How to Craft Your Unique Niche in the Market (And Start a Successful Business)
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The new century has brought a lot of innovations and improvements in many fields, especially in the fields that are closely connected with particular markets, whether the markets being niche or not.
In this age where everything and everyone is connected via the Internet, the possibilities have become endless, the amount of supply of various items have gone up, as well as the demand for certain items.
There are many private businesses and smaller, independent companies that have been started by a handful of passionate people who know how to use the advantages of contemporary times.
Even though it is scary at first, it is actually a lot easier to find your audience and present them with your products and help your company grow using little effort and a lot of love and passion.
In this particular article, you will find out more about the niche businesses that have been taking over recently, particularly what are they and how did those types of businesses start.
In addition, you will find out about the ways of starting your own niche business, how to start one and in which ways you can maintain your business.
After learning more about these niche businesses, at the end of the text, you will find a part about possible problems that might arise, where you can see whether you are ready to take a leap of faith and start a niche business.
WHAT IS EXACTLY A “NICHE” MARKET AND WHAT ARE “NICHE” BUSINESSES?
The definition of the word “niche” is that something is described as suitable to a particular and smaller number of people or target audience, something that is extremely liked by the audience
Now, a niche market represents a particular segment of a larger market, being one that provides its services to a particular and suitable audience that would benefit from that smaller market.
A niche business is, as its name says, a business that offers particular items that cater to a smaller target audience, or in other words, caters to a niche market.
However, a niche business is interesting because it can be a niche as a whole, or it can be a special segment of a large company that wishes to cater to a smaller but demanding target audience.
A perfect example would be a pizza place that offers a big number of vegetarian dishes and pizza pies, or even a separate vegan menu with appropriate food items and beverages.
In this example, the whole pizza place is the main business, while its vegetarian or vegan menu offers are a particular segment of the whole business that is aimed at a particular group of people that would benefit from it.
A niche business would be, using a similar example, if a pizza place opened that only offered vegetarian and vegan food to the particular smaller audience – vegans and vegetarians.
There are many categories by which a market is deemed as a niche one, and it all depends on the target audience the niche market wants to attract to its products.
It can be based on price, meaning that the more luxurious and pricey the items are in that particular segment of a bigger market, the smaller the market and more specific the target audience is.
It can be based on the various specifics of the target audience, such as the age of people, offering specific items to accommodate the needs of the older or female or male customers, among many others.
The main reason that people choose to focus on niche markets is to offer better service through their niche markets than their competitors who usually go for the bigger market with the same items.
The niche businesses that focus on having natural materials in their clothing items to accommodate people with skin problems will have better earnings that the big companies that are looking more broadly to their customers.
It is an interesting and exciting sight to behold as there are a large number of these kinds of businesses that are being opened every day and that cater to different audiences.
Here are some examples of a few successful niche businesses that are sure to grab your attention due to how small their target audiences are, but they still enjoy success.
The first one is “Lefty’s San Francisco”, a store located in San Francisco that offers a wide array of items catered to the needs of left-handed people.
There are some joke items, for example, mugs and decks of playing cards, but there are also a lot of useful items, like special pens that would not smear ink while you are writing.
Lefty’s San Francisco Store for left-handed people is targeting a very niche audience as roughly around 12 percent of people are left-handed.
Another interesting one is “Bonobos”, which was founded at Stanford after the founders’ classmates could not find pairs of pants that would fit them.
They have started selling men’s pants with a special waistband that provides a better fit for men. They broadened their catalog with other clothing items, but pants are their flagship product.
There is a huge number of interesting companies that have learned to make use of their smaller size and lacking a bigger budget, and implement modern utilities like the Internet to their advantage.
There are many more successful niche markets focusing on beer, books, food and many more areas, and if you wish to learn more about them, head to this article and give it a read.
HOW TO TURN A NICHE IDEA INTO A SUCCESSFUL NICHE BUSINESS?
Trying to start up a business is always a difficult and scary step, although those two particular feelings are normal when going for that kind of endeavor.
Thinking about founding a business that is aimed towards a niche market is an even bigger booster of fear and unpredictability than starting a “normal” one, per se, business.
The main reason for that is that it needs more time and passion to have it bloom and start to get near to a point where you make a respectable and sustainable profit.
In reality, though, the first step is similar to any other new business, and that step is finding what will your business be about, to which group will it be aimed at and cater to.
The first step is finding the subject of your new, future business. This wholly depends on you and your business partners and is as simple as sitting down and having a brainstorming session.
Whether it would a business that makes clothing items for pets, or a business that provides knitting lessons to their customers, the subject is indifferent as the possibilities are endless.
After closing in on a subject of your business during a brainstorming session with or without your partners, the next steps are important, as it concerns more closely with the actual starting up a business.
The important thing to have in mind is to focus on creating a service that will be similar to the business of other, successful and big companies, but at the same time making the service as simple as possible.
Creating a simple service might sound baffling and strange in the beginning, as there is no clear definition of what a simple service actually is, but there are a few guidelines you should follow.
For achieving simple service, you need to ask yourself these questions: Who is in need of your service? What is unique about your service? Why is your service better than the services offered by your competitors?
The “who” question mentioned above is all about finding out who is your target audience and what are their assigned characteristics. This is needed in order to plan your marketing campaign.
Nowadays, you can easily make an online survey and put on different regular or social media sites and see the interest particular people have in your niche product.
When the results come in, you will easily see which people would be interested in your product, and adjust your marketing campaigns accordingly. There is a great number of ways to advertise a product, you should choose carefully before committing fully.
Finding what is unique to your new niche business is important for one, simple reason, and that reason, as you possibly might have guessed, is to jump out of the sea of similar products.
It is not of great importance whether it is a pen for lefties or a doggy sweater made of natural fibers, have something that will not be a simple drop in the sea, but a ripple that will be seen by everybody.
Finally, as for why is your service better, the first entry should be because you are a small business and that you know your customers and care for them. Other steps will evolve naturally over a certain period and you will know what more to add.
Next in line is crafting your niche market. This is done simply by analyzing your environment and concluding what they are lacking and in dire need of.
If you already have in mind what your niche market is, then think about the ways you can serve them better, and visualize solutions to the problem of why they have been underserved for so long.
The company that has best analyzed and used their niche market is a clothing company called Threadless, which uses online competitions that attract artists to design shirts. The artists receive financial prizes, while niche audience receives interesting clothing items.
With all these pieces of data that you have acquired, you can slowly start opening a place that you can call your own, niche business, but that is not the end of the preparation phase.
After the data collection ends, your next mission should be to present yourself as the best in your niche field. Even though that may backfire in the way of being all talk and no action, you should focus on a few things.
Firstly and most importantly is to show your customers that you care about providing your customers with the best service and making them as happy with your products as possible.
Secondly, try and be transparent about your business practices and your plans for the future of the business. They will feel like a part of your family and may offer their useful opinion on certain subjects that you can use.
Finally, try to have a pulse on the customers, in the meaning of always innovating and providing them with products that they will actually need. The key is to build a loyal customer base.
Remember to always innovate and experiment with your business. See what other companies are doing well and improve upon it, or doing bad and abolish these kinds of practices.
See what works and slowly build upon that practice, simply see the things you do well and try to make them even better. Listen to your customers’ feedback and constantly be in the state of improvement and betterment.
WHAT IS MY ROLE NOW THAT I HAVE OPENED A NICHE BUSINESS?
As you have entered the role of a new business owner and an entrepreneur, there are a few things you have to start thinking about.
First and foremost, you should try and develop characteristics that will help you develop your business further and help you not feel burned out.
It is given that you have to be a persevering person. Perseverance is important, as in any other business, you will come across a huge wall that you will have to break through.
Perseverance will help you to not be frightened away by this wall, but find a way to either go through it or climb over it.
Continuing further, another situation that you should put yourself in is a challenging one. Being in a challenging situation will make you always think of possible solutions that will help you overcome it.
This is important as you always learn from difficult situations and build your experience for a future obstacle that you might stumble upon.
Another trait of great importance is to be passionate. Without passion, there will be no innovation or progression. Without passion, you will see it as a job that you cannot wait to finish and take a break from it.
The next trait that you should possess is activeness. Activeness, in the sense of being always in the know and on the move for the betterment of your business, trying to bring in new customers, partners, and products.
Presenting yourself as a man of action is extremely important to the people surrounding you, whether those people are customers, your business partners, or colleagues, it is unimportant.
And the final essential trait that you should have is the right attitude. Do not fall into despair if you hit an obstacle that seems insurmountable to you. Do not become pessimistic if you see the earning figures for the month.
The right attitude will make a difference in testing times, so be sure to change your attitude into a more analytical and optimistic view, rather than a worrying and pessimistic one.
A couple of more pieces of advice for you: believe in yourself. Do not let anyone or anything put you into a state of mind where you question yourself or your actions.
It was your vision to open a particular business and you have taken all the steps to make that a reality. And you will have done that solely through your believing in yourself and your vision.
Remember to learn from your mistakes, as well. Let us be real, everybody makes mistakes, no matter their work position or intent. It is not the mistake that is important in this case.
What is important is the lesson you will learn from that mistake. Do not let it break you, but make you a more experienced worker that will learn from it and be ready for the next mistake that might befall you.
There are a lot of ways in which you can become a better entrepreneur, you have been shown some essential traits and characteristics that you should work on, if you wish to learn more about others, give the above article a read.
KEY FACTORS FOR NICHE CRAFTING
To shift focus from the traits into something equally important and closely linked to your particular niche business. It is of great importance to continuously master your particular niche.
It is not important how much you are talented for your particular niche, or how much you think you have mastered and got to the gist of your niche, there is always room for improvement.
You can “master your niche” in several ways: Firstly, you can see whether there is something that you can use to lure more people to your product, by adding something to it or similar.
Secondly, you can observe and do a reconnaissance of other similar businesses, and alter some of their ideas in order to assign them to your business.
Finally, market yourself like it is the last thing you can do. Hand out cards and pamphlets, hire a web designer to make you a good-looking website, open a business social media accounts and promote them, use everything at your disposal to make your business seen by everybody.
Just opening your business is not the final step, there are a lot of things that you should do to make that new niche business of yours into a successful business.
FREQUENT PROBLEMS YOU MIGHT COME ACROSS
While thinking about opening a niche business in your area is not difficult, there are some problems or conundrums that might pop up during your journey to fulfilling the niche business dream of yours.
In this part of the article, there will be a few frequent problems that sometimes arise during or after the preparation period of a successful niche business.
Have in mind, all business, especially niche ones, have had their share of problems, so do not get discouraged if something similar happens to you, as well.
The first common problem is not being able to find a niche that could be used as a business. There are a few solutions to this kind of problem.
The first rule should be to choose something that you know and are passionate about. If you fully comprehend your niche and your potential customers, then your service is already at a high place.
The second rule is to see whether there is a market for such a niche business in your area. It would be much easier if you are certain that people are willing to spend their money on your niche business products.
Additionally, this article helps a great deal about finding your niche, you can browse the catalog for research purposes on the Etsy website.
Etsy is an online store that offers different catalogs of niche products, such as handcrafted soaps, socks, and similar things, which you can use to see what people are interested in.
Finally, sometimes people succeed in making their favorite hobby into a business. Even though difficult, it is not entirely impossible to make it into a business.
If you wonder how to do that, this article will provide a few guidelines, if you have a crafting hobby, but even if you do not, you can find a lot of useful and detailed tips on opening a small business.
The second problem that might come up is that your business is not going well. This is a common problem that usually pops up in the beginning.
Give it a bit of time. Maybe you are on a temporary uphill walk that is yet to reach the peak. There is no need to worry about such an occurrence.
If you wish to act, then the best thing is to promote your business a bit more. As previously mentioned in the article, hand out pamphlets or make online advertisements about your business.
The more serious move is to rethink your promotional or business strategies. Maybe your prices are too steep, or your advertisements are not catchy enough, or your website is a complicated mess.
There are a lot of useful things you can do if you are thinking your business is not going or starting well, but you must not desist.
The third problem which is the most difficult one is that you may be overwhelmed by a large company that offers similar products.
This one is the toughest and the most mentally exhausting problem that might happen. There is no definite solution to this problem, except for offering some kind of incentive to your customers for putting their trust in your business.
Attracting the attention of a bigger company with a bigger budget is not always the end of the world, but it is not a thing you can solve overnight.
The best solution here is to talk with your customers and cater to their needs and go for the “smaller business with a big heart” approach.
Show them that you know each and every one of your customers, that you do not see them like a dollar sign, but as a human being whose needs you cover with your products. Be a friend to them, as simple as that.
Another problem may be the smaller income due to the smaller size of your niche audience, the solution being to broaden your niche offers to an audience within a similar niche.
For example, a business for air filtration systems, and add scented candles or water filtration devices, all falling under a “healthy lifestyle” umbrella.
Problems, however, are an essential part of every business, they are unavoidable and inevitable, altogether.
The best course of action is to simply accept that they will happen and that they will make you a better business person in the long run.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, niche businesses have been blooming lately, with a lot of great examples of opening and having a sustainable business.
Even though it does sound scary to open a niche business and successfully maintain it, it can also be a great way to cash in your hobbies, and be passionate about your job.
Fortunately for you, the popularity and rise of the internet have brought to life various needs that many people have, so it is a bit easier to test the market for that one perfect business that a certain area lacks.
You can also very easily survey the opinion of the people about your potential business, and possible improvements that they wish to see in your existing business.
Remember to research what the potential customers need, and if it is possible to open a business to give them access to their needs.
Remember to always strive for improvement, even if you think that your job is done due to your niche being successfully opened, your skill-honing and job is not done.
Finally, remember that problems are normal in businesses, especially in niche and smaller ones, so you should definitely not be discouraged if you encounter them on your journey.
All in all, niche businesses are here to stay and their possibilities are endless, as long as their owners are passionate, persistent, and willing to improve, they will surely be successful
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