If you’re running a marketing company, then you’ve probably dealt with more conventional clients than niche, unorthodox products and services. However, when it comes to selling something in a highly specialised niche, it can be hard to determine the best way to make an impact and put a smile on the client’s face. Although marketing for niche businesses is certainly more difficult, it’s in no way impossible. Here’s some of my best advice for helping your more unorthodox clients.
Reconsider How You’re Spreading the Word About the Business
When you’re marketing for a highly specialised niche, you should be going about it more or less the same way you would in a regular campaign, only scaled down. This means that you need to think long and hard about the methods you’re using to spread the word about the product or service in question. Part of this is going to be assessing the strengths of any marketing channel that you have access to. Social media advertising, for example, has proven to be pretty effective for small businesses operating in a niche market. However, the targeting options offered by channels such as Facebook, Twitter and so on may not make them cost-effective for your specific client. If you find that this is the case, then a solution like paid search may be a little more fitting.
Know your Audience Like Family
Anyone who knows even a little bit about marketing will be aware of the importance of knowing their audience. However, when you’re selling to a particularly narrow range of people, you need to invest even more effort and resources into getting to know them. When a business is selling something with specialised, niche appeal, whether it’s customised miniatures or roller apparatus, it can be pretty difficult to determine who the audience actually is. Basic fields, like age, gender and marital status, aren’t going to be enough. You need to make sure you have a much deeper understanding of the granular attributes that your target market may have. The smaller the market, the more research you’ll need to conduct, so make sure you’re planning for this right from the start of your campaign.
Keep Tabs on the Competition
When you’re trying to generate sales for a business in a niche market, it’s essential that you know what your competitors are up to. I’m not suggesting you resort to any kind of industrial espionage here. In fact, I’m not even suggesting that you bother to leave your desk! There are a lot of software tools on the market, for example WordStream Advisor, which will give you access to competitive intelligence, and in turn amazing insights into the niche marketing strategies which your client’s main competitors are employing. The more mainstream tactics such as PPC and SEO can be a little hit and miss depending on the niche business you’re trying to market. After a little detective work on the competition though, you’ll begin to notice distinctive patterns, which will show you clearly what’s working and what’s not.