If you are a small business owner or a solopreneur, narrowing your business down to a niche can actually boost your business. It sounds crazy, but getting really good at delivering a small number of specialized products or services to like-minded customers can improve your business.
How to start in a niche
It helps if you choose a niche that you already know a great deal about. Your objective is to establish yourself as an expert, the go-to guy for your customers. If you are just starting out, choose a niche where you know what that market needs. You should know prominent people in the niche already, and they should know you.
If you are not an expert in the niche you are considering, then make sure you have a strong interest. With enough interest in a specialty market, you can teach yourself to become an expert. Read widely about the niche. Join a Facebook group. Read about and research topics that arise.
In the group, you will soon learn who the recognized experts are. Follow them online, go to conferences they attend, and introduce yourself to them. While at the conference, mingle with other conference goers as well. Learn what their key issues are. What are the burning problems that members of this group face? If you are actively involved at just one conference, you can gain enough insight to launch your niche business. Remain connected to the experts, exchange viewpoints, and share your research. Work hard to become a peer.
How to grow your niche business
Learn to use digital marketing and create a modest website. You don’t need to start your website with 30 pages. You just need a home page, an about page, a blog page, and a landing page. Begin writing blog posts. If you have little or no experience in blogging, start by creating 400- to 500-word blogs. Make sure your posts are on subject for your niche and provide value to your readers. That is more important than length. Your blog lengths will grow to 800 to 1,000 words over time as you find you have more to say.
Begin building an email list before your website goes live. Start with friends and relatives. Send them a note that says simply, “I’m starting to write about collecting antique coffee cups (or whatever works with your niche). Want to join me?” Start your list and nurture it by providing helpful information. Carefully and tactfully invite members of your Facebook group to join your email list when you have enough quality posts. When you have posted four or five blogs, publish a landing page inviting blog visitors to join your email list.
How to use social media to promote your niche business
Never try to sell your products or services on your social media page. Use this social media as a way to inform, comment on other posts or pose questions that you might use as material for your blog. People visit social media pages to be entertained … so entertain them. Some example social media posts include behind-the-scenes posts, employee spotlights, fundraisers your business is participating in, etc.
Always include an image that will attract attention to your post, and try posting at least three times a week. Link one of those posts to a specific blog post on your website. When your Facebook visitor clicks on this link, he will be taken to your website and given an opportunity to read your post and join your email list.
Use surveys to keep your message relevant
One of the dangers of serving a niche market is to allow your emphasis to stray. Your niche might be an online coffee subscription business. You cover all of the interesting things you can think about coffee and find your blogs start to stray. One post covers “How to find the best scones to enjoy with your coffee.” You continue down the scone path for a couple of blogs and see your traffic start to fall off. My example is simplistic and in this case, you would quickly get back to coffee, but there may be times where it is more subtle.
There may be new issues in your niche that are arriving on your customers’ radar. Open-ended questions can identify those issues, give you more topics to write about, and with research, help you retain your reputation as the niche expert. Survey Monkey is a well-known survey tool that can help you poll your readers about what they would like to learn.
Use Google Analytics to monitor your visitors
If you haven’t worked with Google Analytics, you should learn about it shortly after you establish your website. It can tell you:
- How many visitors came to your website
- How you acquired them
- Where they live by country
- What pages of your website they visited
- How long they stayed on a page
- What devices they used when viewing your site
- Their demographics like age, gender, interests
- And much more
Most businesses are people businesses and you should truly strive to serve your niche customers. Your reputation will grow by word-of-mouth and the best customers are those that are referred. Within six months, you will know how large you can grow your niche business. If you need to expand, with six months under your belt you may find another related niche that you can easily move into.
If you’d like to market your niche business, contact Kinyx today. We provide everything from web design and SEO to content marketing and social media marketing. You can reach us at 404-937-1987 or info@localmaxx.com.