Category: Niche Marketing

One of the best things that you can do for your business whether it’s online or offline is to make yourself be seen as an expert in the field. Having that sort of weight behind you draws potential customers because they can sense that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to your line of work. It keeps current customers coming back because they can be confident in your products and services. This is why having a reliable blog on your site can be such a huge gain in drawing in new customers. Another great way to build this kind of credibility is through joining forums that are related to your area of trade. If you join and start dispensing helpful advice and recommendations, you’d be surprised how much credibility this can get you and how it turns directly into gains for your business.

The issue, though, is to become narrowed in focus without becoming too narrow. You need to be able to appeal to a broad swath of people in order to get maximum interest in your business. If you own a car parts dealership and your area of expertise is in auto body repair, you’ll do much better if you can also help the person who wants to know how to do an oil change. Keeping your focus narrow enough to be able to give off an aura of expertise about the subject at hand without becoming too esoteric or getting pegged as “the brakes guy” is the key. If you get too specific, you’ll lose a great deal of potential clients.

Joining several different forum groups is a great way to spread your expertise across many lines. If you focus in German cars, be sure to work with the Volkswagen fan group as well as the BMWs. If you like to do paint jobs on cars, you’ll better your business if you can also speak about changing the rims on tires. There are many ways to vary your expertise.

Also, be sure that all of your blog entries aren’t about the same sort of thing. Being able to write well about many different aspects of your business makes you seem more knowledgeable and you will get many more people coming to your website and asking you for advice. Ultimately, this level of trust will get you business.

Essentially, you want to go for the “jack of all trades, master of all trades” persona. This can be rather difficult to pull off, no doubt about it. But the fact of the matter is that when you get down to the business of spreading your expertise across many areas, the business will come back to you. Guaranteed.

One of the cheapest and most effective ways to get the word out there about your business’ goods and services is with a blog. Blogs are excellent because they can be updated at your leisure, are specifically calibrated for ease of use, and, best of all, they can be entirely free.

How can a blog help you reach into a niche? The answer is simple: you blog about what your particular niche is. A good blog can help your page be seen as a well of knowledge, and people gravitate toward where the knowledge is. If you’re a chef, what about starting a blog where you speak about your recent innovations in the kitchen, or perhaps do reviews on various kitchen products? A blog is like a constantly updated stream of information from you directly to the consumer.

Blogging has become something akin to the face-to-face interaction that is often absent from online marketing. While with a traditional store the customer could engage in dialogue directly with you, the Internet makes such interactions nearly impossible. However, with a blog you can appeal to the reader with your knowledge of the niche and interest them with your current news or opinions – to which the reader can respond to with comments. In this way, your blog becomes a living, breathing thing with which you can communicate with potential customers.

Another great thing about a blog is that it showcases your site as “alive.” While sites are mostly comprised of static pages, simply having that information up on the Internet does nothing to tell your readers that your business actually still exists. Having a blog makes your page seem fresh, and even people who are not sticking around to read your blog will be more likely to surf around on your other pages if you have a blog that stays recently updated. This means that you’re still around and will likely answer queries if the potential customer has them.

Additionally, a blog is a great place to advertise things that are going on with you or your business. For example, if you’re offering a promotion or are planning on being away from your business for a while, having a blog is the best way to get the word out. You can even upgrade to video blogging if you’d like to surf the height of the technological waves.

In short, having a blog is an excellent way to reach out to any niche market of your choice. A well written, thoughtful blog can add credibility to any website and encourage greater traffic and eventually greater conversions. For people looking for the best of Internet marketing through niche advertising, give a blog a try.

The very definition of niche is that it is relevant to a specific area of interest. “Car repair” could be considered a niche, but it’s not a very specific one. “BMW car repair” is more of a niche. You probably get the idea – you can get extremely specific with your niche, but as mentioned in an earlier article, it’s important to balance the scales between mastery and a broad range of knowledge. Not specific enough means that people won’t know if you can answer their questions directly, yet too specific means that you’re pigeonholing yourself and you’ll lose out on a great deal of potential business.

Outside of the specific area of interest that your business is involved in is the actual location of the business. Of course, with the advent of the Internet it’s entirely possible to market yourself worldwide, and common sense seems to say that appealing to as wide of an audience as you can is the best way to hook in more customers.

There is some truth to this, and it’s very true that the most profitable companies are international. But the flip side to this is that most of these companies did start out as local enterprises that simply grew and grew. Very few companies make their start hitting the international scene directly. Working worldwide requires an incredible attention to detail and generally a large staff of people who can pay attention to what regions are interested in what products and services.

In short, if you’re a smaller business, you’ll undoubtedly find it’s much more cost effective to market to your local area first. Of course, the nature of the Internet and international shipping being what they are, if you’re running a car parts dealership in Detroit and you get a query from Seattle, you’ll be able to help. Yet for marketing to be most effective, if you’re based out of Detroit, it will help if most of your marketing is targeted toward Detroit. This means that even if you don’t have a brick and mortar outlet, the costs of shipping and communication are much lower as compared to trying to do business with people in Moscow.

Once your business takes off, you can start marketing yourself to a wider arc of audiences. If you start in Detroit, move from there to the greater Michigan area, to the Midwest, to the country, to Canada and across the world. There’s a definite procession to the art, and you’ll likely find it much less expensive and a lot more effective to start small and then think big, rather than trying to take the entire world on at once. Start with your niche, start local – and grow.