What is Niche and How Does It Work?

| November 16, 2015

What is Niche and How Does It Work?

In this era of intense competition, it’s vital to come up with a very precise business plan to launch your business. Most entrepreneurs would like to plan every single detail of their business carefully, especially in the beginning. They read most of the online articles and even hire people to help them through the process.

However, even after all this planning, most entrepreneurs find it very difficult to get their business off the ground. There are several aspects involved here, but one of the most common mistakes people make is not creating the right niche.

What is a Niche?

It’s very easy to confuse and misunderstand this concept. Most people assume that the niche is the target audience and the number of people they’d like to sell to. If that’s your definition of the niche, you might be planning your marketing efforts incorrectly. The concept of niche is much more refined and needs to be examined carefully.

Consider this: You’re a clothing brand that sells women’s clothes. This is a very broad niche that can cause your marketing campaigns to be scattered and completely disorganized. However, if you filter your niche down to a precise degree, you’ll see a great deal of improvement. For example, you’re a clothing brand that sells high-end clothing to urban professional women.

This niche is much more refined. You can further filter it down by considering whether you’re selling the product directly to the customer or do you intend to sell to a retail outlet. When you do this, you have a much narrower target to reach. Most business owners don’t really like to narrow down the scope of their business. They would rather sell to everyone who might buy instead of just focusing on a niche market.

How Does Niche Work?

It’s understandable that most businesses would want a wider scope for business and a wider target audience. Most businesspeople assume that they need to cast their net wide enough to catch the maximum amount of fish. The problem is that every single customer you try to lure through online advertising and other such tactics can cost money. The idea is to keep the investment relatively low and the conversion rates high.

You can achieve this why sharpening your focus and hitting the target dead-center. As illustrated by the above example, by narrowing the down the target audience, you might be able to catch more fish. Knowing your target demographic allows you to develop strategies and marketing campaigns that are targeted towards this audience. The more precisely you’ve narrowed down the niche, the more likely you’re to get the formula right.

How to Find the Niche

Finding the niche isn’t as easy as it sounds. In fact, some entrepreneurs are very surprised when, upon close examination they find that they’ve been targeting the wrong audience most of the time. The only way to find the right niche is to detach yourself from the results and the numbers. Instead, you need to focus on the product and observe which audience tends to respond to it the most. That would be your first step towards finding the right niche.