Which niche should you go after first? Part 2 of 3

Don't go launch your product to the "market," launch it to the perfect "niche"  

After the post on identifying your perfect customer, I am hoping you actually physically made a list of the various subgroups of people that might be interested in your product.  When I'm doing this exercise, I devote a page in a notebook to each one. 

Marketing budgets are limited, so you can't go after them all at once.  Which one should you go after first? 

In the last post, we focused a lot on the small things that separate the market into certain groups.  We talked about the people and their pain points.  Now let's see how crowded each niche market is.

Focus on one niche market and identify the competition situation in each. 

Identify the competition situation within each of these niches:

1) What options for solving their problem do the members of this niche have currently?  

*Keep in mind these options are your competition ONLY if members of the niche actually see the competing product.  If there is a solution to one of their pain points out there, but it's not being pushed on them, don't count it.

Is there anything else in this niche market that solves the problem you're trying to solve? 

Are you the only company with this solution in this niche market?  

If you're a member of the niche market, this will probably be easy.   If you aren't a member of this niche market, you might need to do some research.  Ask friends and colleagues who might be part of that other niche about this.  Don't just rely on blogs and intuition for this one.  Do your research.  

2) How much do members of this niche currently pay for competing products or services?

How much would they pay to be rid of that pain point?  Notice I'm not saying how much would they pay for your solution.  Remember that the consumer really only wants the solution you present, not the product or service itself. 

Again, being part of the niche will make answering this question a lot easier.  Use your network to find the answer if you're not part of this particular niche market. 

3) How do those competing products or services market to this niche?

Are they at trade shows?

Do they rely on word of mouth?

Do they use Facebook or trade publications?

Do they market directly to the consumer? 

4) How much would it cost to just get in touch with the connectors in this market?

Marketing to connectors is usually a great way to make your money go further, if you can get a hold of them easily.
Do the connectors all read the same magazine?  How much would it cost to get an ad in there?

How else are those connectors connected?

Marketing isn't free and the price can vary widely depending on the type of marketing you're considering. Give it hard look and get some ballpark figures before making your decision. 

Go ahead.  Write it down.  This is not the kind of exercise you can do in your head

Once it's written down, you can refer to it going forward. 

Next time, we'll put this information together with the niche info and bundle it into an equation of sorts that takes into account the amount of customers each niche has and the cost of marketing to each niche.

Questions? Comments? Feedback?  Did I miss something? Does this ring true for you?  Let me know!

Did you miss Part 1?

Go to the last part of this series with Part 3