If you have a passion for something and that something has an active audience you are way ahead of the game when it comes to online marketing. Whether you already have a passion or you don’t have a clue, there are a couple of general rules that you should keep in mind when deciding on a niche.
For example if you’re into mountain biking and you have a lot of experience pounding across the trails, there is probably a niche in that sport that you could serve. If however, your passion is for something more esoteric like collecting Polynesian nose rings…well you might have a somewhat limited audience to market to.
A niche is a segment of a larger market. For example you can take the monster market of weight loss and you can trim it down (pun intended) to slimmer niches like “how to make my butt less fat” or “how to get rid of a flabby stomach”. The idea here is that while millions of people want to lose weight, many of those millions are specifically motivated by losing weight in a particular part of their anatomy.
You can then focus on how to make a website targeting a fraction of the total market. The big guys go for the whole enchilada. Your strategy is to laser-focus on a niche and do what it takes to grab the searcher looking for “make my butt less fat” away from the giant who is probably optimized for “lose weight fast.”
A niche may have a high commercial intent if it involves a problem, pain or need that has a high emotional connection with people in the marketplace. In other words, something people think about every day, and are likely to research online.
Examples often include life-changing events like getting married, trouble in a relationship, getting divorced, the death of a loved one, chronic illness, getting laid off, looking for a job, natural disaster or financial troubles. Can you see how each of these niches would weigh heavily on the minds of anyone who was experiencing them? If you were just diagnosed with high blood pressure you would probably be thinking about that condition every morning as you popped your medication.
All these examples sound pretty grim but they do really well in terms of selling products and information.
You can find similar high-emotional niches that address needs but they by definition have a short life span for the individual with the need, For example Halloween costumes do terrific business for about 4 weeks out of the year. Golfers are typically affluent and fanatic and spend a ton of money on golf but it is seasonal. A teen that has a bad outbreak of acne is going to get all bent out of shape for a week or until he finds a product to take care of his needs.
But what if you are interested in something that doesn’t have a daily interest to the market like gardening or interior design? Don’t worry, there is a market and you can successfully work it just understand that the sales cycle is likely to be longer than people who have an immediate need.
So you’ve picked out a couple of niche ideas. Now how do you determine if they are actually hot topics or dogs? One way is to use Google’s keyword tool or WordTracker.com to determine how many website searches are made monthly for keywords associated with the niche.
Another good tool is Google Insights. It will show you the trend for a phrase over a four year period. If it is steady rising that’s a good thing. If it’s dropping like a rock you probably want to toss that one out. What you will most likely see are peaks and valleys which mean it has seasonal interest and that could impact when you enter the market. In addition to the trends it will recommend other keyword phrases and show you the ones that are “breakouts” or super hot at the moment. Lastly it will show you where the traffic is coming from geographically. So if you are promoting a physical product, and the bulk of the interest is coming from India, understand you are going to have some serious shipping challenges.
Finding a niche is a critical first step. Next you’ll need to get to know who your website audience is and what they are thinking about. With that knowledge you can then start looking for a product or service that matches their needs, and you can embark on a targeted path of making a website that people will use.
