Business Advice on Niche Market Selection

Step One: Pick an Affordably Reachable Niche Market When I was younger ... I [didn’t] want to be pigeonholed ... Basically, now you want to be pigeonholed. It’s your niche. —JOAN CHEN, actress; appeared in The Last Emperor and Twin Peaks CC eating demand is hard. Filling demand is much easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market—define your customers—then find or develop a product for them. I have been a student and an athlete, so I developed products for those markets, focusing on the male demographic whenever possible. The audiobook I created for college guidance counselors failed because I have never been a guidance counselor. I developed the subsequent speed-reading seminar after realizing that I had free access to students, and the business succeeded because —being a student myself —I understood their needs and spending habits. Be a member of your target market and don’t speculate what others need or will be willing to buy. Start Small, Think Big Some people are just into lavish dwarf entertainment. —DANNY BLACK (42”), part-owner of Shortdwarf.com2> Danny Black rents dwarfs as entertainment for $149 per hour. How is that for a niche market? It is said that if everyone is your customer, then no one is your customer. If you start off aiming to sell a product to dog- or car-lovers, stop. It’s expensive to advertise to such a broad market, and you are competing with too many products and too much free information. If you focus on how to train German shepherds or a restoration product for antique Fords, on the other hand, the market and competition shrink, making it less expensive to reach your customers and easier to charge premium pricing. BrainQUICKEN was initially designed for students, but the market proved too scattered and difficult to reach. Based on positive feedback from student-athletes, I relaunched the product as BodyQUICK and tested advertising in magazines specific to martial artists and powerlifters. These are minuscule markets compared to the massive student market, but not small. Low media cost and lack of competition enabled me to dominate with the first “neural accelerator’”2® in these niches. It is more profitable to be a big fish in a small pond than a small undefined fish in a big pond. How do you know if it’s big enough to meet your TMI? For a detailed real-life example of how I determined the market size of a recent product, see “Muse Math” on this book’s companion site. Ask yourself the following questions to find profitable niches. 1. Which social, industry, and professional groups do you belong to, have you belonged to, or do you understand, whether dentists, engineers, rock climbers, recreational cyclists, car restoration aficionados, dancers, or other? Look creatively at your resume, work experience, physical habits, and hobbies and compile a list of all the groups, past and present, that you can associate yourself with. Look at products and books you own, include online and offline subscriptions, and ask yourself, “What groups of people purchase the same?” Which magazines, websites, and newsletters do you read on a regular basis? HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013894