How to Determine Your Niche Market

Over the years I have worked with many different businesses on marketing promotion and this is one major problem that some businesses run into, namely the impulse to broadly promote to anyone and everyone.

While the thought of promoting your business to the entire world and possibly making millions seems very attractive, it is actually expensive and counter-productive. This impulse can actually cost you thousands and result in little or no return. As a business you want your promotion to make the biggest bang for your buck, and this is why you find your niche.

What is a niche market?

Your niche market is the specific audience that you are promoting your product or service to. The objective is to make that niche as tight as possible.

So how do you define your niche market?

The easiest action you can take starts right with your existing client base. Find out who your customers are with a simple demographic survey. The important point here is to find the majority of similarities between everyone who has bought anything from your business.

First, ask for just the usual basic information such as sex, education level, zip code, annual household income, race, marital status and so on. Now this gives you a general idea of who you should market to, but you can refine it even more.

Now refine your niche market

Now it's time to dig in and get the meat. Find out what each customer bought from you. Find out what activities they participate in. Find out what tv channels they watch, the magazines they read, their favorite radio stations. Find out what subjects they are interested in. Gather whatever information you think might be useful.

Putting it all together

Once you have gathered it all, make a tally of everything and find out who the majority of your clientele consists of. You might actually be surprised at the results.

For example, say you run a spa. Most spas market to women in general, but the results of your survey show that 80% of your clientele are men, they all paid for massage and 75% are interested in sports. With just this little bit of information, you might do well to create advertisements targeted for the local sports media promoting massage to men.

Once you have built up a strong client base and are ready to expand, put your feelers out into the community with another demographic survey to find out who else would be interested in your product or service.

Article written by Rachael Vondracek

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