While it may seem a little counter-intuitive at first, the secret to creating a highly successful e-commerce store is to sell fewer types of items. Choosing one specific thing to specialize in, otherwise known as choosing a niche, is what separates many successful online businesses from everybody else.
While it's never been easier to launch an online store with AmeriCommerce, this also means that there is a lot of competition out there. However, by choosing a business niche you'll give yourself a greater chance to move beyond the competition - or even get rid of the competition entirely.
Below is our attempt to help tell you how to find your niche market, and just as importantly, how you can make your business grow faster as a result.
Why Niche Down?
While you may have heard about the importance of "niching down" before, you may not understand exactly why that is.
Choosing a niche for your business can give you a lot of advantages that can make your path to success easier than it would be otherwise. Here are a few of the benefits that will come from choosing a clear business niche.
- A More Defined Audience: By choosing a niche, you'll be able to identify your ideal customers more easily. You'll be able to develop clear buyer personas and will have a better idea of what your customers want and need. This can result is less advertising dollars spent towards an audience less likely to buy.
- Differentiation: When you niche down, you'll be facing less competition. By narrowing down your focus, your business will be more unique and few competitors will offer exactly the same thing to customers as you are. This could also be beneficial from an SEO standpoint.
- Branding Opportunities: Niching down can also give you better ways to market and brand your business. You'll be able to position yourself as more than just a general online store with a wide product list. You'll have a narrow focus, and this can help your brand be more memorable, helping foster more brand loyalty as well.
- Mastery: When you choose just one part of a wider niche to focus in on, you'll be able to become a master of that one thing. This will help you position your business as a specialized one, rather than as a jack-of-all-trades. Think about more targeted blogs, videos, guides and content.
- Higher Profits: Because your business will be specializing in your niche, you'll also be able to justify charging higher prices. There will also be fewer competitors you'll need to try to outdo when setting your prices.
How to Find Your Niche Market
If you're convinced that niching down is the right choice for growing your business, then the next step is to find a great niche. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Here are a few ways you can go about finding the perfect niche for you.
1. Consider Your Own Skills and Experiences
First of all, you need to look at yourself to determine where your own experience, interests, preferences, and skills lie. Ideally, you should choose a niche that means something to you or that you're already knowledgeable about.
Look for a niche where you know that you can personally add value or where you can meet an existing need in the marketplace.
2. Break Your Ideas Down Into Subcategories
Once you've determined what your most valuable knowledge points are, it's a great idea to start looking at the subcategories within them.
If you're thinking about launching an online clothing store, for example, you'll probably want to break it down into subcategories. You could choose to focus on only women's apparel, and taking it even further, your niche may become women's dresses. Taking it even further, you may decide to focus on only sundresses.
With a bit of brainstorming and by checking subcategories, you may come across a niche that is perfect for your needs. If you need help finding subcategories, try Google Trends or Wordtracker for ideas and inspiration.
3. Check For Low Competition
It's also ideal to look for a niche where there is little competition. Doing extensive keyword research and simply using Google to see if there are any other e-commerce stores in your niche can be a great help.
With enough research, you'll be able to get a good impression of whether the competition for your niche may be fierce or if you may have a good opportunity on your hands.
4. Determine High Demand
While the above factors are important, it's also essential that you look for a market that will be profitable and will have high demand.
Since you'll be narrowing down your focus, this means that you'll be targeting fewer people. However, while there may be fewer customers there should still be an adequate amount of demand to make a profit. There should also be plenty of people willing to spend money in the niche.
5. Do Your Research
Once you've discovered a potential niche for your business, you'll also want to do plenty of research. Performing keyword research using tools such as Google's Keyword Planner Tool or Wordtracker can help give you a good idea of what kind of demand and competition is out there for your niche.
Additionally, you should also carefully calculate potential profit margins. Find out what options you'll have for sourcing your products and determine whether it will be worth the effort or not based on your calculations.
How to Explode It
After you've chosen a great niche, your job isn't quite done yet. You'll still need to ensure people know about your business and you'll have to work hard to find customers and build a community.
Here are a few tips on how you can grow your niche business as quickly and effortlessly as possible.
1. Create a Marketing Plan
It should come as no surprise that no matter what niche you choose you need to have a strong and clear marketing plan. Simply niching down isn't enough on its own.
Luckily, SEO, PPC ads, video marketing, and social media can all be great tools for marketing your niche. However, you have to be consistent with your marketing strategy. Ensure that you're always working smart, rather than only working hard.
2. Opt For Quality Over Quantity
Having great products is also essential for doing well in your niche and making it work well for you. It's also essential that you offer outstanding customer service and have amazing branding.
Try to become the best at what you do and offer only the best to your customers. Opt for quality over quantity when choosing products to sell and when deciding what to offer customers within your niche.
3. Listen and Adapt
Listening, adapting, and testing are also essential for exploding your niche and building a loyal customer base for your products.
Listen to your audience and try to be objective while constantly tweaking your business as you go along. By continually testing new ideas and products you'll be able to find out what connects with them and will build a better business as a result.
4. Build a Brand Identity
One of the best ways to build a community around your niche store is to ensure you're being expressive when marketing your business.
You should aim to create a clear brand identity that you let shine when interacting with customers. By having a clear brand identity, customers will be able to connect with your business more easily and they'll also become more loyal to you as well.
Tools such as social media and email marketing can be a great help for connecting with your audience in a down-to-earth way, so make sure that you're using them regularly.
Final Thoughts
While discovering how to find your niche market is something you'll ultimately have to do for yourself, the above tips will set you in the right direction. Make sure that you fully consider choosing a niche market if you want your online business to succeed in the long run.
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