The Niche Marketing Blog

Image by TuTuWoN via Flickr

[Editor's note: The following article illustrates a fundamental niche marketing principle: namely, the more tightly focused your niche, the more easily you will be able to rank for your keywords. Ranking equals potential traffic.]

By Steve Schafer

It seems like no matter what your business is these days, there are about 40 bazillion other companies in exactly the same business. How do you compete with that? You can try being so much better than your competition that all of the customers naturally come to you. That is hard to do. Not only is it hard to do, but even if you are a lot better than your competitors, how do you make sure everyone knows it? You have to advertise.

Even advertising can be difficult and expensive. As it turns out, more and more companies are choosing internet marketing, because it is not only cheaper, but it can actually reach more people. By far, the cheapest and most effective means of advertising on the internet is micro niche marketing. So what is micro niche marketing?

Let’s say that you own a pet supply store that specializes in pet clothing. You decide to facilitate online orders to widen your customer base. You want to show up #1 in the search engines for search terms that your potential customers are using to find products like those that you sell. If you were to focus on the term “pet supplies”, you will have so much competition in that niche that it will take you forever (and a lot of money) to even show up on the first page of the search engines, forget about #1.

You decide to focus a little more and do some research and you find that “pet clothing” has a bit less competition. You could even go narrower and focus on “ferret sweaters” or even “purple ferret sweaters”. The process of taking a wide niche and narrowing it down to smaller, more manageable niches is micro niche marketing. While it will not give you as many visitors to your website, the visitors that you do get will be a lot more focused on your products. There is no rule that says you can’t widen your niche once you have the more focused ones dominated.

Happy advertising!

Steve has been in the internet marketing business since 2003. He currently spend his time teach others niche marketing techniques and how to find the right internet marketing tools.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Schafer

http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-You-Should-Try-Micro-Niche-Marketing&id=4823234

Related articles by Zemanta

• Micro Niche Marketing (untreatableonline.com)
• Niche Marketing (ronmedlin.com)

Technorati Tags: niche market, niche marketing

Image via Wikipedia

[Editor's note: Here's an article that goes back to the fundamentals. If you are just starting out in your niche market, this article will help provide a foundation.]

Let’s talk about niche marketing for beginners or what is also referred to as newbie niche marketing.

Marketing in general is loosely defined as the opportunity to sell something to someone. A niche is a special area of demand for a service or product.

The essence of niche marketing is identifying a very specific audience with a very specific need and providing them what they want and are willing to pay for.

Niche marketing for beginners is a viable business model because, by definition, niches are less competitive and very targeted, so the work is in the research not the sophisticated marketing techniques.

Success simply requires the investigation of keywords and locating groups of consumers willing to spend money in specific markets. Newbie niche marketers can learn about marketing as they build their businesses.

Another great thing about niche marketing for beginners is that the advertising costs are much lower because the competition for keywords isn’t as high as it is in larger markets.

Niche marketers need to focus on providing unique solutions to their customers unique needs. A good example might be the specific niche of “miniature poodle grooming” inside the much larger market of “dogs”. Now I don’t know anything about this market, this is just an example.

You could have a million different products for the “dogs” market but the “grooming miniature poodles” market has very specific needs.

The challenge then becomes developing a product or service that stands out in that market. If you have a good product targeted to that audience, you can expect a high number of people to be interested and to buy.

People searching for miniature poodle grooming products have done their browsing and research already. They know what they want.

If you have determined that your niche market has enough demand, then your goal is develop a great product or simply find an existing product that you can market as an affiliate. How to determine demand is another topic unto itself, but it is not difficult or complicated, even for a beginner.

A fundamental truth of marketing is that people buy things that solve a problem, eliminate a fear, improve their health or make them money. There are certainly other things to understand about online marketing to be successful, but if you focus on this principle, everything else gets easier.

Successful niche marketing for beginners is driven by the ease of entry into specific markets with low competition and quality products or services that fulfill one of these basic human needs.

Another thing that can make niche marketing easy for new marketers is the idea of spying on your competitors. Nobody does enough of this.

Whether it’s pricing, product development, graphics or sales copy, other people have discovered what works already. All you need to do is look around and see what works and then figure out a way to make it your own.

What I mean is, you can’t blatantly just copy something, but you can take the core concept and make it unique to you rather than “recreate the wheel”.

Let’s face it, Burger King probably took a lot of it’s processes from McDonalds, because McDonalds was there first and was successful.

Niche marketing for beginners is a great way to start an online marketing business if you don’t have a ton of experience or a bunch of resources.

If Niche Marketing sounds interesting and you want to learn more, I have a great FREE report for you called Niche Ninja. Check it out and get your online business started!

Once you get your feet wet, for more free advice and tips about Internet Marketing techniques for beginners come over to The Internet Money Map and browse around.

(c) Copyright-Mark K Aylward All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint rights are granted where no changes are made to this article.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Aylward

http://EzineArticles.com/?Niche-Marketing-For-Beginners—Newbie-Niche-Marketing-Secrets-Revealed&id=4911446

Related articles by Zemanta

• Pointers For Finding Your Niche Product (encourageblogging.com)
• How niche will you go? An introspective look at niche marketing (agentgenius.com)
• Avoid Some Basic Niche Marketing Mistakes (encourageblogging.com)

Technorati Tags: niche marketing, niche markets

Image via Wikipedia

By Scott Spooner

This past week Yahoo consummated its long awaited courtship with Bing by announcing that, henceforth, Bing will be powering the search functions of Yahoo, one of the Net’s most respected search engine companies.

I can understand the desire for Yahoo and Bing to enter into this partnership; both from a market share and financial perspective. After all, someone has to challenge the 600-lb. gorilla that is Google.

But, from a strictly marketing point of view, how will Yahoo position itself in the mind of the consumer? To the average consumer, Yahoo has always meant “search”. If Bing is now powering the search, can Yahoo legitimately continue to claim this mantle? If not, what position will Yahoo stake out?

I’m sure – or, at least, I hope – that both Yahoo and Bing have their best marketing teams working on this very question. In the ever changing landscape that is the Internet, they’ll have to move quickly if the are going to capitalize on the benefits of this merger and build future market share.

Otherwise, the venerable search engine will shrink into the shadows and join the likes of other search engines that have come and gone.

Or maybe the net surfers of tomorrow will simply remember the former giant as “YaWho?”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Has Yahoo! Finally Found the Ideal Search Engine? (fool.com)
• The Death of Yahoo! Search? (fathomseo.com)
• So Sad: Yahoo Finally & Officially Gave Up On Search (seroundtable.com)
• Microsoft’s big Bing theory targets Google (macworld.com)
• Why Bing+Yahoo Means 5% Less Organic Traffic (searchengineland.com)
• Yahoo Results Labeled as “Powered by Bing” (marketingpilgrim.com)

Technorati Tags: Bing, Market share, niche marketing, niche markets, Yahoo

Image by jayRaz via Flickr

By Scott Spooner

In an effort to compete head-to-head with market leaders, many niche marketers decide to slash prices to attract traffic. This is almost always a bad move. Why? In response to this tactic, the better funded competitor will simply match your price, and then wait until your diminishing margins take their toll. Sooner or later you’ll have to either raise your prices again, or suffer possible liquidation and a potential buy-out, as your cash dries up and your competitors start to circle your business like carrion fowl.

Here’s an example, from an unusual market. While driving across town yesterday, I noticed a billboard which was advertising a local “gentlemen’s club”. Now, there is nothing unusual about the promotion of these types of clubs in Los Angeles, but what caught my attention was the marketing position they staked out in their promotion.

Up until this billboard, all of these types of clubs positioned their sales copy around the beauty of their dancers, the quantity of dancers, the proximity of the club or, as in most cases, the arousal of the customer. Of course, this is what you would expect if you were in this particular market.

However, the billboard I saw yesterday took a different route: they focused on the price of the “lap dances”. In other words, they positioned their services as a commodity, and decided to compete on price.

Will this strategy work? Will this tactic draw more patrons to the club? Probably, yes, at least in the short term. But at what cost? What stops their competitors from engaging in a price war? More importantly, now that they have staked out the “low cost” alternative, how does this particular club ever change their future position in the mind of their customer? And, what does “low cost” convey in this particular niche market?

So, when you are considering the position you want to hold in the mind of your prospect or customer, think carefully before you opt for competing on price alone. This strategy may work well for a market leader like Walmart, but it is a risky strategy at best for most niche marketers. With so many marketing positions available to the smart marketer, settling on price should be your position of last resort.

For more information on how to pick a winning position, check out the book Posiitoning: The Battle for your Mind

Related articles by Zemanta

• How niche will you go? An introspective look at niche marketing (agentgenius.com)
• Have You Fallen Victim to Certain Preventable Pitfalls in Niche Marketing (stevehartkopf.com)
• The right way to position against competition (asmartbear.com)
• Avoid Some Basic Niche Marketing Mistakes (encourageblogging.com)

By Eric Fernandes

You have been hearing a lot of people promoting the fantastic opportunities and profits they claim can be had through something called “niche marketing.” But you’re a little skeptical and are wondering how exactly you should go about finding and researching a viable niche that you could develop into a profitable business-one that is not only real, but still has room for newcomers to succeed.

1. Start with you. Where do your existing skills and areas of expertise lie? Do you have job experiences you’ve enjoyed or interesting hobbies? You are far more likely to have the persistence and energy to work over the long term in an area that truly interests you. And building on an area you already know about will be far easier than starting from scratch to develop the kind of knowledge-base you’ll need to create a quality website and earn credibility.
2. Identify related keywords. Once you’ve identified some potential areas to explore you need to develop a list of “keywords” that describe or relate to these concepts. You can find help for this process at an online site called “Wordtracker” that will take your initial ideas and bring up an array of associated words and ideas that can help you define your interests in terms of products and services. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your keywords will multiply, maybe into the hundreds.
3. Explore the market. Next you want to test whether these keywords are also interesting to a significant number of other people-do they have a potential market. For this you’ll want another kind of online service that tracks the popularity of keywords among both suppliers and searchers. In other words, how often is someone searching using this keyword, and how many websites do they find out there when they look? Two sites that can give you this kind of data are “Product Idea Evaluator ” (P.I.P.E.) and “Site Build It!” Identify the keywords which have high demand (many people are searching) compared to the supply of existing sites providing the answers they are seeking.
4. Cost out your keywords. Take the top candidates you’ve identified as keywords having high demand and low supply. Sites like Overture and Google AdWords will give you estimates for what it will cost you to advertise using the keywords that describe your chosen interests. What you are looking for is leads to existing products that you would be able to market through an affiliate relationship. This is where you begin to determine what the financial potential is of the niche you’re looking at.
5. Who’s ahead of you? Explore the sites and offerings of the people who are already in business in the area you’re considering. Are they as up-to-date and attractive as they could be, or are they sagging a bit and showing signs of neglect? Consider ways that you can enter this market competitively-with something fresh and unique to offer. Truthfully, it’s difficult at this point to find a completely unexploited online niche with strong profit potential. But there are still areas that have been underdeveloped and have room left for an imaginative and energetic new enterprise.

If you’ve made it this far, you are ready to start building your all-important web presence. The key to efficiency at this stage is to create solid, informative and well-targeted content that will draw people to your site. If you succeed in providing the right information expressed in the right way, more and more people will find you and your search rankings will rise organically. At this point, your site will have developed the kind of value advertisers will pay to be associated with. And you will have found your niche-hopefully a rich one!

Do you want to start a profitable business online, achieve financial independence, and become successful using niche marketing, then you need to visit: http://startaprofitablebusinessnow.com and get your online business up and running today!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_Fernandes

http://EzineArticles.com/?Using-Niche-Marketing-to-Find-a-Profitable-Market-to-Target&id=4850165

Related articles by Zemanta

• Utilizing Yahoo And Google Adwords To Generate Laser Targeted Visitors (ronmedlin.com)
• 7 Golden Tips to Earn Your First $1000 Online (quickonlinetips.com)
• Keyword Spying on the Competition… (zacjohnson.com)

Technorati Tags: niche market, niche market research, niche marketing

Image via Wikipedia

When you are full-steamed with new business ideas, you must do everything to give them shape and utilize their potential to their fullest. But sometimes, the well known adage “Less is more” holds true too! When you are in the online marketing business, do trust this advice: the less complicated your business strategy is, the more money you will rake in.

Lots of business owners, especially the ones who have an Internet business do not often realize the importance of choosing a particular niche. Choosing the right niche and targeting the apt target market is very important to be successful in Internet Marketing.

When you are doing niche marketing, you will face less of competition since you are not competing in all fields. You will be only selecting a handful few and concentrating on them. This has its own advantages.

1. You pay more attention to each of your market, and work in an organized manner.
2. You will be able to show your expertise in these fields so that people will trust your credibility and swear by your products.
3. Since there will be no more alternatives when you sell products based on one niche, you can eventually raise your prices and make a lot of money.

To select a niche, you first have to analyze your customers and their needs, their attitude towards your products and your competitors, and whether you are a good salesman that people can trust.

When you are doing market research, you are actually finding out which customers you would like to cater to, what their needs are, and how your business products can offer them solutions. This way, you will be able to set up a niche of your own.

While doing market research, you do not need complicated methods, or expensive consultants or even focus groups and surveys. All you have to do is ask yourself some questions like:

1. Do I have target customers with similar needs and problems?
2. Is the online market I am working on large enough to accommodate my business?
3. Can I create my products and services and my business identity to suit the needs of the targeted customers?
4. Is the market that I am targeting unpopular and unknown?
5. Can I actually reach all my customers in cost-effective methods?

Your niche will give your business a sharp focus and an edge over the others. The more you specialize in something, the more you will be able to show your expertise so that the customers will swear by your products. You can start providing services that cannot be found anywhere else.

For better results, it is good to choose a niche where there are not many competitors. You need to market properly to let your niche be well known among customers, for when you choose a particular niche, not many people will know about this.

You need not worry, since in Web 2.0, you can use the social networking sites to advertise your niche and market your products so that everyone gets to know about them and that too, without any costs.

So go and build your own niche, and give Mr. Scrooge a run for competition!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Niche Marketing (ronmedlin.com)
• Researching and Discovering Niche Business Ideas (brighthub.com)
• Common Niche Marketing Mistakes That Can Cause Your Business’ Demise (ronmedlin.com)

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, niche market, niche marketing

Image via CrunchBase

By Scott Spooner

The goal of niche marketing, and niche marketers, is to identify a niche with both plenty of search traffic and an acceptable level of competition. There are plenty of tools available – both paid and free – to help you uncover these niches. But, what do you do after you have discovered your own perfect niche?

This is where “rank building” strategies come into play; the goal of which is to rank your site, blog, or post, high enough in the search engine rankings so that you will be found. These strategies range from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Pay-Per-Click (PPC), and everything in between.

PPC gets you on top of the search engines quickly, but you have to have a considerable ad budget to keep you there. SEO won’t cost you anything but time (unless you outsource the activities), but it could potentially take you a long time to obtain a high ranking (for a competitive keyword), and longer still to maintain that position.

Following is a summary of how I am able to take competitive keywords, focus them on a blog, and achieve #1 ranking positions in Google. I’ll assume that you don’t have an advertising budget, are willing to learn a little about SEO, and can afford to spend some time to develop your rankings. I’ll also assume that you have a blog, or similar platform with which you can post your content.

The Five Steps

1. Keyword Research – This is a very important step; and one that many fail to do correctly. Once you’ve picked your niche (or potential niche), grab your favorite keyword tool (depending on my needs, I use Market Samurai, Micro Niche Finder, or Google’s free keyword tool), and do some keyword research. Look for keywords that are getting at least 80 searches per day (2400 per month), with no more than 30,000 competing web sites. Once you find 4 or 5 of these keywords, build your blog around them. The trick here is to narrow your focus; I try and develop niches that are “narrow, but deep”. You are trying to get a foothold in the search engines, and not “be all things to all people”.
2. Content Creation – With your keywords in hand, it is time to start creating, or gathering, your content. Remember to focus on the keywords that you found in step #1 above. If you are having trouble coming up with your own content, consider searching the content of video sites (e.g. YouTube), article sites (e.g. EZine Articles), and other blogs in your niche. Whether you create the content yourself, or repurpose it from other sources, make sure that it is focused on your keywords. Again, narrow, but deep.
3. Blog Posting – As you gather content, you’ll want to post that content on your blog. The secret here is to post consistently and on a regular basis. Give your readers a schedule to look forward to and, at the same time, give the search engine spiders something new to crawl each time they stop by. Obviously, the more you post, the quicker your site will develop, and the faster your rankings will occur. But don’t get hung up on it: whether you post once a day, or once a week, pick a schedule that you can maintain. Finally, make sure you are using your keywords in your posting tags. This will help the search engine spiders better understand what you are posting.
4. Social Book Marking – After every post, bookmark your post throughout the social media sphere. I will typically bookmark my posts on Digg, Propeller, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. I’ll also create links on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. This step is very important because each of these bookmarks creates a back link pointing back to your blog. SEO experts will tell you that the number one “off page factor” in improving your rankings is the quantity and quality of your back links. Social book marking sites offer these quality links for you. Pick the social media sites that you like and start book marking. One last note here: use your keywords as your “anchor text” (the text that you see) when creating your back links.
5. Rank Tracking – Install an analytics package on your site (I use Google Analytics, which is free). Keep track of the traffic arriving at your site and monitor: 1) where that traffic is coming from; 2) how they find you, and; 3) what keywords they are using to search for your topics. You can not fix what you haven’t been measuring. So, measure how well your keywords are performing and use those measurements as a guide for improving your long term ranking.

The above will take some time – and that is O.K. The search engines give a certain amount of credibility to sites that have been around for some time. This all works to your advantage. Just focus on your keywords (remember: narrow, but deep), and think about creating, or gathering, content.

In summary, you don’t need expensive tools or programs; in fact, you can complete each of the above steps using free tools available on the web. What you do need is to be prolific, persistent, and patient. Remember always that Internet marketing is a process, not an event.

The only question that remains is: when will you begin that process?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Who Told You THAT Was a Good Keyword? (searchengineguide.com)
• Making the Process Clear: Improve Your Search Engine Rankings in 6 Steps (searchenginejournal.com)
• Niche Analysis: Where To Start? (dailyseotip.com)
• Long Tail Search Keyword Strategy Works!!! (webmetricsguru.com)

Technorati Tags: Google Analytics, keyword research, niche marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search engine ranking

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

By Dave Fuller

Everyone talks about Niche Marketing and thousands if not millions of people are either making money online with it or want to make money online with it. For those new to Niche Marketing, we describe it as taking a little piece from a big pie. As an example the weight loss industry is the large pie and the piece of the pie or “niche market” could be loosing weight with natural juices. The more narrower you get the tighter the niche market and you will be focusing more on one group of people as oppose to something so borad like weight loss.

Here are four easy steps that will help you make money online with Niche Marketing:

1. Keyword Research- Researching the right keywords is so important that if you do this wrong or don’t do the right amount of research, your niche site may not appear in the search engines and you may not be targeting the right group of people.
2. Article Marketing- A great article with the right keywords can get you a long way. You will need to write an article that will not only help the reader get what they want out of it, but it will also need to have that keyword to attract more viewers to your website.
3. Monetization- This is the whole reason why we are into niche marketing. Some of us forget that we can add banners, ads, and products on our website to monetize it and are missing out on a huge chunk of money. You can promote products or services to your readers according to your niche market and keyword research.
4. Promotion- There are so many people that want to make money online and are entering the niche marketing industry that you absolutely must promote your sites. Whether it is through article marketing, back linking, or however, you must get more people to look at your sites.

All of these are all very important steps that will determine the profitability of your site and they must all be used correctly. Everyone wants to make money online in and industry so large like niche marketing, but not many of us know what it takes to start and maintain a great niche site.

I hope you found these steps valuable to your niche marketing business. To find out more on niche marketing and starting an online business you can visit me at Make Money online with Dave.

For more information on how to execute these 4 steps more accurately, click here.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Fuller
http://EzineArticles.com/?4-Vital-Steps-on-How-to-Make-Money-Online-With-Niche-Marketing&id=2896875

Related articles by Zemanta

• Micro Niche Marketing (untreatableonline.com)
• Proven Methods To Selecting Niches That Make You Money (ronmedlin.com)
• Niche Research Tools (untreatableonline.com)
• Internet Marketing – Choosing A Niche (ronmedlin.com)

Technorati Tags: niche market, niche marketing

Image via Wikipedia

By Andrew Rossillo

You could have the finest product line or set of services in the marketplace, but if you fail to market your offer right, no prospects will ever see or hear about it. Even if you are employing one of the latest online marketing tools, the outrageous rate of saturation of today’s marketplace means that people are constantly bombarded with a virtually infinite amount of marketing and advertising messages throughout the day. This makes it even more of a challenge to reach your target audience.

Because of this onslaught of marketing and advertising, our brains have actually become programmed to filter out a great degree of the messages that are fired at us. What new marketing tool consistently passes through our marketing and advertising filter? Mobile marketing and the awesome power of text messages! One of the reasons why businesses are experiencing great success with mobile marketing is because it features a fraction of the competition than other media-Internet and email tools are engrossed in a jam-packed and highly competitive environment.

For example: An email message usually has around a 10 percent success rate of actually being read. Text messages, however, feature over a 90 percent success rate of not only being read, but being read within the first 30 minutes of being received! While getting your marketing message out is important, having your message actually read is key to your business or organization experiencing record-breaking sales. What adds even more potency to this special type of marketing? It’s the only marketing media that reaches prospects and clients while they are on the go! Mobile marketing and text messages allow you to automatically update, announce, invite and communicate when you want and how you want!

Top Mobile Marketing Benefits:

• Generate leads that you can continuously market to
• Build a mobile database for lucrative follow-up
• Reach customers instantly
• Build relationships with customers
• Learn more about your customers through surveys, polls and demographic info
• Drive traffic to your business with the use of coupons, special deals, and event promotions

Your Chance to Be a Wealthy Pioneer

Very few businesses are actually taking advantage of mobile marketing right now. That’s because this type of marketing is where Internet marketing was back in 2000. That means you can get a gigantic head start by incorporating mobile marketing within your business today. Plus, you can easily integrate mobile marketing and text message marketing within any offline and online marketing campaign. Of course, this type of marketing is substantial enough to form a standalone marketing campaign.

If you’re questioning the type of potential you have with text message and mobile marketing then consider that there are 270 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. alone, and 91 percent of them are said to keep their phones within just a few feet of themselves 24 hours a day throughout the year! In addition, text message marketing has an incredible reach of almost 5 billion compared to Internet marketing’s reach of 1.7 billion.

Lucrative Lead Generation

Every time a prospect or customer opts into one of your text message offers (e.g. to get informational updates, coupons, discounts) that creates a lead. You now have the means to market to that person as much as you’d like. Take this opportunity to upsell, build belief in your business, provide additional value, increase attendance at events and just about anything else you can think of.

This is made even easier with the accompaniment of super simple database options that allow you to file all of your leads, so you can send out a blast to your entire database or use simple filters to send out to select groups within your database. Build a herd and market like there’s no tomorrow.

Plus, mobile marketing offers one of the most significant ROI’s possible among today’s leading marketing and media tools. Text message marketing is like having hundreds of obliging little marketing assistants hustling around doing all the work for you. All you have to do is press a few buttons and you’ll have instantly reached out to your entire database of leads, customers and prospects-with a 90 percent success rate of being read!

Andrew Rossillo is the primary copywriter and co-owner of Business Ball; a comprehensive business resource website. We’re all about helping as many people as possible, so please feel free to post our article on your website. We simply ask that you don’t alter the content and that you leave our link intact (http://www.businessresourcesdaily.com/).

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Rossillo

http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Make-More-Money-With-Mobile-Marketing&id=4698379

Related articles by Zemanta

• An Introduction to Mobile Marketing (demandmetric.com)
• Benefits of Mobile Marketing (logicpath.com)
• Lead Generation for Mobile Marketing (mediabullseye.com)

Technorati Tags: Lead generation, Mobile Marketing, niche marketing, niche marketing tools, niche markets, Text messaging