Go to part one of this series What is a niche?

Define a Niche?
A philosophy essay in 3 parts. Part 2.

What is a Niche? What is a Niche Market?
Why should I be doing Niche Marketing?

Define a niche market? The Wikipedia definition goes like this…

“…a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers. A niche market may be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.”

We define a niche as: The process of finding and serving small but potentially profitable market segments and designing or selling custom-made products or services for them using a mini site or blog.

Human beings simply have a need for beauty and just as nature creates colour and shape and sound in beautiful forms, so do human beings. We do not need pointy toed emerald green high heeled shoes or sunset crimson. glossy enamel, fast and powerful cars - we just want them. They satisfy a need inside us, whether its a need for colour and beauty, or as a symbol of high status and wealth is irrelevant. Human beings like to create and enjoy the ownership and use of beautiful things.

There is no survival instinct involved in wanting to dress stylishly or to own metallic objects that make tiny pictures and can send our voices to the other side of the world. People may argue that in this day and age, dressing stylishly is necessary to get a mate but the truth is people manage to find a mate easily enough without doing it. People may argue that a business man could not survive in this days business world without his mobile phone but although arguments can be made that they are essential - the truth is, that we just want them.

If we returned to a more primitive time, would we still want pointy toed high heeled shoes if we lived in a mountain cave - it's unlikely. Would we still want a red ferrari if there were not smooth highways to drive it on. It's more likely we'd prefer sturdy non slip boots and a four wheel drive, but given a choice - I bet the boots would still be green and if a red enamel finish was available on a 4WD it would still be a popular choice.

What does this all have to do with the price of fish ? Absolutely nothing and that's the point. Fish will sell no matter what the price so long as people are hungry, enjoy eating fish and can afford to pay. The same goes for red ferraris and high heeled shoes and for the same reason. I don't think however that many people will make a living on the internet selling fish. But I could be wrong, there may well be a niche for fishmongers.

What you sell on the internet are all intangibles. Information and things to pass the time with. A pattern of code we call software, a collection of words we call a story, physical products we display using two dimensional pixels - and we ask our customers to imagine what it is like to use this information, to touch, taste or listen to goods and all we have is words and pictures to convey how much better they will feel when they've spent their hard earned money on them.

A computer screen can only convey a tiny square of intangible information. On the Internet we are at a constant disadvantage to bricks and mortar stores where their products have tangible sensual value and impulse can have the purse open and emptied in five seconds. All we have to offer is words and pictures, our clients curiosity and that emotion we don't have an accepted comfortable sounding noun for but I call by the verb "want".

People buy what they want . When there is something there they want and they can afford to buy it, they will. Lets be brutally honest - even if they cannot afford it, they will buy it. Wants spring from an emotion not from a logical thought. Even in mating our minds may know we will be happier with a stable quiet person, while our emotion has us chasing a wild selfish colourful person who we know will not make us feel long term happy.

This is the basis of all selling. Whether it be selling for money or bartering for love, we need to touch the want in a person before we'll be able to get our desired reaction. Accountants and librarians are rarely thought of as sexy because they remind us that we need to work and learn to succeed. Doctors are loved and Dentists hated despite the pain they both take away and because of that they both inflict and why is it ? They touch us where it hurts but we react in different ways.

They call psychology a science but surely it is an art, when we touch the right triggers we make something beautiful and when we accidentally hit the nerve our whole emotional nature recoils.

If you use the methods we outline in our first eBook on researching a niche market, you will be able to eliminate a lot of the niches that don’t have enough 'want', the niches that have way too much competition and the niches that just aren’t worth your time and energy. You are not necessarily looking for a huge market but you do want one that wants something and is willing to pay for it, and if they're also in pain, as the dentist and the doctor well know, that's going to help too!

Continued on Niche Definition

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