Niche Marketing for SMB
By Phil Johnson
Great Things Still Come from Small Packages: Small Businesses and Niche Marketing
It’s understandable and even expected of small business owners to feel apprehensive about their chances of surviving in the Internet especially when they’re facing tough competition from large and well-established companies. If you’re a small business owner yourself, however, don’t let the scary facts and figures get you down. You still have a chance to succeed, and all you have to do is find your own nook in Internet.
What is Niche Marketing?
Niche marketing is the opposite of mass marketing. In mass marketing, you are addressing the wants and needs of a general market. You may also be using a general advertising strategy for several markets. You may also be modifying your product in various ways to make it appealing to different types of customers.
Niche marketing on the other hand is all about catering to the wants and needs of a SPECIFIC market or a market niche in other words. Instead of concentrating on the superficial demand of a large market, you’ve decided to focus on a slice of the market and catering to their unique demands.
The Benefits of Niche Marketing
Lower Advertising Costs – You’ll definitely spend less in advertising simply because you have a smaller target market.
Quicker Results – With a smaller target market, you can also ensure that your message will reach its intended recipients more quickly and consequently bring equally quick results as well!
Easier to Make – Niche marketing strategies are also easier to devise than mass marketing strategies most especially if you’re a part of the market niche yourself!
How to Make Use of Niche Marketing for Small Businesses
When devising niche marketing strategies for your business, this will be one of the few instances when it won’t benefit you to think like your opponent. Remember that you don’t have all the resources that your bigger and richer rivals all have so you need to focus on your strengths and not theirs!
Forget about Economies of Scale – Don’t even bother attempting to make your prices competitive by reducing them and making them equal to the prices of your competitors’ products and services. You’ll still lose, and in a bigger way at that, in the long run.
Remember that these companies can probably afford to lower their prices because they’re manufacturing a higher volume of goods and they have lower operational costs. You can’t afford either of those so stop beating your head on the wall.
Product Innovation – Focus on making your product or service totally YOU and totally unique. That is one of the core strengths that small businesses have: their ability to make product innovations without denting their pockets too much. Bigger businesses can’t make product changes as easily as yours can because they’ll have to shell out a larger amount of money and worry about alienating a larger market.
Bigger businesses may also need to ensure that their products or services will retain mass appeal, which is something that you completely need not focus on if you’re determined to use niche marketing for your company. If you’re using niche marketing strategies for your business, all you’ll have to worry about is getting the wants and needs right of a particular market sector and not the whole market.
The Smaller Things in Life – When you’re using mass marketing to advertise about your business, the little but nice things that you do for your customers probably won’t get noticed. If you’re concentrating on a market niche, on the other hand, there’s more chances that the little things you do for your customers will not only get noticed but help increase your sales as well!
Making an extra effort to redefining customer service in your industry, for instance, can go a long way in establishing your reputation, expanding your customer base, and strengthening customer loyalty.
Never underestimate your customers especially when you interact with them in a daily basis. Even if they don’t show it, they’ll notice any changes you make in your business and appreciate it of course if those changes are beneficial to them!
Finding the right niche marketing strategies may take you some time. Finding the right niche for your small-sized business may take even longer, but the important thing is not to give up until you’ve found the position where your business is most comfortable and able to attain the highest profit.
About the Author
Phil Johnson is the author of Viral Marketing Advertising .com, a resource on the wide topic of marketing. He also contributes to article sites such as Information Junkie and The A-Z of. Writing mainly about the various aspects of marketing Phil has vast experience of both online and offline methods having over 15 years in the marketing business after a sucessful career as an accountant.
Source: Viral Marketing
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