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Hey Brandi,
What is a Niche Market?

A niche market is simply a focused definition of who you’re selling to. For example, NFL Red Zone reaches the niche market of NFL super-fans. Layne Bryant targets women professional women who wear sizes 14-26 with contemporary and trendy styles.

For many of us, it’s really hard to define our niche market. We don’t want to limit our customer base – isn’t the point to sell to as many people as we can?

Unfortunately, when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. Imagine if NFL Red Zone also wanted to reach hockey fans, basketball fans, soccer fans, tennis fans, basketball fans, and golf fans? They’d lose the attention of their core fan base – but probably wouldn’t attract the premium fans for the other sports either.

So how do you define your niche market?

If you have existing customers, look at what they have in common. Are they in the same geographic area? Primarily women or men? How did they find you?

If you’re just getting started, it may take a bit more creativity. There are some elements that may be obvious (like if you’re selling specialty leggings, you’re probably marketing to a predominantly female audience), while others can take more research. Some basic questions to consider:

• Am I selling to a consumer or a business?
• Is my customer male or female?
• Why are they buying my product? To solve a problem? Social status? Something else?
• How do they research for products like yours? Word of mouth? Google search?

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