Niche Marketing 101: 4 Advantages of Marketing to a Niche Audience

What is niche marketing?

I’ve talked an awful lot about defining your target market, but it’s because it is too important to ignore. Whether you’re writing content, posting to social media, or developing a new marketing campaign/offer, tailoring your message to your audience is imperative. Similarly, defining who your products or services benefit the most allows you to zero in on a message that resonates with that audience.

Where your target market is a “specific group of consumers at which a company aims its products and services,” a niche market is an even more specific group of people at which a company’s products and services are aimed. Niche marketing is when a brand identifies a special attribute of their product that will echo most with a certain group of people.

The difference between defining a target market and a niche market lies within the special characteristic that encourages your audience identify with you.

For instance, this is an example of a target market: women ages 18-25 who want to learn to cook. Now, let’s turn this target market into a niche market: gluten-free women ages 18-25 who want to learn how to cook healthy gluten-free recipes. Another example of a target market is men ages 30-45 year looking for high-end business suits. To make this a niche market, let’s zero in on wealthy, eco-friendly professional men ages 30-45 who make more than $100,000/ year looking for high-end, eco-friendly business suits.

As you can see, niche markets are super specific. While the specificity can range depending on your products and services, niche marketing is all about taking what’s special, different, unique and rare about what you’re offering, and marketing that to the group of people who are most likely to identify with you.

4 advantages of marketing to a niche audience

A strategic and focused approach to marketing and product/service development, having a niche market surely has its challenges; however, the advantages far outweigh them, so let’s dive into four of them!

1. There’s less competition

When you have a brand, product, or service that targets an extremely specific audience, chances are your competition will be less than if you’re targeting a broader market. With the decrease in competition, you have the opportunity to think outside the box and really tailor your content and messaging to the people it’s most likely to resonate with.

With a product that targets such a specific group of people, identifying your audience also becomes much easier.

2. It’s easier to tailor your messaging

Having a highly specific audience lets you tailor messaging that speaks directly to said audience. And you don’t have to worry about whether they will understand certain buzzwords or innuendoes, you know your targeted audience will get it. Your message won’t be lost on those it matters most to, regardless of the medium in which you send it. However, it’s still important to determine where your audience spends their time – in terms of traditional and digital marketing platforms.

3. It helps you develop and market a focused website

From a digital marketing standpoint, your website is one of your most important assets. Essentially, your website is the face of your business on the Internet. Not only does it have the ability to attract people and turn them into customers, it can also turn people off in mere seconds. This is where the design of your website – coupled with user experience created for visitors – is important to your success as an online entity.

Aside from the design of your website, the information on your site must answer the questions your audience has, and since you know them so well, you should be able to oblige! Since you know what your audience wants and needs, you can create a website that speaks directly to them, and they’ll certainly appreciate that!

In terms of marketing your website, you can also increase your chances of ranking in the search engines by focusing on long tail keywords and phrases, giving yourself the opportunity to be found under particular terms your niche market searches for.

4. It allows you to write content that is more effective

Speaking of those long tail keywords and phrases, having a niche audience also allows you to write, publish and promote content (website, blog, social media, etc.) that is more effective.

By more effective, I mean content that’s read, shared, and commented on more than a business with a broader audience. When you’re writing for a niche market, you’re able to hone in on what matters most to your audience, providing them with answers, solutions, entertainment, how-tos, demonstrations, and thought-leadership pieces that mean something to them and resonate with them.

Niche marketing isn’t for every business or every product/service, but it definitely occupies a space that should not be ignored by any business. Sure, it might not be for you, but it’s definitely worth thinking about.