5 Ways to Develop a Niche Marketing Strategy

I asked a friend once to choose a fruit that matched my aura. She responded “A mango – because not everyone likes you, but the people who do like you LOVE you.”  

Thanks? 

But the more I thought about it, the more I agreed. I don’t want to have the fuji apple “one size fits most” aura. And I feel the same about marketing strategies.  

Even the most successful niche marketing companies aren’t known by a majority of the general population. What makes them successful is that they are well-known and respected or loved by their community. 

Every person you know or pass by on the street is a part of one or several niches. As a marketer for a niche company, you can ignore most markets as long as you impress and delight the right ones. 

If you’re trying to break into a niche or trying to solidify and grow your reputation in a niche, here’s how to develop your niche marketing strategy. 

Download our checklist of 30+ ways to promote content here.

What is niche marketing? 

Niche marketing is catering to a specific group of people (or segment) of a larger market. This segment may be defined by unique needs, preferences, or identity that makes it different from the market at large. 

For example, a general market may be the arts industry. The niche market may be professional oil painters. The needs, preferences, and knowledge base of professional oil painters will certainly be different from those of the general market.  

What sets niche marketing strategies apart 

A Niche marketing strategy takes more initial input. If you don’t take the time at the beginning of your strategy to define your audience, it can be much more detrimental to your business than a company that caters to a general market. 

There may be less flexibility in your approach. Because you are catering to people with specific needs and preferences, your marketing strategy may contain more parameters. Straying too far away from your niche content can take you into irrelevancy. But don’t confuse this for less room for creativity! There are endless ways to create unique approaches in any niche.  

It’s a sniper over a shotgun approach. A non-niche marketing strategy has the luxury to cast a wide net in content, targeting, and design and then see what it pulls in. With niche marketing, not so much. It’s way more productive to zero in on your niche audience than trying to build reach and impressions.  

When done right, you can spend less money or spend your money more productively. Since you’re not casing a wide net with your targeting, there’s no need to waste money on a huge general audience. Excluding demographics in ads will be your best friend, and you can put all of your efforts towards the individuals that are invested in your industry. 

You also may be able to charge more. If your niche company competes against companies that are using a general approach, more likely than not the niche company will seem as the expert company. Pulling in our professional oil painting niche, a this may look like a company that makes water color, puff paint, children’s water color as well as oil paint, versus a company that only creates oils. The niche market will understand that the niche company focuses their resources into one great product, and will accept a higher price. 

Ther is a higher potential for repeat business. People can define themselves through their niche interests, which means they put a ton of stock into their niche products. Once someone in your niche discovers and is impressed by your product, you may have a customer for life. 

How to develop a niche marketing strategy 

Market research is your best friend 

If you don’t reach out to your niche market, you’re not really reaching out to anyone. Spending time on the upfront work and effort of finding and understanding your niche market will only help you grow and save you from feeling lost down the road. Important topics to cover in your initial research is: 

• What defines my niche audience? 
• Where do I find my niche audience? 
• What do they expect to see in outreach? 
• What specific problem does my product or service solve? 
• What value proposition are they most likely to react to? 

This is just a starting point of what you should know about your niche audience. Short of knowing what’s in their bathroom cabinet, (unless it’s relevant to your industry, of course) you should have a really good idea who your niche market is as individuals and as a group. 

Create content that shows your niche expertise 

The most important strength you have as a niche company is that your resources, knowledge, and future growth will focus down into one specific topic. This will can set you apart as the resident specialist in your niche. Cementing this “resident specialist” title in your industry will come from using your voice.  

Create white papers, vlogs, blogs, social content, or whatever is relevant to your industry to communicate new trends, controversial topics, tips, and opinion posts repeated to your niche. The beauty of niche content is you can drill deep into the specifics of the topic, and flesh out an expert take on endless aspects of your niche.  

With our professional oil paint example, this specific content may look like a 20-minute tutorial on using your paints to mix the perfect shades of tan and caramel skin tones. 99% of the population won’t watch 30 seconds of this, but aspiring professionals would eat this up. 

Define your niche SEO strategy 

A niche SEO strategy lives in the longtail keywords. Spending time and effort on targeting general terms that get a lot of monthly views won’t help you much. This means your strategy throughout your website content, schema markup, and meta data should all focus on your specific topic, with your niche market’s search queries in mind.  

For our professional oil paint example, that means not putting an emphasis on “art supplies” or “paint”, and doubling down on “professional oil paint” and “oil paint for professional artists”. 

Work with micro influencers in your niche 

Working with micro influencers in your niche can benefit your company and help grow your audience base of engaged, informed, repeat customers. It can take some time to find the influencer with the right size. If you have been in your niche a while, you probably know people of note who are engaging your audience. But you may not know the up-and-comers that have a small but passionate cult following. These micro influencers may be even more beneficial, as they are usually less competitive to work with and their audience is very engaged because it feels like a more intimate connection. 

Build and grow a niche community 

Once you establish your audience and reach out to micro influencers that use and promote your product, growing a niche community central to your product may come naturally. Working on connecting your community not around your product, but around their shared passion creates yet another layer to strengthen your expert reputation. It also supports your niche audience to start conversations, share tips, and discuss positive reviews around your product, enhancing their overall experience with your company. 

Niche marketing done well can grow naturally and set you apart as the go-to product or service in your specific industry. If you need help developing a niche marketing strategy, reach out to our team!