We all know that having a business that sells to a niche market is the way to go. The benefits can include:
Ability to leverage off systems and processes designed for one market
Ability to have a product/service that is heads above a generalist product/service
More effective marketing
More effective networking strategy
The hard thing is to work out what niche market is out there for you.
When creating your niche market, I believe the market needs to satisfy the following ( I will use a Fat Loss Personal Training (“FLPT”) niche market as our example):
1. Lots of them – your niche market needs to have enough potential customers for it to be worthwhile for you. Whether your niche is a location, an industry or a product line, you need to do your research to make sure the amount of potential buyers are around.
FLPT - In a world of a huge amount of scrutiny on body image and the like, the amount of people looking to lose weight is ridiculous. Easy way to find out if there are lots of them, a week of surveying at local bus stops will give you a pretty good % of fat people vs skinny people in the area
2. Money to spend – you need to make sure your niche market has enough money to spend on your idea. Selling a high price product to a niche that makes no money just wouldn’t work.
FLPT – depends what area you are in. Personal training is more expensive then just a gym membership, you need to make sure you are targeting working individuals with a little bit of money to spend.
3. Make a difference with them – your idea needs to be able to make a difference to the market you are selling too. Without this, your market won’t buy. This is the reason for them to buy.
FLPT – tick tick tick tick, if you create a great fat loss program incorporating both exercise and diet and you believe it works, absolutely you can make a difference with them.
4. Enjoy working with them – there is no point in having a great niche market, working with them everyday, but not liking either the people in the market or the market in general. Creating a business is a lifestyle, you need to enjoy your lifestyle, if you enjoy your lifestyle you will love waking up in the morning and going to work, you will have a huge amount of energy, and I believe energy creates sales.
FLPT – this is up to the individual running the business. If it was me, nothing would be more rewarding then seeing individuals meet their weight loss goals.
If you tick off on all 4 of these criteria for your niche market, the last thing you need to do is to give them a problem. If they don’t have a problem, why would they act and buy your idea. Think about how you make a difference with them and work out what the problem is if they don’t buy your idea.
FLPT – you can create plenty of problems for this niche market. Whether it be simply being overweight, decreasing your expected lifespan by 20 years (or whatever it is?) or having no energy in life. The good thing is, with the huge amount of scrutiny in the world at the moment about weight issues, the media has created the problem for you.
If you have all these, your niche market will have a recipe for success. If you have an idea and want me to look over it for you, by all means send it through; I’d love to help.