Main Lessons: 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | Course Index
Lesson 16
Are Enough People Looking For Your Niche?
Sometimes marketing to your passions or skills is not good enough to guarantee success. You may be the world's leading source on the mating patterns of the Australian zebra lizard. There may be no one on the planet who can speak as intelligently about Australian zebra lizards and their love interests as you.
Even so, there probably aren't enough people that are interested in that topic for you to build a successful business around it.
Here is where you have to do a little keyword research. What if you could discover in 5 or 10 minutes exactly how many people searched for a particular keyword or phrase each month? Actually, that is easy to do, and here are a couple of proven methods.
Free Method
Once again, we will rely on our knowledgeable friend Google. The Google Keyword Planner will show you exactly how many monthly searches are performed for a particular keyword phrase. Type "Google keyword planner" into the Google search engine, and follow the link provided.
Make sure you check the option for "exact phrase" search. Type in keywords or phrases relevant to a prospective niche. When you find a search term with 10,000 to 100,000 monthly searches, that is a good range which limits your competition, while also providing enough financial viability.
Paid Method
Sometimes you need more than bare-bones information. The following paid keyword research tools reveal in-depth information about who is searching for what, how many times, and why ...
- Longtail PRO
- BuzzSumo
- Moz’s Keyword Analysis Tool
- Keyword Spy
- Keyword Discovery
- SEMRush
We've already spoken in previous lessons about the "real world", off-line way to find a niche market with plenty of potential customers, by heading out to your local book store to search magazines and non-fiction books. These paid keyword research tools take things one step deeper and may be what you need if you find yourself at an impasse.
Lesson 17
What If My Idea is Already Being Done?
If your idea is already being marketed, that is great! It means that there is definitely a market for your product or service. Now all you need to do is "steal" the hard work that your competition has already done.
Join the email lists of websites and blogs that are marketing a product similar to the one you intend to offer. Check out their websites. Read their blog posts. Order their products and services. If they have a forum, join it, and see what their customers and potential prospects are talking about. This is incredible information, and is all free of charge.
Then take that information and use it to make a better product than your competition is offering. Price your product lower, add more features, deliver a lifetime warranty, make it bigger or smaller, faster or slower, and longer-lasting. Deliver a better value and let everyone know about it.
You can also differentiate yourself through marketing. Remember the clothespin example from earlier? The innovative clothes pin manufacturer had a hard time selling his product at first, even though it was superior. When he began to market it as a clothespin "that doesn't roll", sales exploded.
Come up with an eyebrow-raising, humorous, clever, shocking or bold way to market your product and your unique approach will overcome bland competitors selling virtually the same product or service.
Is It a Bad Sign If My Niche ISN’T Being Done?
On the flip side, you might worry if your niche isn’t being done by anyone else. Sometimes this can be a sign that your niche is too small and that there isn’t that much of a market. However, it might also mean that you can be the one to start something new.
Many niches have started that way – new diets, new health trends and so on. They are often based within a very broad niche – like healthy eating – but then take it into a completely new sub-niche.
Whatever happens, remember that it is always possible to tweak your niche if you don’t get the results you expect!
Lesson 18
Is Your Niche Big Enough to Grow?
This is an important question – any niche you enter should have potential to grow in future. If you start out with one product, for example, you probably eventually want to add more. You’ll also want to make sure there’s enough scope to keep creating new blog posts and content!
Unfortunately, it is sometimes hard to determine exactly. Take the buggy whip business. Before the invention of the automobile, people got around in horse-drawn buggies and carriages. The person piloting the vehicle used a whip to lightly strike the rump of the horse when it needed a little motivation.
Buggy whip salesman were doing a booming business … before Henry Ford automated automobile production. Virtually overnight, they went the way of the dodo bird.
Basically, you want a niche market that is small enough to dominate, while still allowing room for growth. For example, MySpace used to be the largest social media site. It became such an overnight success that hundreds of competitors popped up. The creators of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest all realized that social media was in its infancy at the time, but still had plenty of room for spectacular growth.
You can do this in your own market by watching relevant trends. If you plan on blogging about smoking as a healthy pastime, you are about 50 years too late. On the other hand, blogging about how to stop smoking once and for all is probably a topic that has plenty of room for growth, as human beings have become more health-minded in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Again, the keyword research you did earlier can help out a lot here. If your main keyword phrase returns just 20,000 or 30,000 results, you could be looking at a burgeoning niche market that is about to explode. You may also be staring at a market which has been slipping the last few years.
Keep an eye on technology. Learn everything there is to know about your niche market. Join forums and chat rooms applicable to that field. Use social media to monitor your marketplace. These are all simple ways to feel the pulse of any niche market, and gauge whether there is room for growth, or whether you are riding a sinking ship.
Lesson 19
Understanding Your Ideal Audience (to Help You Stand out in Your Niche)
The best way to stand out in a niche is to have a very specific, ideal audience in mind. Why? Because there may be hundreds of blogs already about how to achieve a flat stomach. However, if your ideal target audience is new, vegetarian mothers then they will always come to you over other sources!
The key is to define your audience and then get really, really clear on what they want. This can help you come up with some amazing niche, content and product ideas!
Think about the answers to these questions:
- What problems are they having?
- What is the one area where they are not being serviced?
- If they could solve just one problem tomorrow, as it relates to your niche market, what would that solution be?
A lot of successful entrepreneurs, online and off, got that way by solving their own problems first. Chances are the issues in your life are being experienced by a lot of other people. If your niche market applies to your own life in some way, you may just need to answer your own problems in order to understand the needs of others.
Once again social media comes to the rescue. Remember those groups that you made on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms earlier? Talk to your audience. Simply ask them what they want. Ask them what features or characteristics a product or service would have to have for them to switch from their current provider.
Always remember to think from your prospect's point of view, not your own. Do not think about building products. Think about offering solutions. And never forget that every single purchasing decision any human being makes is based on one of 2 subconscious factors:
- Avoiding Pain
- Providing Pleasure
When you decide to eat something, it could be that you are avoiding the pain of hunger, and eventual starvation, and also that you are providing the pleasure of tasting one of your favorite foods. When talking to your audience, focus on the pleasures they are trying to attain, and how they are trying to alleviate pain.
When you think about your niche market, imagine a single, specific person. Identify the age, demographic, gender, intelligence level and all other applicable metrics that make up your "perfect customer". Market to that single individual rather than an audience, and your niche marketing efforts will be successful.
Lesson 20
Conclusion: Don’t Forget About Passion
Lastly, remember that you should be passionate about any niche you choose. Unless you plan to outsource the whole thing, this is something that you could be involved in for many years to come.
Running an information-based online business means constantly coming up with new content ideas on the same topic. Things are a lot easier when you actually enjoy what you’re writing about!
And that brings us to the end of this course. Thank you for riding along with me through this information. I hope you have found it helpful in choosing your online niche. Remember, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us at any time! Check out some of the other courses available at tikal.me — there are many steps involved in becoming a successful online business and we cover many of them in our other courses.
