By reading this article, you're very likely to be on the hunt for the next big idea for your online business.
You have the itch, the motivation, and the gut. You want to get started with your own company.
But you don't know where to start.
I can relate to it. I know this feeling and I've been there before.
One thing most, if not all, successful businesses have in common? They started by focusing on one very specific segment of a bigger market, aka. a niche.
At the end of this article, you'll be able to:
- Start your online business by honing in the right things
- Craft better messages towards a specific audience
- Speed up your go-to-market strategy
I'm going to give you the ins and out of niche markets, what they're for, and why you should get down to them. I'll also walk you through some of the best examples and give you 3 extremely valuable tips on how to find a profitable niche.
Without further ado, let's get into it!
What Is A Niche?
Explaining what is a niche market is like comparing a housing renovation work business with an in-house house painter.
The former is an all-in-one solution you can hire if you don't want to deal with plenty of stakeholders and take it easy. The second one is focused on doing one thing very well: painting the wall within the house.
Which one would you pick? It depends you'd say. Fair enough.
The thing is, the painter will get a much easier job of pitching his services. For the all-in-one business, the pitch would be along the lines of
I can do anything you want in terms of renovation.
Okay, but what are you good at?
Anything and everything!
MMMM… ok. Let me get back to you.
Joke aside - let me give you a simple definition of a niche market.
A niche market is a subset of a bigger pie, a bigger market in which the individuals can be defined by their own unique requirements, their own needs, and characteristics that separate them from the rest.
In marketing, this niche market is embodied by a persona which is a "composite sketch of a key segment of your audience".
Ardath Albee
B2B Content Marketing Strategist
Example of niche market lemlist
For example, within the keyboards market, we'd have different segments or niches. Keyboards for geeks would be one, keyboards for children would be another one, and so would be keyboards for disabled people.
As an avid game player, which one would you pick? The generic keyboard or the niche keyboard for geeks? I'd assume the latter.
Pro-tip: Whatever your niche or segment, CoverWallet can provide you with professional liability insurance in a way that's tailored to your business needs, however specific they may be.
The persona is well-defined, which makes the messaging music to the audience's ears. It's much easier to understand the value prop and feel the benefits of adopting such a solution over the generic one.
There is one and only one persona the company is focusing on - which makes everyone's job easier and much more straightforward. The narrower the target audience, the easier it becomes to identify the potential customers and to relate to the pain points.
That's definitely the way to get started with your business. Once you dominate the niche, and only then, you can expand out to a broader audience.
Now that you understand what a niche market is, let's get to some real-life examples.
Leverage Resources to Identify Trending Profitable Niche Markets
You've got a better idea of the areas you can go to. If you completed step 1, you should have a list of 5 to 10 domains you can dive into. Time to explore them!
There are tons of resources you can leverage in order to create your own benchmark and get inspired.
Find and follow influencers
Any given industry out there has specialists, influencers, and experts that speak out about their observations, their expectations for the future, the new cool projects, and trends they spotted. Which is why it's very important to follow them and feed yourself with their content! Here are a few places that'll help you find them!
Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Linkedin native searches
Using any social media search function, you can go after thought leaders around specific hashtags, queries, and content.
Buzz Sumo
Buzzsumo.com is a great alternative to the native search. It's a tool that helps you identify content that performs best across social media, as well as to identify influencers around a specific topic.
Great to monitor things in the long run!
Leverage Curated Newsletters
Next up on our list are the different newsletters that curate the trends and things to know in a given industry. They already to the heavy homework and data analysis. Great!
Trends by the Hustle
Trends.co is a monthly premium newsletter that goes through the "next big business idea before it explodes". Must read!
It's released by the same team as The Hustle - a free daily newsletter that I recommend by the way to keep you up to date with fresh news!
Trends.vc
Another great newsletter covering business trends once in a while. Anything from productized services, to coliving and personal branding. This kind of newsletter goes through trends they found worth sharing, giving an intro to what they are about and why they are interesting.
Substack
With the recent rise of content creators on Substack, it's a no-brainer to find interesting newsletters using their discovery tab. You can find content around, literally any topic. From vegan cooking to personal finance and daily news.
I also tend to look for newsletters on Google using advanced searches.
All-in-all, content doesn't lack. I anything but recommend you to deep dive into topics of interest by leveraging others' expertise. It's going to be a huge idea generator for you!
Deep dive into trends
Aside from newsletters, there are also great websites that'd help you in your idea generation process!
Trendsmap
Trendsmap.com is a curation of trending Hashtags on Twitter. Great for local ideas!
Reddit is another great place to spot trending niches. You can either use websites such as subredditstats.com that give you the growing subreddit.
I also like going through the r/DIY subreddit which contains plenty of idea gems!
Google Trends
Last but not least, Google Trends! It's an excellent source of inspiration and niche ideas, but also one of the most reliable sources out there! They crunch their own data, based on the volume of research and identify topics that stand out.
The good point is that, even though we're talking about Google's data, it's related to most other platforms out there (Amazon, Reddit, etc.). Why? Because most traffic is coming through Google today.
Join Communities
Another great source of inspirations to come up with profitable business and brain thoughts are community-powered websites. Quora is a great example of all types of questions.
IndieHackers is another example.
By the way, I advise you to explore their products section to get some ideas of what people are doing and how much $$ they are making!
By the way, keep the "pay it forward" mantra in mind. The more you give, the more likely you're to get back from the community. And you might even be able to find potential customers in the different communities.
Of course, Reddit is a must! I'm mentioning it again but it is the go-to community! Talking about big platforms such as Reddit, we hear a lot about the concept of "unbundling" them. I find it quite interesting. It basically represents the idea of verticalizing a marketplace out of a bigger one initially.
Airbnb is nothing new - it was happening on Craigslist long before. The Airbnb founding team "just" took the P2P rental section off of Craigslist, added a bunch of features to make the renting experience smoother, and took it from there!
It resulted in a bigger market than Craigslist's initial market…
If you want to read more on the concept of unbundling, give this article from A16z a read.
How To Find Your Online Niche Market - FAQ
Here are some of the top questions that entrepreneurs that want to find online niche market-related answers have.
There are a few key things you can do in order to find a great online niche market that will work well for your business. First, you'll want to make sure that you choose a broader market that you're interested in.
From there, you can research specific niche brand markets within that broader market using keyword research tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. Once you've found a potential niche market, you'll want to make sure there is a steady and growing trend within that niche for your target customers.
Some good examples of niche markets include businesses that focus on a specific type of product or service, businesses that cater to a specialized audience, businesses that operate in a micro niche, and businesses that focus on a mass market.
A niche market is a smaller, specialized market within a broader market. A mass market is a large, general market that includes a wide range of consumers. While this might sound great in theory, if you choose a niche is too broad, you may have difficulty ranking in the search engines and driving targeted traffic to your website.
There are a few online tools you can use to help determine whether or not your chosen niche is too broad. The first is Google AdWords Keyword Planner. This free tool allows you to input a particular keyword or phrase and see how many people are searching for that term each month.
If the number of monthly searches for a particular keyword is low, this could be an indication that your chosen niche is too broad. Another indication that a niche may be too broad is if there are many other businesses competing for the same keywords.
There are a few things you should keep in mind when trying to find a niche market:
There are many benefits of finding a niche market, including:
If you’re having trouble finding a niche market, there are a few things you can do:
This will help you drill down into the right niche market.
Wrap Up: Buckle Up For An Exciting Journey!
By niching down you can double down on speed by speaking directly to your customers, crafting a unique marketing strategy that speaks to them, and by becoming more efficient at delivering your products or services.
In a nutshell, niching down is important for the following reasons:
Keep in mind that the goal here is to start small, and expand the customer base over time once you dominate the niche. From a small business started in your garage to a well-established brand!
You're on the right path to hitting your financial and business goals.
Last Updated on August 18, 2023 by Hanson Cheng
Thanks for the post. It was very interesting and meaningful. I really appreciate it! Keep updating stuffs like this.