What is a Niche Market?

niche market

The world of business has changed and evolved over the years as technology has created new ways for advertisements to reach customers.  The end result is hopefully increased profits for the business owner, since the main goal of business hasn’t changed.

Marketing strategies have grown more sophisticated as well.  Every business is in search of the right customer for their product.  Large companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year developing new products and conducting market research.

Small businesses also need to know where to market their products or services.  With considerably less money than a big corporation, successful marketing strategies can mean the difference between staying afloat and taking a nose dive.

One tool in the marketing arsenal is niche marketing.  The principle strategies of this tool make niche marketing adaptable to the small business owner looking to turn a profit and the larger corporation that wants to increase their market share.  Every customer is looking for something and the trick is to find out what that is and provide the product or service for them.  In today’s economy, no one wants to waste their money.  But, they will spend money for the items they want and need.

What is a Niche Market?

whatHave you ever perused a store looking for something to solve a problem?  It could have been a stubborn stain in your carpet or a bothersome cold.  You know what you need but have a hard time finding it.  Sometimes you simply wish someone would create exactly what you are looking for.  You’d even invent it yourself if you could.  That is where niche marketing can be of great help to the customer.  What if someone were to provide what you needed?

A niche market is a smaller group of individuals that have a specific need for a product or service that hasn’t been met.  To take advantage of the opportunity to reach this specialized group of customers is the goal of niche marketing.  But, you must identify what the group needs before you can strive to provide it.

While there are many niches that remain untapped, all of them are not profitable.  You can promote a stain remover for stubborn carpet stains but if only 100 people need that remover, you won’t make much money.  So, simply identifying the niche is not the end, but the beginning.  Studying its viability is also important.

This group of individuals can be linked in many ways.  How they are linked is the key to discovering a new niche market.  The want of the product is not the niche but social class, race, economic level, background, gender and religion to name a few.

customer

Once you have found the customers, it is your job to provide a quality product or service to them.  Meet their expectations and you’ll begin building a solid customer base.  What any business wants are customers who will stick with them through thick and thin.  A loyal customer is a customer for life.

Why do niche markets go untapped?  Part of the reason has to do with perception.  Niche markets are small and well defined.  When most business owners think of small they envision shrinking profits and that is not the way they want to go.

The thought here is akin to how old fashioned fishing boats would cast their nets.  If you cast a large net over a wide enough space, you have the opportunity to catch more fish.  A product that appeals to a broad market is more feasible than putting time and effort into pinpointing the exact location of one school of fish.  Do you get the idea?

A larger business might not see the logic of going after a more specialized market.  That is great news for you as a small business owner because what falls through the net is free for the taking.  A small business owner could do quite nicely on a million in sales from a newly discovered niche market.

5 Ways to Promote Your Book Using Facebook

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Facebook is one of the most useful resources on the Internet when it comes to marketing anything. But, if you want to market and promote your book on Facebook you’re in luck because Facebook is practically tailor made for just such a thing.

1. Create a Facebook Page for Your Book

That’s right, you want to create a Facebook Page just for your book. It will be under Entertainment. Simply go to home on Facebook, Create Page, and choose Entertainment. Choose Book for category, and then put in the name of your book and agree to the terms and conditions. Go through all the steps and don’t forget to pick a unique URL for your book.

2. Invite Friends to Your Page

Now you want to get some followers on your page, so use the tool on the page after you’ve created it to invite your Friends. This is a good start to building a fan base for your book. Ask your friends to share with and invite their friends too. You need to get at least 30 likes to have access to page insights and other features.

3. Connect Your Blog

If you have a blog, and an Author’s Facebook page connect your blog so that you can automatically post excerpts from your blog right on your Author’s page. You can use a number of different technologies to do this, one is called Networked Blogs. Once you set it up, each time you publish a blog post, it will post directly to any Facebook Page that you own as you’ve set it up. This is a great way to automate the sharing of some content.

4. Promote Your Page

Use the handy and easy Create Ads feature to promote your page. You can easily segment the audience that you choose to promote your page to. You can choose not to promote it to the people who already have joined or are your friends, and only promote it to just the right audience choosing your daily budget.

5. Update Daily

One of the keys to keeping your page active and attracting likes is to keep content going on your page every day. Not just any content, it needs to be relevant and useful content that is focused on the type of audience you want to attract. You can share your blog posts, YouTube.com videos and more using your Facebook Page. Your page needs to be updated enough to make people take notice but not so much that you annoy people. Most of all, keep it as close to the topic as you can.

 

Marketing and promoting your book on Facebook is fun and simple. It’s a truly essential element in ensuring that you can build a following. A lot of people don’t realize that even if you’ve been published by a publishing company you still need to do a lot of marketing on your own, so whether you’re self-published or not, using Facebook to market and promote your book is an essential component in book marketing today.

 

If you’d like to know more about Promoting Your Book Using Facebook , then don’t miss our free Webinar on December 12th, “How to Market & Promote Your Book Using Facebook”.

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