Choosing your Niche
Q. I’m confused about choosing my niche
What is a niche?
A niche is a type of product group which is purchased by a well defined type of customer with a specific interest or problem.
The purpose of choosing a niche is so that you can focus your advertising efforts and resources on a specific segment of the market to sell your products.
Remember, you’re not excluding anyone by focusing on a defined customer segment. Anyone can still buy from you, but your marketing is aligned to the needs and wants of clearly understood types of people. They behave in certain ways, they live in certain locations, they have been influenced by their generations' life events and beliefs. This is called your “customer avatar.” By getting familiar with them, you can offer useful products that match their needs and expectations, making your store successful.
When you research your niche, think about refining it. For instance, golfing or fishing are activities that have products associated with them, but a niche would be defined further, such as beginners golfing products, funky golf apparel or fishing lures. But please note, a niche is not one product; it’s a narrow product type (connected to a type of customer).
If you want a powerful niche choice, then your research should focus on the following:
- What problem does it solve?
- What are people searching for?
- Are these products consistently selling over time and all year round?
- Brainstorm 3 niche ideas to research
- See which has the biggest audience and pain point to solve
- Exclude one, then choose and get it down to one = trust your gut instinct!
- Find some niche products that average $100 or more to balance marketing costs
- Learn about the Competition - too many, too few or just right?
- Do our training. It walks you through this process and more
Finally, make a decision! This is the defining part of your store creation journey, but the emphasis should be on getting started with a reasonably researched product group and then moving onto the next part of training.
Once we develop your store and you get access to begin test marketing some of your niche products, the marketing will reveal the right products. Winning products are chosen by the customers, not from your initial research. Stay open enough to be able to present a few different products, and use dropshipping as an easy, low cost way to find the clear winner and then you’ll be ready to move into creating your own products with your branding.
For more guidance on where and how to research the information for choosing your niche before your KickOff meeting with us, see Training Week 1, Module 4.
There you’ll find the downloads for Fletcher’s cheatsheets to help your research until you’re clear and confident with one choice.