Consumers have a myriad of choices when looking to purchase any kind of product. In order to differentiate their product, many businesses have invested in niche marketing. This kind of marketing concentrates targeting efforts on a specific segment of the population.
Here are four crucial steps to engaging with a niche audience:
1. Research your niche audience
You probably already have a solid idea of who should make up your niche audience, or at least a general knowledge of a few audiences that could be a good match for your product. In the initial stages of finding your niche, it’s important to allot time and resources towards research in order to better understand your target demographic.
This research can take a variety of forms. For example, you can ask people from within your current audience what blogs they frequent, what they like to shop for, where they like to shop, and what brands they prefer. Don’t be afraid to consider other types of interests or buying habits unrelated to your own product or service. Information that might seem irrelevant at first can still yield valuable insights into your ideal niche.
Once you’ve compiled this research, start following the different channels that influence your target market. Stay up to date on these trends. Track whether customers’ buying or browsing trends cut across other niches. It’s possible one very concrete niche could reveal itself early on.
Also pay attention to how other brands your customers interact with target their own marketing towards specific niches. Pay special attention to their content strategies, partnerships and especially their branding. You’re likely to see trends that could be important for your brand later on.
2. Generate relevant content
After you’ve researched consumers, it’s time to engage them over social media. Take advantage of what you’ve learned and ensure you’re posting content that appeals to their interests and lifestyle based on your research. Getting this right can make consumers feel like you understand them. For example, if you’ve identified a niche audience as people who love bowling, writing about changes in bowling technology or different techniques could seriously boost your brand in this community.
It’s incredibly important, however, not to post too much. Quality goes a lot further than quantity over social media. Saturating consumers’ feeds with your content can quickly become annoying.
It’s also important to avoid content that constantly revolves around your brand or product alone as opposed to lifestyle content that pulls from what you’ve learned about consumers’ buying and browsing habits. Content like this can quickly get stale.
Lifestyle content is also a lot more likely to get reposted by your audience thereby reaching even more like-minded consumers that fit into your target niche.
Consider posting limited-time offers, sample opportunities, and coupons with offerings unique to your niche or niches.
3. Cross-promote with similar brands
Teaming up with similar brands and influencers that appeal to your audience is a valuable tactic for reaching consumers. Brands that promote each other often see large increases in followers because they can tap into each other’s consumer bases and effectively double their reach.
One way to realize this strategy is through participating in multi-brand events that align with your brand identity. Such events can provide even more valuable insight into your niche. They also expose your brand to tons of potential new customers, most of whom will already feel at home in your niche. A very basic example of this goes back to the above bowling market. If you run a bowling alley or other event space, you could team up with a local restaurant or band to have a special night to benefit both your business and another that could cater to the unique market.
Cross-promotion is mutually beneficial. Each brand increases their exposure and gains new and valuable insight to help further solidify their respective niches.
4. Create brand ambassadors
According to a report by Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust word-of-mouth recommendations from family and friends more than any other form of advertising. Once you’ve carved out a loyal niche, you should come up with a strategy to turn these consumers into brand ambassadors.
Consumers that are already in your niche market are highly likely to have friends who fit the same demographic and would benefit from your product or service. Finding a way to highlight or reward the consumers who recommend your brand to their peers is a vital part of a brand ambassador strategy. One example of this strategy is having a contest for which your customers could gain entries by referring friends. You could also have a special sale for those who refer a friend.
In addition to rewarding an individual consumer, this sort of recognition also increases the visibility of your product as well and shows off the perks of becoming a brand ambassador. After seeing the recognition, they could receive, other consumers are more likely to become brand ambassadors themselves.
Effective niche marketing is critical to differentiating your brand from the crowd and making your customers feel valued and personally cared for. Through initial research, curated content generation, cross-promotion, and ambassador recognition strategies, your business can harness the full potential of niche marketing.
