Niche Markets. What Are They? Should You Be Targeting One?

Niche (pronounced neesh) markets are subsets of a larger market. There’s niche and there’s niche. How niche you want to go is up to you, but some say the nichier the better.

If we’re looking at a large market like “shoes”, a niche market might be Nike running shoes. That niche is still in a pretty large space and you’d find many thousands of competitors all competing to bring their online shoe stores into the top 5-10 Google results for keywords related to selling Nike running shoes.

A smaller niche market would be female Nike trail running shoes. One could probably focus on this niche and enjoy a fair bit of success faster than someone with the same marketing budget focusing on the larger Nike running shoes budget. The competition is less and you’ll find it easier to manage your focus on a tighter niche.

There is an idea among internet marketing types that niche markets are where the real gold is for small businesses getting started online. The bigger niches are already heavily competed for. In fact, those blew up first, big companies with deep pockets realized they could sell everything online and quickly ramped up to do that. They are generalists – specializing in some general areas, or, like Amazon, reaching into all kinds of spaces to see how much they can sell in each.

There are huge online shoe stores. Huge online music stores. Huge online software stores. Massive electronics stores. The large spaces are pretty well competed for and spoken for. You’re not going to get in them without having a TON of cash to spend to get there. Is it worth spending a ton of cash to get there? Up to you, for some – yes. If your ideas are solid and you offer some value-add that is irresistable, and functional… people will go for it. There is big money to be made in general spaces… but, there is respectable money for small businesses in the tiny niches too.

Why do tiny niche markets work for the new business startup?

1. Easier to get a grip on. Easier to wrap your head around and master than a large niche. You’ll be up and running months or years before you would be if trying to play in a large space. Go niche and expand to other related niches later as master the ones you’re in already. Choose a space where unmet needs exist and play in all those tiny niche areas. Sites with traffic and needs for specific, hard to find or little known products and services will find you, link to you, and join your affiliate program to be able to sll the specialty items you have.

2. Customers want specialized knowledge about what they’re buying. An expert in a niche provides specialized information that others just don’t have. Ask the owner of Zappos shoes why a female trail runner should use Nike over Adidas shoes and you’d likely see a blank stare. Consumers are starting to insist on having detailed information because as a group we’re just so knowledgeable already. We know the basics… we want to know the real differences between Nike and Adidas trail running shoes. We want to know the modem speed of a GPRS enabled phone, not just the three colors it’s available in.

3. Your marketing costs are trivial in comparison to large, general, unfocused markets. You’ll find much greater success owning the space with a serious effort than you could ever dream of in a big market. Own many niche areas in Google and you’ll do very well. Look up Adam Short on Google. He creates products for 90 niche markets, has 90+ websites selling to those markets – and makes mid 6-figure income each year doing it. To get an idea about how niche you can go… he makes $500-$1,500 from this site each month: www.bettafishcenter.com. Pretty specialized, yes? There is a group of people that exists that wants information about Betta fish – and will pay $15 for his ebook about them. There are innumerable niche markets you could jump into… research and GO!