Selling Unique Products - The Holy Grail of online retail, Define your marketing niche in 6 simple steps

Step 1. Make a List of What You Do Best

The best business is going to come from a stirring up your own passion. Take a look at what you have succeeded at in your past and take a look at the skills implicit in each of your successes. Identify patterns and take inventory of your skills. This will reveal your priorities and business focus. Another way to do this is to look at your failures, and find important lessons from which you can learn. By taking this intrinsic approach, you will be able to better narrow down your niche market based upon your past experiences. Everyone feels good when they perform well in the area of their natural talents. This is where you have a competitive advantage to perform better than anyone else.

Step 2. Focus on What You Want to Sell

Narrowing down what specifically you want to sell to your buyers will help you to define your marketing niche. A retail Cosmetics and Beauty store is not a niche, but a field in which you will work in. An example of a niche within this field would be “At-Home Teeth Whitening”. Narrow your field down to be more specific.

Step 3. Identify Important Industry Trends

There are several ways to find out trends in the industry of which you’d like to sell in.

One way to get started is to...

Google it! If you want to start selling in the “At-Home Teeth Whitening” industry, try Googling “Teeth Whitening trends.” You’ll be surprised how this quick and easy action can teach you a lot about the industry. Look for trends on social media. Social media is where your audience lives, and it gives you insight into what they want and love. Be aware that trending topics are not necessarily trends. They are simply just a topic that everyone is talking about at a certain time.

Step 4. Define Your Ideal buyer

Rather than choosing a broad category, narrow your target buyer down with the following specifications: gender, ethnicity, age, geographical location, hobbies, familial status, political affiliations, occupation, income, etc. If you are appealing to another business, focus on its geographic location, revenue, size, or other industry-related information. By narrowing down your ideal Buyer you’ll have a better idea on how you can market specifically to future Buyers.

Step 5. Differentiate Your Brand

Successful brands have differentiating factors that set them apart from their competitors. Take a look at what really makes your product different from other products out there on the market. Does it solve a problem that no other product solves? Is there a need in your ideal Buyers’ life that is not being fulfilled? Present unique attributes that set you apart from your competitors.

Step 6. Integrate Your Ideas to Create Something New

By this point, you should be getting a pretty good idea of what you will be selling and to whom you will be selling. This is the stage where you should start to shape your product, your passions, and your buyers’ needs to create something new and different. Essentially, you will be defining your niche. Take a circular process to steps 1 through 5 by refining your niche until you have a good sense of to whom you want to sell, what you want to sell, and how you want to sell it.

While it is important to be specific when defining your niche, you will not want to box yourself into a corner with your brand definition. Remember that going through the cycle is an important process and that your brand definition can be refined as you learn new things about your niche.

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It is also worth noting - new business who define and start out with niche marketing do better as start-up businesses. Once you have succeeded at the first step - you can then build on top of that success more quickly when expanding and adding to your business.