7 Benefits of Niche Marketing
Niche marketing is a form of marketing that is geared toward a very specific population, or niche. Niche marketing is possible when a business specializes in a particular service, or serves a particular demographic within its target audience. If the business forms its marketing endeavors around this subgroup, this business would be in the practice of niche marketing.
Niche Marketing Strategy
With a niche strategy, you leverage your expertise in one area to stand out from your competition. You may provide other products or services, and you may serve a broader audience, but specializing in one area helps you to distinguish your business.
The size of a business’s niche relative to its target audience can vary. Some niches make up the entire target audience, while others make up a small percentage. Depending upon the size of the niche, a niche strategy may consist of any of the following:
- Marketing only to your niche
- Marketing to both your niche and your larger target audience, refining your content slightly more for the niche
- Marketing to your target audience from the standpoint of your niche
A Niche Strategy Example
Let’s say a landscaper’s target audience is comprised of owners of residential property, as opposed to owners of athletic fields, office courtyards, or college campuses. Within this target audience are various types of homeowners, based on region, neighborhood type, income level, and lawn size.
An example of a niche here would be wealthy estate owners, or wealthy estate owners who have organic plants or prefer eco-conscious landscaping. The landscaper provides basic lawn care services for average income homeowners as well, but his niche is wealthy estate owners. If there are enough wealthy estate owners in his area, the landscaper might only market to this demographic. If not, he might use this niche to market to all homeowners, by showcasing a beautiful estate lawn in a Facebook ad image, or catering his content around being the only eco-conscious landscaper in his area.
Benefits of Niche Marketing
Niche marketing isn’t for every business, but if you have the opportunity to cater your business toward a niche, there are many benefits to be had.
1. Enhanced Customer Relationships
Niche marketing targets a very specific kind of customer, so depending on what you’re promoting, your niche market may be very small. For example, if you are a physical therapist, there are only so many expectant mothers who are looking for physical therapy for hip issues.
A small customer base has its benefits. When you are engaging with fewer people, you can focus on the quality of those engagements and on nurturing your relationships. Your emails can be more personalized, your follow ups more diligent, and your thank yous more frequent. You can also accommodate special requests, offer custom services, and get to know your customers on a more individual level. Each of these practices will enable you to better serve your customers, further enhancing your relationship with them and solidifying their loyalty to you.
However, if you have a small niche, be careful not to pigeonhole your marketing. If your niche is just a part of your target audience, make sure your efforts on your niche are boosting, and not detracting from your efforts on your target audience. This is one of many important considerations to make when forming a niche market strategy.
2. Reduced Competition
When you have a highly specific product or service, there will be less companies out there with the exact same offering. For example, there are millions of companies out there that sell knives. There are fewer companies that sell knives with handmade wooden handles, and yet fewer that offer customized knives with your initials on them. The more specific your product or service, the less companies there will be to compete with you for customers, and the harder it is for them to duplicate your strategies.
While it’s important for companies to have competitors, reduced competition is not necessarily a bad thing.
The less competitors you have, the less you have to worry about monitoring prices and keeping tabs on what they’re up to.
At the same time, the more specific the product is, the less people there will be that are looking for it. Reduced competition is only a benefit of niche marketing when there is a significant audience to compete for. If your competitors aren’t targeting a niche because they can’t meet their needs, then that’s great news for you. If they aren’t targeting that market because it’s not lucrative, then you may not be at an advantage.
3. Increased Visibility
Increased visibility is a benefit of niche marketing that not only leads to more customers but can also improve your online presence.
Businesses that serve a niche market tend to be unique, such as a cleaning company that uses all natural cleaning products, a gluten-free bakery, or landscaper that creates interesting mowing patterns. Businesses with a unique product or service tend to stand out, and often get featured in media outlets such as talk shows, radio stations, or newspapers.
With niche marketing especially, getting in front of the right people is more important than getting in front of a lot of people. However, getting in front of a lot of people such as through these media outlets also has its benefits. The more people who know about your business, the more people there are to recommend your business to a friend who fits your niche market.
4. Word of Mouth Growth
Another benefit of niche marketing is that it is very word-of-mouth-friendly. People in a niche tend to be in frequent contact with others in that niche, which means more opportunities to get the word out about your business. For example, expectant mothers attend prenatal fitness programs, take childbirth education classes, and shop at maternity clothing stores, where they meet many other expecting mothers.
If you are a prenatal yoga instructor, your current customers will be some of your best marketers. The better you serve them, the more likely they are to recommend, and maybe even rave about, your services to their many fellow expectant mothers.
5. Honed Expertise
Niche marketing requires more concentrated practice in one area, so it can really fine tune your expertise in a shorter time period. The benefit of niche marketing is that it enables you to become an expert or thought leader in your niche.
For most customers, expertise is more important than size or brand name. A small law firm that specializes in immigration may be chosen over a larger law firm with a familiar name. When it comes to legal, financial, or health services, people want the business that has the most knowledge and experience in their area of concern.
When you are an expert at something, not only do you obtain more customer trust, you also gain more brand recognition. If you do everything, you’re going to be average at everything, and you will blend in with the crowd. If you do a lot of things but are really good at one specific thing, you will stand out. You may be even become known for that specific thing. This won’t detract from other services you provide. The key here is that you become known. People may learn about your business because of a specialty you provide, even if they’re looking for a different service you provide.
6. Less Resources
One important part of effective digital marketing is identifying and understanding your audience, which requires an investment of time and money on data and analytics tools. The benefit of niche marketing is that because you are confined to a specific person and a specific need, less focus is required on digging into your data to understand and keep up with their needs. You will also be doing less trial and error with your methods, which also can be resource-heavy.
Another cost effective benefit of niche marketing comes from audience segmentation. Businesses with a broad audience will have various segments within that audience. Successful content, ads, and communication channels will look different for each segment, and catering your methods to each segment requires more effort and bandwidth. When you serve just one demographic, you have less work to do. You can also operate more seamlessly and give your undivided attention to this one area.
7. More Fun
Businesses don’t always pick their niche and pursue it. Oftentimes, they accidentally find their niche in the process of serving their target audience. A photographer whose target audience is people (as opposed to landscapes or animals) may find that she is especially good at capturing candids of children. A landscaper might find that he particularly enjoys jobs in senior citizen communities. A financial adviser may find that he works better with teachers. The benefit of niche marketing is that since your niche arises from your interests, passions, or special abilities, you are doing more of what you love.
Whether your business serves only your niche, or a niche among other audiences, the purpose of niche marketing is the same. You want to find a small pond in which you can be a big fish. If you compete for everything, you’re going to win at nothing. However, if you pick one area to concentrate on, you can focus your efforts and stand out in your market.
Source: thrivehive.cpm ~ By: Kristen McCormick ~ Image: pixabay.com
7 Steps to Defining Your Niche Market
You’ve come up with a great idea for a business, but you’re not ready to roll yet. Before you go any further, the next step is figuring out just who your market is.
There are two basic markets you can sell to: consumer and business. These divisions are fairly obvious. For example, if you’re selling women’s clothing from a retail store, your target market is consumers; if you’re selling office supplies, your target market is businesses (this is referred to as “B2B” sales). In some cases—for example, if you run a printing business—you may be marketing to both businesses and individuals.
No business—particularly a small one—can be all things to all people. The more narrowly you can define your target market, the better. This process is known as creating a niche and is key to success for even the biggest companies. Walmart and Tiffany are both retailers, but they have very different niches: Walmart caters to bargain-minded shoppers, while Tiffany appeals to upscale jewelry consumers.
“Many people talk about ‘finding’ a niche as if it were something under a rock or at the end of the rainbow, ready-made. That’s nonsense,” says Lynda Falkenstein, author of Nichecraft: Using Your Specialness to Focus Your Business, Corner Your Market and Make Customers Seek You Out. Good niches don’t just fall into your lap; they must be carefully crafted.
Rather than creating a niche, many entrepreneurs make the mistake of falling into the “all over the map” trap, claiming they can do many things and be good at all of them. These people quickly learn a tough lesson, Falkenstein warns: “Smaller is bigger in business, and smaller is not all over the map; it’s highly focused.”
Creating a good niche, Falkenstein advises, involves following a seven-step process:
1. Make a wish list.
With whom do you want to do business? Be as specific as you can. Identify the geographic range and the types of businesses or customers you want your business to target. If you don’t know whom you want to do business with, you can’t make contact. “You must recognize that you can’t do business with everybody,” Falkenstein cautions. Otherwise, you risk exhausting yourself and confusing your customers.
These days, the trend is toward smaller niches. Targeting teenagers isn’t specific enough; targeting male, African American teenagers with family incomes of $40,000 and up is. Aiming at companies that sell software is too broad; aiming at Northern California-based companies that provide internet software sales and training and have sales of $15 million or more is a better goal.
2. Focus.
Clarify what you want to sell, remembering that a) you can’t be all things to all people and b) smaller is bigger. Your niche isn’t the same as the field in which you work. For example, a retail clothing business is not a niche but a field. A more specific niche may be “maternity clothes for executive women.”
To begin this focusing process, Falkenstein suggests using these techniques to help you:
- Make a list of things you do best and the skills implicit in each of them.
- List your achievements.
- Identify the most important lessons you’ve learned in life.
- Look for patterns that reveal your style or approach to resolving problems.
Your niche should arise naturally from your interests and experience. For example, if you spent 10 years working in a consulting firm but also spent 10 years working for a small, family-owned business, you may decide to start a consulting business that specializes in small, family-owned companies.
3. Describe the customer’s worldview.
A successful business uses what Falkenstein calls the Platinum Rule: “Do unto others as they would do unto themselves.” When you look at the world from your prospective customers’ perspective, you can identify their needs or wants. The best way to do this is to talk to prospective customers and identify their main concerns.
4. Synthesize.
At this stage, your niche should begin to take shape as your ideas and the client’s needs and wants coalesce to create something new. A good niche has five qualities:
- It takes you where you want to go—in other words, it conforms to your long-term vision.
- Somebody else wants it—namely, customers.
- It’s carefully planned.
- It’s one-of-a-kind, the “only game in town.”
- It evolves, allowing you to develop different profit centers and still retain the core business, thus ensuring long-term success.
5. Evaluate.
Now it’s time to evaluate your proposed product or service against the five criteria in Step 4. Perhaps you’ll find that the niche you had in mind requires more business travel than you’re ready for. That means it doesn’t fulfill one of the above criteria—it won’t take you where you want to go. So scrap it, and move on to the next idea.
6. Test.
Once you have a match between niche and product, test-market it. “Give people an opportunity to buy your product or service—not just theoretically but actually putting it out there,” Falkenstein suggests. This can be done by offering samples, such as a free mini-seminar or a sample copy of your newsletter. The test shouldn’t cost you a lot of money: “If you spend huge amounts of money on the initial market test, you’re probably doing it wrong,” she says.
7. Go for it!
It’s time to implement your idea. For many entrepreneurs, this is the most difficult stage. But fear not: If you did your homework, entering the market will be a calculated risk, not just a gamble.
Source: entrepreneur.com ~ Image: pixabay.com
How Much Water You Need to Drink
You may have heard that you should aim to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day. How much you should actually drink is more individualized than you might think.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends that men drink at least 104 ounces of water per day, which is 13 cups. They say women should drink at least 72 ounces, which is 9 cups.
Still, the answer to exactly how much water you should drink isn’t so simple.
Water recommendations
While the eight glasses rule is a good start, it isn’t based on solid, well-researched information.
Your body weight is made up of 60 percent water. Every system in your body needs water to function. Your recommended intake is based on factors including your sex, age, activity level, and others, such as if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding.
Adults
The current IOM recommendation for people ages 19 and older is around 131 ounces for men and 95 ounces for women. This is your overall fluid intake per day, including anything you eat or drink containing water in it, like fruits or vegetables.
Of this total, men should get around 13 cups from beverages. For women, it’s 9 cups.
Children
Recommendations for kids have a lot to do with age.
Girls and boys between ages 4 and 8 years should drink 40 ounces per day, or 5 cups.
This amount increases to 56 to 64 ounces, or 7 to 8 cups, by ages 9 to 13 years.
For ages 14 to 18, the recommended water intake is 64 to 88 ounces, or 8 to 11 cups.
Women of reproductive age
If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, your recommendations change.
Pregnant women of all ages should aim to get 80 ounces, or ten 8-ounce glasses of water each day.
Breastfeeding women may need to up their total water intake to 104 ounces, or 13 cups.
| Demographic | Daily recommended amount of water (from drinks) |
| children 4–8 years old | 5 cups, or 40 total ounces |
| children 9–13 years old | 7–8 cups, or 56–64 total ounces |
| children 14–18 years old | 8–11 cups, or 64–88 total ounces |
| men, 19 years and older | 13 cups, or 104 total ounces |
| women, 19 years and older | 9 cups, or 72 total ounces |
| pregnant women | 10 cups, or 80 total ounces |
| breastfeeding women | 13 cups, or 104 total ounces |
Other considerations
You may also need to drink more water if you live in a hot climate, exercise often, or have a fever, diarrhea, or vomiting.
Add an additional 1.5 to 2.5 cups of water each day if you exercise. You may need to add even more if you work out for longer than an hour.
You may need more water if you live in a hot climate.
If you live at an elevation greater than 8,200 feet above sea level, you may also need to drink more.
When you have a fever, vomiting, or diarrhea, your body loses more fluids than usual, so drink more water. Your doctor may even suggest taking drinks with electrolytes to keep your electrolyte balance more stable.
Why do you need water?
Water is important for most processes your body goes through in a day. When you drink water, you replenish your stores. Without enough water, your body and its organs can’t function properly.
Benefits of drinking water include:
- keeping your body temperature within a normal range
- lubricating and cushioning your joints
- protecting your spine and other tissues
- helping you eliminate waste through urine, sweat, and bowel movements
Drinking enough water can also help you look your best. For example, water keeps your skin looking healthy. Skin is your body’s largest organ. When you drink plenty of water, you keep it healthy and hydrated.
And because water contains zero calories, water can be an excellent tool for managing your weight, as well.
Risks
There are risks of drinking too little or too much water.
DehydrationYour body is constantly using and losing fluids through actions like sweating and urinating. Dehydration happens when your body loses more water or fluid than it takes in.
Symptoms of dehydration can range from being extremely thirsty to feeling fatigued. You may also notice you aren’t urinating as frequently or that your urine is dark.
In children, dehydration may cause a dry mouth and tongue, lack of tears while crying, and fewer wet diapers than usual.
Dehydration may lead to:
- confusion or unclear thinking
- mood changes
- overheating
- constipation
- kidney stone formation
- shock
Mild dehydration may be treated by drinking more water and other fluids.
If you have severe dehydration, you may need treatment at the hospital. Your doctor will likely give you intravenous (IV) fluids and salts until your symptoms go away.
Hyponatremia
Drinking too much water may be dangerous to your health as well.
When you drink too much, the extra water can dilute the electrolytes in your blood. Your sodium levels decrease and can lead to what is called hyponatremia.
Symptoms include:
- confusion
- headache
- fatigue
- nausea or vomiting
- irritability
- muscle spasms, cramps, or weakness
- seizures
- coma
Water intoxication hyponatremia is uncommon. People with a smaller build and children are at a higher risk of developing this condition. So are active people, like marathon runners, who drink large quantities of water in a short period of time.
If you’re at risk due to drinking large quantities of water for exercise, consider drinking a sports drink that contains sodium and other electrolytes to help replenish the electrolytes you lose through sweating.
The takeaway
Staying hydrated goes beyond just the water you drink. Foods make up around 20 percent of your total fluid requirements each day. Along with drinking your 9 to 13 daily cups of water, try to eat lots of fruits and vegetables.
Some foods with high water content include:
Tips for drinking enough water
You may be able to meet your water intake goal by drinking when you’re thirsty and with your meals.
If you need some extra help consuming enough water, check out these tips for drinking more:
- Try carrying a water bottle with you wherever you go, including around the office, at the gym, and even on road trips. Amazon has a good selection of water bottles.
- Focus on fluids. You don’t have to drink plain water to meet your hydration needs. Other good sources of fluid include milk, pure fruit juices, tea, and broth.
- Skip sugary drinks. While you can get fluid from soda, juice, and alcohol, these beverages have high calorie contents. It’s still smart to choose water whenever possible.
- Drink water while out to eat. Drink a glass of water instead of ordering another beverage. You can save some cash and lower the total calories of your meal too.
- Add some flair to your water by squeezing in fresh lemon or lime juice.
- If you’re working out hard, consider drinking a sports drink that has electrolytes to help replace the ones you lose through sweating. Shop for sports drinks.
Source: healthline.com ~ Image: pixabay.com
Hydration 101: What You Need to Know
As the temperature increases, so does your risk of getting dehydrated. We asked Ron DeAngelo, Director of UPMC Sports Performance, for his top hydration tips. Check out the infographic below to find out why you should stay hydrated.
Dehydration Symptoms
Dehydration happens when your body isn’t getting enough fluids. You can usually tell when you’re dehydrated, but common symptoms of dehydration include:
- Decrease in energy
- Fatigue
- Headache
- Longer post-workout recovery
- Upset or burning stomach
One of the most accurate signs is both color and volume of your urine. Next time nature calls, refer to the handy guide below.
Cumulative Hydration
Hydration is important over any period of time – days, weeks, or even months. It’s not really possible to “catch up” if you go awhile without drinking enough fluids. To keep your tank full, we recommend that men consume 100 ounces of water daily, and women consume 70 ounces. So, each day you go without drinking enough fluids, your supply goes down until you risk getting heat exhaustion or severe muscle cramps. Remember, these guidelines are based on normal activity levels, and should increase with more physical exertion.
Fill ‘Er Up: How to Stay Hydrated
Here are a few tricks to keep your tank full:
- Schedule it! Have a glass of water first thing in the morning and one hour before you go to bed.
- Include a healthy-sized drink with every meal.
- Avoid sugary drinks, soda, or alcohol.
- More is not always better! Too much water can leave you feeling bloated.
- Get most of your fluids from drinking. However, try fruits and veggies that are high in water content, including pineapple, watermelon, blueberries, pears, grapefruit, cucumber, lettuce, celery, and tomatoes.
The Relationship Between Sweat and Dehydration
How you sweat also plays an important role in staying hydrated. Try this easy calculation:
- Weigh yourself before and after a moderate workout, wearing the same clothing.
- In ounces, determine the difference between pre-and post-workout weight. 1 pound = 16 ounces.
- Add this number to how much fluid you drank during your workout.
- Divide this by the length of your workout (number of hours).
- The resulting number is your hourly sweat rate.
Now you know how much you need to drink every hour to replace your lost sweat!
Source: share.upmc.com ~ By: SPORTS MEDICINE ~ Image: Pixabay.com