Target the Right Customers | Niche Marketing Strategy Explained
Model Name : Niche Marketing Strategy
Year : 1982
Purpose : Understanding the niche marketing strategy | learning to target a specific group of audience | getting the apt consumer insights | understanding the market with special needs | forming an effective consumer strategy | targeting a product demographically
What is Niche Marketing Strategy?
You may think that the most profitable businesses are the ones who have the biggest audiences. Well, that logic is flawed. Sometimes, catering to the particular needs of a smaller, yet more targeted audience is the key to untold business success.
Whenever a company has a specific set of ideas in mind for a special audience, then that means the company is targeting a niche market.
Catering to the needs of a specific audience will prove to be far more beneficial for you than catering to everyone in the social demographic.
After all, the key is to appeal to the customers and make them feel like their needs are fully being understood and met by you.
Niche marketing strategy is one of the most successful approaches to make any brand into a money-making machine. And what’s more – it’s cheaper.
Typically, niche marketing strategy involves the launch your product in a selected region or selected market. You use an advertising campaign and media mix that is well-understood by a particular audience.
But it’s not as easy as it looks.
Contrary to popular belief, niche marketing is far more difficult than mass marketing.
The smaller audience that the brand is targeting through niche marketing strategy literally makes or breaks the brand. Make a single wrong move, and it could very easily lead to several years of a tarnished credibility.
Yet, even a single move in the right direction can put you well ahead of competing and similar businesses as an established market leader .
In my view, the risk is well worth it.
How to Choose a Niche Market?
Getting all the necessary information about a market before entering it helps your brand identify what unique needs of the people are waiting to be fulfilled.
You need to have an effective approach that highlights the uniqueness of your products, giving you a competitive edge.
All that being said, the real question now arises: how does a brand choose its niche? Let’s find out:
- A brand must recognize its best customers by studying their interests closely.
- Next, figure out some What’s about the potential customers.
For instance,
- What do they do for a living?
- What are their interests?
- What do they earn?
- What needs do they have?
How to Implement the Niche Marketing Strategy?
Upon the niche being finalized and selected, comes the phase where your business should apply the strategy.
When doing so, remember these important points:
1. Customer needs – All the customer wants is to have their needs heard, understood, and catered. Brands which have managed to successfully make it through several decades without failure have done so by becoming the primary fulfillers of their customers’ needs.
For instance, a business catering to the Hispanic market must have bilingual staff, or it might go into failure due to the language barrier.
2. Marketing messages – the advertising campaigns, product promotions, and all other communications must be outlined and written particularly for the niche. To become successful, a brand needs to sound like the niche, by speaking the language they speak and showing what they like to see.
For instance, you decide to distribute pamphlets that will be read by the niche, then you should utilize the proper vocabulary, writing style, and desirable content to build a familiar, comfortable and trustworthy rapport with your niche.
What are the benefits of Niche Marketing Strategy?
1. Creates Minimum Competition
Usually brands suffer a bump in the road towards success whenever another brand enters the market as competition. This is bound to happen all the time when a brand targets a mass consumer base.
The grass is greener on the ‘niche’ side because it caters to a unique set of needs which every other brand can’t fulfill.
2. Increases Brand Loyalty
Customer loyalty and reliability is what every brand aspires to achieve. Every time a brand targets a niche, it increases its chances of establishing a loyal customer base.
If you successfully make loyal niche customers, then rest assure, your consumer base will always stay strong.
This will also reduce the risk that your brand might face when launching a new product.
3. Decreases Chances of Failure
Inability to identify targeted audience is one of the main reasons behind the business failure. Targeting your niche specific audience and catering to their needs is a foolproof way to keep failure at bay.
4. Niche Marketing Helps In Saving Costs
Companies don’t only care about making money, but also saving money wherever possible. Marketing can be expensive and almost every brand relies on marketing. Spending countless dollars weekly is unavoidable for these brands.
Opting for niche marketing strategy can allow brands to save heaps of money on marketing tactics. Brands can directly target their marketing energy and efforts onto specific population groups who fit the criteria of being the niche and deliver their message in a cost-effective way.
Example of Brands that have Implemented Niche Marketing Strategy
The following brands have successfully implemented niche marketing strategy:
1. Simple Bank
Simple bank has successfully implemented niche marketing strategy by targeting the internet savvy generation. While traditional banks have many branches simple bank has not opened any physical branches yet. Instead, they have developed a powerful mobile banking app that allows its customers to conduct easy online banking.
2. Lyft
Lyft is a competitor of Uber. Like Uber, it is also a ride-sharing service. However, what sets Lyft apart from Uber is the way they have implemented niche marketing. Uber had a professional and luxurious approach. However, Lyft went in the opposite direction. They implemented a fun and friendly approach. This marketing strategy was met with favorable reviews by customers who preferred Lyft over Uber.
3. Bonobos
Bonobos was formed keeping one thing in mind; to make great men’s pants. They interviewed Stanford school business schoolmates who weren’t satisfied with store-bought pants. To solve this problem bonobos launched their e-commerce shop that offered great quality men’s pants. Their approach was so widely appreciated that they earned $1 million after six months. Bonobos is later acquired by walmart.
The Takeaway Message
Customers are now looking for customized products and services. This makes niche marketing an ideal choice. Creating a niche market will help you increase your profits and establish a stronger customer base.
However, one thing that organizations must never forget is that achievement doesn’t come without effort. Organizations operating in a niche market have got to have the detailed know-how of their consumers. Because that is the only way they will stay updated with the changing needs of their customers and remain an undeniable market leader.