re a member, for no additional cost!).

Be Unique Picture courtesy of: http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/07/motivators.html
Number Balloon Pictures courtesy of: http://www.burningahole.co.uk/buy/search/number%202/