How to Find a Niche Market & Make It Your Own

How to Find a Niche Market & Make It Your Own explained by professional Forex trading experts the “ForexSQ” FX trading team.

How to Find a Niche Market & Make It Your Own

One common path to success for many small businesses is to find a niche market and establish themselves as a dominant player in that niche.

Because no matter how hard they try, no large retailer can be all things to all people, there are always going to be segments of the population whose needs for particular products and/or services are going unmet – leaving room for the small business to succeed by meeting those needs.

So how can your small business capitalize on these unmet needs and find and dominate your own niche market? Concentrate on these four basic concepts for niche marketing success:

1. A unique product or service.

For starters, if you’re going to master a niche market, you need to have a unique product or service. Ideally, you want to be the only one selling what you’re selling.

The trick to coming up with such a product or service is to look on the fringes for unmet needs. For example, one East Coast entrepreneur’s business consists of creating hand-made medieval outfits. Large retailers and even shops specializing in costumes don’t supply these types of garments.

Don’t forget that processes can be products as well. Someone once looked at an inkjet printer cartridge and came up with the idea and the process for refilling them, for example.

Need help getting started with this sort of idea spotting?

7 Sources of Business Ideas will spark your thinking.

2. A marketable product or service.

You can create all kinds of wonderful and wonky products and/or services but if no one wants what you’ve produced, what’s the point?

(Speaking of wonky, here are 12 Wacky Businesses That Actually Make Money.)

Maybe there’s no one selling fried insects from a vending cart on your street, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

The niche market of people who enjoy eating fried insects in this country is so small they wouldn’t even fill an elevator.

There has to be enough of a demand for your product or service for your business to make a profit. How do you find out? By trial and error or by conducting extensive market research.

I, of course, recommend the latter. If you want to know if there’s a market for coats for dogs, bamboo flooring or counseling for the iPhone addicted, the best way to find out is to get out there and ask. Making or buying a lot of something and throwing up a website to see if there’s any interest in what you’re doing is for people who don’t want to make money.

3. Choose a niche market that’s available.

Remember, niche markets tend to be smaller so there’s only room for so many players. If you try to jump on a bandwagon, you’re only going to fall off the back.

For instance, at one time I mentioned the niche market for gay marriages in Top 10 Home Business Business Opportunities. But because many more places have legalized gay marriage, this market has become a lot larger than it used to be.

Before you started such a business yourself, you would certainly need to carefully research the competition and the size of the market to see if a new business in this niche would be viable.

It might well be better to find a different niche in the marriage or gay markets and make that niche your own.

4. Market, market, market.

Marketing is perhaps more important for niche businesses than for any other kind, because the niche market business is by definition unknown and succeeds or fails on making the connection with exactly the right kind of customer/client.

If I open a Starbucks, for example, people know right away what that business is about and what kinds of products to expect. And because Starbuck’s market is “anybody who likes coffee”, they really don’t have to worry much about advertising at this point in the game.

But if I open a business providing naturopathic treatments for pets, selling tub/shower conversions for the elderly or providing virtual assistant services to professional speakers, to give just three examples, people won’t know what to expect or even that my niche business exists at all unless I make the effort to reach and educate them.

So market, market, market – and once you have a customer or client, make contact on a regular basis.

(To get you started, here are 6 Simple Marketing Strategies to Increase Your Business, 10 Low-Cost Ways to Promote Your Business and 10 Ways to Get Positive Word of Mouth for Your Business.)

A unique product or service that will fulfill the unmet needs of a specific group of people – that’s niche marketing in a nutshell. If you apply all of the four concepts above, your small business will enjoy the powerful competitive advantage that mastering a niche market provides.

Do You Need to Find a Niche Market?

If you are looking to start a business, there are many proven business ideas in existing traditional markets that can generate full or part-time income if you can:

Deliver the products and services that your customers need, and
Provide better customer service than your competitors

For example:

15 Inexpensive Business Ideas

Top 10 Home Business Opportunities

The Best Business Ideas for Working for or with Seniors

Best Business Opportunities for Retirees

16 Part-Time Businesses You Can Start Today

Sometimes you can boost existing sales of your products or services by simply reorienting your business. For example, customers are increasingly concerned about the environment and by incorporating eco-friendly business practices you may gain new customers. (See 10 Ways to Green Your Business.)