What is Your Marketing DNA? (Part III of IV)

So we’ve tackled the Differentiation component of your Marketing DNA. This post deals with your Niche. Just like the previous post, we’ll look at four areas: what it is, why it is important, how to find a niche and who is doing well with their niche.

1) What is a Niche?

A marketing niche is nothing more than the relationship of a business to its surroundings. If a business is in an environment with many resources and few competitors, the business can find success. Conversely, an environment with few resources and many competitors can make success difficult. Thus, a business must find the right environment.

My recommendation to most businesses is to first identify the niche, then develop the product or service. Start first by figuring out what niches need solutions and how you or your business can provide the needed solutions. This same principle can be used with existing businesses: really dig into the area that needs the solutions the most and design your product or service to meet those needs.

2) Why is a Niche important?

Selecting the right niche is the essence of survival and sustainability. I liken the importance of selecting the right niche to the importance of selecting the right battlefield. Marketing is often compared to a military struggle with words like campaigns, tactics, objectives and initiatives. With this analogy, the niche is the place in which the battle will take place. Bring a knife to a gun fight and you’re in trouble. But bring the right weapon (i.e. product or service) into the right battlefield (i.e. marketplace), and success is imminent.

Another useful analogy to illustrate the importance of finding the right niche is fishing. A fisher will choose the right bait to attract the right fish and he or she wouldn’t bring a fly rod on a deep sea fishing boat. Yet so many businesses do exactly that. They are so convinced their product or service can work for anything, they forget to think about who they need to attract. They then blast their message everywhere and wonder where the fish are. Focus on one niche, do it well, and your business will boom. The riches are in the niches, as they say.

3) How do you Niche?

There are many ways to focus on a niche. Here are just a few:
· Start with the End in Mind: think first about the target and then design a product or service for that target. Many businesses do just the opposite: they have a product or service designed first and they only later think if the market needs it.
· Look Beyond the Mirror: too many business owners think, “we’ll I like this so everyone else must like it.” That is rarely the path to success. Look beyond the mirror to see of others see what you see. Watch and observe over time.
· Specialize: similar to differentiation, specialization makes your business a niche magnet. There are many ways to specialize, but the more a business focuses on one core competitive advantage that is better and different than others, the more the business will grow.

4) Who focuses on a Niche well?

Lots of businesses excel at serving niches. Here are a few:
· Global Powerhouse: Amazon.com. Amazon started with one sole focus: books. This one platform led Amazon into different niches, but don’t forget that Amazon first gained success by focusing strictly on books.
· Regional Superstar: Clif Bar. The entire marketing strategy at Clif Bar is focused on connecting with its outdoorsy, health-conscious and active niche. Clif Bar sponsors events, athletes and other initiatives to allow it to connect to its niche extremely successfully.
· Local Hero: Nuts 4 Nuts. Luis Martinez was just a Chilean immigrant in NYC. He started selling honey-roasted nuts on a street corner and turned his local cart into an international sensation. Now with over 200 carts in NYC, Santiago and plans to go to Italy, Spain and Germany, Nuts 4 Nuts still remains focused on one product and one niche.

Differentiation is the first component of your Marketing DNA. Niche is the second. Tune into the final Marketing DNA post to learn more about Add-value.