The Niche Marketing Blog

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What do Starbucks, Sports Authority, and Jack in the Box all have in common? They all are successful, national brands. They also have recently embraced social media as part of their marketing campaigns.

Starbucks and Sports Authority are developing campaigns using “location based” media (such as Foursquare.com), and Jack in the Box has developed a “fan page” on Facebook where they can communicate their latest promotions via their fan base.

Hundreds of businesses, both large and small, are following suit.

Whether you publish a blog, or have a “brick and mortar” retail location, you can no longer afford to ignore social media and it’s power to both create a community of followers, and nudge those followers to your blog or store.

But, with the dozens of social media sites popping up, where do you start? My recommendation is to visit several of the better known sites (like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon) and see which ones “fit” your personal style.

For instance, if you are interested in bookmarking sites in your industry, consider the social bookmarking sites (like Digg, Reddit, and Propeller).

If writing short posts is more in tune with your lifestyle (called “micro-blogging”), then consider Twitter.

If you just want to jump in with both feet – and mix it up with 400 million of your closest “friends” – then Facebook might be the place for you.

In any case, get in the pool and start paddling around. You’ll find that the water is just fine.

Once you’ve settled on a small list of social media sites that interest you, set up an account with each and begin posting; post about yourself, but also post about your industry and your business.

One word of caution here: don’t get into social media sites thinking that you are going to get very far by selling your products and services – that will come later. Simply become part of the conversation and and listen for frustrations and “pain points’. Offer advice. Point people towards solutions that you have found.  Be seen as an expert. Lead the conversation. If you have something useful to say, people will start looking forward to your posts, and then will want to learn more by stopping by your blog or store.

So, you’re now ready to take your first step. It is a good step to take. In future posts I’ll explore more of the social media sites, along with some tips and tricks for  building a loyal following.

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• How social media is currently being used (slideshare.net)
• Why customers, and not social media, are your key to brand success (simonmainwaring.com)
• 10 Ways to Really Connect Through Social Media (webworkerdaily.com)
• 5 Ways to Clean Up Your Social Media Identity (e1evation.com)
• 3 Reasons Why You Should Include Facebook For Business (charlesheflin.com)
• Starbucks Used Social Media to Get One Million to Stores in One Day (mashable.com)

Related videos:

Social Media in Plain English

commoncraft.com A simple story that illustrates the forces shaping social media. This video comes in an unbranded “presentation quality” version that can be licensed for use in the workplace. http

What is Social Media?

chris.pirillo.com – Blake Cahill recently interviewed me, and I thought you might find my answers somewhat interesting. If you wanna know what I care about most, let me lay it on the line… and please post a video response with your own take on Soci…

Technorati Tags: Digg, Facebook, Reddit, social media, Social network, StumbleUpon, Twitter

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

By Scott Spooner

When you think of search engines, what names come to mind? if you are like most people, you’ll probably come up with some combination of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If you’ve been on the Net for a while, you might also think of Alta Vista, Baidu, Ask, and dozens of others.

But let me ask you: did Facebook or Twitter come to mind?

Most netizens associate Facebook with social networking, and Twitter with micro-blogging. But few realize that both Facebook and Twitter are also up and coming search engines, as both offer searchable keyword databases.

With active Facebook members now exceeding 400 million, and active Twitter members now exceeding 100 million, the respective search databases are enormous.

Add to this Facebook’s pay-per-click ad network (with rumors that Twitter will be following suit with their own paid advertising), and you have a potent combination for both demographic/geographic keyword research and targeted advertising opportunities.

If you are an on-line marketer who is looking to build traffic and reach your target audience, then don’t overlook Facebook and Twitter when it comes to search.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Google, Scott Spooner, Twitter, Web search engine

The key to niche market research is finding the needs of your target market. Watch this short video as the author dives into market research for a niche.

Included in this video is a tour of Big-Boards.com and how to use forums in your market research. This is a good video if your are having trouble coming up with niche ideas for your on-line business.

Need more ideas? Download a free report on hot niche trends on http://NicheTrends.net

Duration : 0:9:55

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: market research, niche marketing, niche trends

LaShanda, the Web Tech Gurl, talks about niche marketing and how you can find your target market online. This short video focsues on business fundamentals, and offers good tips for any niche marketer.

To learn more, visit the following web site: http://www.webtechgurl.com

Duration : 0:9:27

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Technorati Tags: business women, internet marketing, niche marketing, social media marketing, social networking, target marketing

Before you or your business can become successful you must identify who your target audience is! Start by conductings some market research and discover which niche market you are targeting! This short video offers a few tips on how to begin thinking about who your target market is, and what problems they might have that you can solve. The sound quality is poor, so you’ll need to turn your speakers up.

This video is brought to you from the folks at EasyNetrworkMarketingLeads.com

Duration : 0:1:26

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: target market, target marketing

Here’s a short video from Tracey Walker. On this video Tracey discusses target marketing and how you must target market to see success fast. Your ability to target market will determine the growth of your business. Her focus in on developing a downline, but the principles she discusses are applicable to any type of business.

You can learn more about Tracey at: http://www.mlmiseasyonline.com

Duration : 0:8:45

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: target market, target marketing

Note: The following was reprinted from Yahoo! Answers.

Question: why cant you just market to everyone?

Answer: A company cannot be everything to everyone, so the successful companies use their strengths to market to their niche customers. By creating a super-niche and selling more of what is the most profitable to their company, the company can out perform their competition and keep their costs lower.

www.jhowardco.com

Technorati Tags: target market, target marketing

Long before you get busy with keyword research, competitor analysis, or link-building strategies, you need to identify the niche market within which you will be competing.

Broadly speaking, a “niche” is a sub-set of a market; for example, “1956 Chevy’s” would be a niche in the “automobile” market.

Why do we want to identify a niche? The simple and most straight-forward answer has to do with your available resources. The vast majority of Internet marketers simply won’t have the resources – financial or otherwise – to successfully compete in broad markets. So, the only viable alternative is to pick a niche within a market where you can gain a foothold, and then successfully compete (that is, make a profit).

There is much to say about identifying niches from which to start your marketing. This post, however, will focus on how to come up with some niche “ideas” from which to begin your market research.

On-line Sources

Places such as Amazon.com and Yahoo Answers are good places to go for gathering niche ideas. Google Trends is another good place to go to find out what’s hot right now.

Web 2.0 properties, such as YouTube, Squidoo, Facebook, and Twitter, all have searchable databases where you can find good ideas.

Another route would be to follow the money. For a niche to be viable there has to be enough advertisers paying for ads to be put in front of targeted readers. As such, Google AdWords, and Yahoo Marketplace are also good places to locate niches worth considering. A good place to start would be to look for keywords that show four or more paid advertisers.

While you are on-line, search through the blogs and forums for selected markets. The presence of blogs and forums is a good indication that there is a marketplace for selling products into that niche; and the blogs and forums will also help reveal needs and frustrations to be found within those niches.

Off-line Sources

Consider your local magazine rack for fresh ideas. Most every niche has magazines dedicated to interested readers, and it is a good bet that, if the magazine has been around for awhile, it has a big enough audience to support the niche.

Finally, consider your own interests and hobbies. These are rich sources of niche ideas where you can identify needs and wants in a marketplace.

So, start you research by identifying some niche ideas that you might want to pursue. Only after you have generated a number of possible niche ideas should you follow-up those ideas by conducting keyword research to estimate both the available traffic, and level of competition, within each niche.

I will cover that topic in a future post.

Scott

Here is a related article that you might find interesting:

• 42 Sites That May Help You to Find a Niche Market or Product . – I have collected this list of 18 sites that should help you find a new niche market or product. Or you could just want to watch trends and what’s hot on the .

Technorati Tags: niche ideas, niche market, niche marketing

By now you know that the secret to successful online marketing lies in selecting a set of keywords that are closely associated with your niche. The tighter the relationship between the keywords which you are optimizing for, and the niche market you are in, the more targeted the traffic will be that arrives at your site or blog.

Picking the correct keywords is part science and part art; and there are many keyword research tools available to assist you in making your decision. I have written about keyword research tools in other posts, so I won’t take up your time with a review of them here.

Today’s post looks at a slightly different aspect of keyword research and selection: picking the “buying” keywords.

It is estimated that upwards of 85% of search keywords are for “information gathering” purposes only; that is, the user is not looking to make a purchase at the moment. Maybe they are still deciding on the topic, the product, or the brand. Maybe they are just interested in the information for more academic purposes. Whatever the reason, to be a successful Internet marketer, you’ll have to discover, and then focus your efforts upon, the remaining 15% of the search terms; what we will call the “buying” keywords.

This can be a daunting task; one that will take several hours to get through. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Mike Mograbi, Mike Chambers, and “Matt”, have developed a product called Buyer Keywords Generator. This product is designed to search out and identify targeted buyer keywords for your niche. This is a well designed and efficient product that will save you hours of work. I could go on and on telling you the benefits of owning this software – but, that isn’t the purposes of this post. If you want to learn more about Buyer Keywords Generator, click on the following link:

Buyer Keywords Generator

What I do want to share with you today is a set of 90+ short videos, named Buyer Keyword Profits Exposed, which is also offered by the Buyer Keywords Generator team. This FREE set of videos discusses such topics as: the three phases of the buying cycle, how to identify buyer keywords, expanding your buyer keywords, how to find buyer keywords, where to find buyer keywords, where to find the best niche sites, how to generate buyer keywords from the search engines, and much more.

You don’t have to purchase the software to gain access to this set of videos; although, you might find it more efficient to spend a little money in order to save a lot of time. Either way, the choice is yours.

Here is the link to sign-up for the free set of Buyer Keyword Profits Exposed videos:

Buyer Keyword Profits Exposed Videos

Scott

Technorati Tags: Buyer Keywords Profits Exposed Review, niche market product reviews, niche marketing tools