The Niche Marketing Blog

Market segments and niche markets

By Scott Spooner

Many sectors of the economy, both here in the United States and abroad, are beginning to show sings of growth. While that growth will likely remain sluggish and uneven for another year or two, the trends are definitely positive. This equals “opportunity” for the smart niche marketer who is still in the game and focused on his or her market segment.

Now is the time to reassess your niche market. Savvy business owners and managers will use this time to conduct new keyword analyses to make sure that they have their proverbial fingers on the pulse of search users. They will also be reevaluating their competitors to see who is left standing in the market, and what positions they currently occupy.

Results from market research conducted a couple of years ago may no longer be valid. Worse yet, assumptions made yesterday made lead your company down blind alleys in the changing world of today.

So, dust off your favorite keyword and competitor research tools and get busy crunching some numbers. Get reacquainted with your industry blogs and forums and keep abreast on the latest innovations, conversations, and challenges. Speak with your customers and see if their needs or wants have changed. Try and uncover new opportunities for your niche and your market.

The road ahead is bright for those who seize those opportunities. Happy hunting!

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Technorati Tags: market research, niche market

By Scott Spooner

The folks over at HingeMarketing.com have recently completed a study looking at  the effects of market research on company growth and profitability. The results surprised the study team:

To our surprise, we found a clear — even dramatic — correlation between systematic research and firm growth and profitability. The more frequently you do research, the faster you grow and the more profitable you are.

The following infographic helps to summarize their findings.

In short, the more systematic research a business engages in, the the greater growth and profitability that business is likely to realize. The research team believes that this correlation is straightforward: the more you learn about your customers, the more you'll be able to anticipate their wants and needs, and the sooner you'll be able to react.

As the economy continues to remain soft, this is good advice for niche marketers who are trying to gain a foot hold in their market.

Related articles

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Technorati Tags: market research, niche marketing

It’s been a while since I have posted a “round-up” of niche marketing videos. So, without further ado, here is a short collection of niche marketing videos for your education and enjoyment. The first three are from NicheTrends.net, while the last one is from the Headless Professor.

If you are new to the concept of niche marketing, these short videos will get you up to speed quickly.

Niche Marketing: Finding Hot Markets

NicheTrends.net If you’re stuck trying to find niche ideas for your niche marketing, here are some free tools that I use to find hot trends that may help you as well. You can also download a free report of the hottest niche marketing trends of 2008 a…

Niche Marketing: Finding Traffic

NicheTrends.net Need help with your niche market research? Here’s a nifty tool that can help. Visit our website at http for more ideas and a free report of the hot trends in 2008.

Niche Marketing: Niche Market Research

NicheTrends.net The key to niche market research is finding the needs of your target market. Watch over my shoulder as I dive into market research for a niche. Need more ideas? Download a free report on hot niche trends on http

niche marketing

How to target a niche based upon market segmentation: demographic, psychographic and benefit.

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

Image via Wikipedia

[Editor's note: Today's guest article drills into your marketing strategy. Here we will focus on your target market, and the goods and services you sell. This article should get you thinking about how to plan your marketing efforts in order to maximize your marketing dollars. ~Scott]

By Krista Baker

If you have just started a business, you are probably eager to get the word out and start marketing. This is where many small-business owners get stuck. What are the best ways to market your business? How do you get the most bang-for-your-buck?

Before you can answer these questions, you must look internally at your core business strategy. Entrepreneurs often fall into the trap of trying to be “everything to everyone” and the thought of turning away business can seem foolish when you are strapped for cash. Yet the quickest way to burn through your marketing budget is to try to target everyone.

The best marketing plans start with a quick assessment of your core business strategy.

1) What is your business identity? How do you differentiate your business from others like you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Why should customers and clients do business with you instead of your competitors?

2) Who is your target market? To market cost-effectively, you must know and understand the main problems and frustrations of your market. What are their demographics? What do they want? What do they need – and is that different from what they want? What is their decision-making process for purchasing the types of products and services you offer?

3) What products and services do you offer? You can’t be and do everything for all people, so what do you sell? If you try to sell a laundry list of products and services to everyone who contacts you, you will end up confusing your prospects – and confused prospects don’t buy. The best types of products and services to sell involve aligning your core strengths with what your target market desperately wants. How can you use your strengths to solve a major frustration or pain that your market has?

These three questions are interdependent. You must be able to adequately answer all three before you start any marketing campaign.

Conducting Market Research
Once you have a clear idea of what you do best, what your market wants, and the types of solutions you will offer, the next step is to clearly explain your core products and services in a way that communicates why you are the premiere choice for solving your market’s problems over all other options available to them.

The best way to do this is to conduct basic market research. Go out and talk to people in your target market. Ask them if they have ever had the problem your products and services solve. Ask them how they solved their problem. Ask them how they made their purchasing decision and what attracted them to this particular solution.

Don’t assume you know the answers to these questions. Get hard data. Otherwise, you are just guessing.

Many people skip this step because it isn’t as sexy as putting up a website, being #1 in Google or creating a beautiful brochure, but if you try to skip the market research step, you end up with a very hit-or-miss marketing campaign. You try lots of tactics – and some may work – while most result in a lot of money wasted for few results.

Marketing that works is based on psychology. If you understand what your target market wants most, where they go to research potential solutions, and how they decide to purchase a solution, you will know where you should be advertising, what types of marketing tactics will be most effective in attracting new clients, and what your marketing materials should say.

Need help writing your marketing plan? Download your free 45-page strategic marketing plan guide today at http://www.getclientstoday.com. This hands-on workbook covers the 6 steps for creating your marketing strategy and includes a fill-in-the-blank marketing plan template you can use to craft your monthly marketing plan.

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

http://EzineArticles.com/?Marketing-Strategy—3-Key-Questions-to-Dramatically-Increase-the-Number-of-Prospects-You-Attract&id=3758636

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Technorati Tags: market research, Marketing strategy, niche marketing

Image by Gare and Kitty via Flickr

[Editor's note: Today's guest article focuses on the basic difference between "marketing" (in the general sense of the word) and "niche marketing", as both apply to the Internet. If you are new to marketing, this is a good place to start. ~Scott]

By Vanessa Sweeney

Online marketing is a popular method of spreading the word about products, services or information on the Internet. Companies from small local business to bloggers to large corporations advertise and market their products and services online. One of the reasons why people jump to the Internet every time they want to get the word out about something is because there are billions of Internet users all over the world. People search for all types of information and products while they are online, so it is very easy to get information to a ton of people very quickly.

The one issue with getting the word out to people on the Internet is that search engine marketing has to be used in order for people to easily be able to find the information or products that the company or person is marketing. This field is very competitive and millions of websites, people and companies are trying to get their products or services noticed. There are two major types of search engine marketing; niche and general. Here are the differences between the two:

• General marketing does not typically target a specific group of people, while niche marketing targets a demographic of people who are going to be the most likely to buy products, services or read the information that they are providing.
• Niche marketing uses very specific and targeted keywords in campaigns, where the general method often uses broad keywords that are very competitive and expensive.
• Since general marketing often reaches people who have no interested in products or services that are being offered, the conversion rate is often lower; money is wasted and time is also thrown away.
• General online marketing using search engines can be done when a company or person is marketing a lot of different products or services, but niche marketing is often used when a person or company is campaigning for one product or service (even though they may offer more).

Each type of search engine marketing is meant for different situations, but people often cross the tactics and use them both in order to achieve online marketing success. Niche marketing is becoming popular as Internet marketers look for a way to have success without having to deal with all of the competition that general search engine marketing provides.

Vanessa Sweeney finds and writes about the latest trends on the Internet at http://www.theinternettimemachine.com/beta/site/index.php

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

http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Difference-Between-Niche-Marketing-and-General-Online-Marketing&id=4712280

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Technorati Tags: market research, niche marketing

Image by SeattleClouds.com via Flickr

[Editor's note: Today's guest article focuses on the continuing evolution of the World Wide Web, how content will be delivered in the future, and the marketing strategies that  niche marketers must employ to take advantage of these changes.  ~Scott]

By Arlen Card

Your marketing strategy may have centered on email marketing, search marketing, pay-per-click, Web 2.0 techniques, or any of dozens more approaches. These techniques may still work, but their future is now overshadowed by the coming 800-pound gorilla.

I am referring to “app marketing” to mobile users. It is crucial to your future that you understand what is happening. Some estimates (data gathered from an Adobe-Omniture guru) put smartphone usage at several times that of the Web in as little as three years, and that includes even the crazy numbers we see in Web 2.0 gathering places. In fact, the social gathering will mostly be done from smartphone apps, not via browsers.

When giants like Adobe are gearing up to lead the charge into mobile app marketing with the services they offer, I think it would be wise for all to watch closely, but not wait.

“Mobile app marketing,” does not mean making money selling apps on iTunes. It refers instead to smartphone functionality via apps that lead strongly back to a merchant — you. For example, you can currently follow PGA standings and scores on an iPhone app (a free one), and football scores and rankings on another. More and more retailers, media outlets, service providers, and other vendors are giving away smartphone apps that give a prospect very appealing functionality, but are closed-ended – they lead the user to only one place, the sponsor’s offers.

These mobile apps capture emails to build lists in exchange for social interaction features. They link to websites. They pitch special offers. They sell downloads and services directly. They gather user data so offers can be targeted. They basically do everything websites can do, but they are with the person 100% of the time, totally convenient, and require no decision or action – the approach is included with the app the user already chose to download and use.

This is very much like direct to desktop messaging and Web 2.0 piggybacking, because the message gets to the prospect without the prospect having to take any overt action. The convenience and near-permanent presence, however, is an improvement on the old marketing strategy of search engine optimization. There is no competing for a number one position. If your app is fun, functional, and emotionally appealing, your message will be seen, and unlike pay-per-click or cost-per-thousand advertising, it is seen by the prospect without any charge to you.

The marketing strategy of the future is already here, the trends in traffic are unmistakable, and the savvy internet marketer should really be on top of this. Right now.

Get more info on this crucial topic, as well as more cutting edge tips and techniques that can really boost your income at http://www.internet-marketing-mvp.com/posts-and-news

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Arlen_Card
http://EzineArticles.com/?Marketing-Strategy-Shift:-Web-2.0-Has-Been-Replaced—Will-You-Be-Left-In-the-Dust?&id=5149562

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Technorati Tags: market research, Marketing strategy, niche marketing

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Twitter is one of the “new kids on the block” in the Social Media or Web 2.0 world. It has some fantastic social aspects and if used correctly it can be a great tool. You can use Twitter for market research, which should be one of your core internet marketing strategies. The best thing about using Twitter is you get the research done quickly-and for free!

Broad audience

One of the best aspects of Twitter from a marketing perspective is the broad reach you have. You can touch millions of people around the world. At any given moment there are literally millions of people twittering away.

You put a tweet out to the Twitterverse…asking a question and you will get short, spontaneous answers…these tend to be direct and not calculated because they are spontaneous. The Tweeple don’t take time to think about their answers…tweets are flying by too quickly for that…so they just answer!

You can either put out the questions manually as in “What is your favorite flavor ice cream?” or you could use one of the applications and create a poll or survey giving them specific choices.

After you get your initial results, you can even tweet the outcome giving people a chance to respond and further refine or clarify your research!

Eaves dropping

You can also conduct market research by listening in on other people’s tweets. You can find out for free what people are buzzing about, what they are looking for, problems they are encountering, solutions they wish they could find…or just info they are seeking.

Twitter has a search function built in so you can find people talking about a specific subject. You can also use different search applications to find comments. The hashtag is a popular way for people to identify a topic they are interested in.

So if I want to find out what people are talking about regarding ice cream, I could type “ice cream” in the search box, or “#icecream”. The # will return tweets by people who have put that exact phrase #icecream in their tweet.

So I could ask my question so I catch both groups-”what is your favorite ice cream flavor? #icecream” And I still have 91 characters left!

By getting this input, you can then direct your next project to solve a problem that you know exists! This is one of the classic offline and internet marketing strategies: find a need and fill it! This research might lead you to promote a different product than you had originally intended. Or maybe it gives you clues on how to write the sales copy to make your product more appealing. It might inspire you to create a new product or improve an existing product-or to provide a service that fills a need.

Learn fast act fast

Another one of my internet marketing strategies is acting while a market is hot and Twitter really helps here! Because you got the research quickly, you can also act upon it quickly.

So by using social media, specifically Twitter, you are able to implement at least three of your internet marketing strategies-market research, filling a need and acting quickly.

Tellman Knudson is CEO of Overcome Everything. He and his team at The Listbuilding Club are passionate about teaching others the ins and outs of list building and other internet marketing strategies. To learn more about using Social Media in your internet marketing business, visit http://ListSpeed.com/

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

http://EzineArticles.com/?Internet-Marketing-Strategies—Conduct-Market-Research-Quickly-Using-Twitter&id=2285537

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Technorati Tags: hashtag, market research, marketing, search, Twitter

By Zachary Wilson

1. Not knowing what you don’t know
Its easy to do online surveys these days. Too easy. It may be so cheap and easy that you do it without understanding the basics and end up with misleading answers that send your business down the wrong path. This is worse than never doing any research in the first place. Spend a little time and get to know what you don’t know about market research. A basic review of the following topics is a great start.

• Sampling and sampling error
• Quantitative vs. qualitative research
• Question bias / question design
• Response rates / confidence levels
• Questionnaire coding
• Why people take surveys (social contract)

Some great books on these subjects are:
“Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method” by Don A. Dillman
“Asking Questions: A Definitive Guide to Questionnaire Design” by Norman Bradburn, Seymour Sudman, Brian Wansink

2. Not eliminating sampling errors
Now that you know what sampling error is you can understand why it is critical to conducting meaningful market research. Many of the online surveys you see today are full of potential sampling errors. Don’t be one of them. Take the time to develop a good sample and then make sure you get as many of those people as possible to your survey. This is probably the biggest difference between professional market research and your do-it-yourselfers. The pros take the time and money to develop good samples and then make sure that they get good response rates. You can to if you put in the effort.

• Always use a true random sample
• Tracking your respondents (PINs)
• Program the survey to eliminate duplicates and respondents with bad intentions
• Check the data for oddities (clean the data of illegitimate records)
• Use incentives (does not have to be monetary, see social contract)

3. Making decisions with inaccurate information
If you never understood any of # 1 and # 2 it is a good bet your survey is useless. Worse than that you may think it is telling you what to do with your important business decisions. Making decisions with inaccurate information is worse than taking a guess.

4. Writing bad questionnaires
You might get everything else right and then go and write a bad questionnaire. Lots of online surveys have at least one bad question. What is a bad question? It’s any of the following:

• Biased questions
• Unanswerable questions (impossible to know the answer)
• Questions with two meanings
• Hard to understand questions (way to long, strange use of words)
• Dumb questions (asking about something the researcher should already know, or has already asked)

5. Programming a hard to take survey
After you have spent all that time creating a good sample and writing good questions don’t ruin it by programming a hard to use survey. One of my top gripes is forcing respondents to complete every answer. Too much of this is going to get you either a contrived answer or the respondent leaving. Neither is good.

• Don’t force non-critical questions
• Don’t have non-standard buttons
• Don’t use non-standard technologies (java applets, etc.)

6. Going cheap
Both the good and bad thing about online market research is that it can be much less expensive than in the past. The bad of this is that it is just too easy to conduct flawed market research. Many of the above items cost time and money (sampling, questionnaire design, etc.) Spend the time and money to do it right. Even better hire a quality market research firm to do it for you. Either way you will save money in the long run by conducting quality market research.

7. Confusing social networking with quantitative market research
Talking with lots of people (social networking) might gain you valuable qualitative information but it is not quantitative market research. The difference is qualitative information rarely represents all of your audience and gives you individual opinions and ideas. Quantitative research on the other hand is designed to represent all of your audience and gives you answers that you can know reflects all of your customers. Don’t confuse the two. Social networking can be useful but understand its limitations.

8. Being overly “cute” with the survey tool
Your market research is supposed to gather meaningful information about your target audience. It is not supposed to impress them with all the high technology you can master. Keep your survey technology as simple as possible to reduce excluding respondents that are not up to speed with the latest and greatest.

• Keep Flash and JavaScript to a minimum (use them but not in critical areas, always provide alternatives.)
• Use tried and true web technologies

9. Relying on only one source of information
Market research is a snapshot of opinions at a certain time. If your research results in wildly different answers than you were anticipating it is wise to confirm these conclusions with more data.

• Conduct another survey
• Look for corroborating data

10. Ignoring your market research
If you go to all the trouble to conduct a good study then have a plan to do something with that information. Too many organizations will conduct market research for one reason or another and when they get information back just sit on it. Don’t be the one who ends up saying “Wow, if we had just done what our market research told us we wouldn’t be in this bad position”. Before you conduct any online research have a plan as to what you will do with it.

Zachary Wilson is Vice President and Web Manager of Wilson Research Group (a small Silicon Valley market research firm) and has been conducting online surveys for over 10 years. This article targets those who are not market research professionals but want to conduct professional surveys.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Zach_Wilson
http://EzineArticles.com/?Top-10-Mistakes-in-Conducting-Online-Market-Research&id=2552698

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Technorati Tags: market research, Qualitative research, Quantitative research

Here’s a short video that discusses the importance of surveying your customers as part of an overall market research strategy.

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Technorati Tags: market research, marketing, Online Surveys, research

Image by kansasexplorer 3128 via Flickr

By Scott Spooner

Do you remember the days when “niche marketing” meant researching a market to find the sub-markets, or “niches” of people that had common likes, wants, needs, or traits? Those were the days. You could identify a group of people and market directly to them through time-tested channels.

It’s not so easy anymore. Today, successful niche marketers not only have to identify the niche market, but also they have to decide where that niche hangs out, and how best to reach them.

Web sites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other competing social media sites all clamor for the attention of our prospects. Add to that the endless possibilities of “mobile marketing” through the ever expanding variety of smart phones and mobile devices.

Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook have taken notice. So has Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

You may feel overwhelmed by all of these choices, but one thing will always hold true: research is the key to understanding and reaching your market. Do your homework. Study your market. Stay away from chasing the big hit, and rely instead on building a solid relationship with your customer base.

Like Dorothy, we may not be in Kansas anymore, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find our way back home.

Tell me what you think about the changes in niche marketing.

******

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Technorati Tags: market research, niche marketing, social media