How to Define Your Niche and Ideal Clients
Do you have a general idea of what you want to sell or which of your skills you want to offer to the world? That’s excellent!! But who do you want to sell to or more important who do you think will actually pay you?
Before you can answer this you will need to start doing some research. You will need to decide who you are going to be selling to and create what is called a Niche. A niche defines your special part of the great big global market place. Since you are location independent, the world is your market!! This has its advantages but you can’t possibly sell to everyone.
Understanding who you’re selling to will also help you decide how to sell and which message to use when you sell and how to phrase it. Imagine you want to sell apples. First of all you have to think about what kind of apples you’re selling. Meaning you have to have to be very clear on what you’re selling, this is called your offer. Now the apples that you are selling are excellent for making apple pie. They have the perfect texture for apple pie. When baking they don’t fall apart, they keep their firmness but are soft enough for a juicy bite of apple pie. They also have the perfect ratio of sweet and sour which makes any apple pie that is baked with your apple the most tasty one people could possible buy.
Sounds like we’ve already decided on what were selling and how we could convince people to buy. Now that you know what you’re selling and why it’s such a wonderful product you need to decide who you are going to sell to. A wild guess would lead me to conclude that these apples will most likely sell to people who make apple pies.
So there you have it, your Niche: people who make apple pies
If only it were that simple, we still need to find who exactly these people are, where we can find them and how we can communicate with them.
We need to start asking questions like: in which countries do they make apple pie? Are there other dishes like apple pie that can be made from the same type of apples? Do I know people who make apple pies, who are they and how old are they? Far be it, from us to assume that in this day and age only women make apple pie? Are these people individuals or are they small or large businesses?
It’s probably getting clear to you that there are a lot of questions you need to ask yourself before you can define your Niche market.
It is also possible that after you’ve defined you’re Niche market and you know exactly who you are selling too you might adjust your product or the packaging of your product or the service you’re offering to suit your Niche market. Creating your offer and defining your Niche go hand in hand.
In order for us to understand who we are going to sell our apples to we have to answer a lot of questions. You will first need to decide if you want to be selling to consumers or to businesses. If you are selling to businesses, then you have to analyze the business types otherwise you have to analyze the direct consumers.
The type of questions we need to ask and answer to determine our Niche market can be divided into two different categories. The demographics and the psychographics.
In the demographics we want to know where they are and what their life is like:
Age, Geographical Location, Gender, Income level, Education level, Marital or family status, Occupation, Ethnic background
In the psychographics we want to know how they think and act:
Personality, Attitudes, Values, Interests/hobbies, Lifestyles, Behaviour
Now you know a little bit more about who is going to buy you’re apples and how they think. There are still more questions to ask to go a little deeper and decide of there are any alterations necessary to your product or services or if you have to adjust your original Niche market.
Narrowing Down Your Niche Market
From your initial analyses you have to decide if there are enough people who will fit your criteria. You want to sell enough apples so you can make a living, are there enough people in your Niche market for you to do so. Or do you need to offer another product or service so you can make enough of a profit. Do you need to not only sell apples that are fit for making apple pie but also sell the apple pie recipe that requires the use of your unique perfect apple?
Another thing you have to consider is what the need or demand is in your Niche market. What problem do they want a new seller to solve for them, what are they missing? Either they are already buying an alternative product at the moment or maybe they aren’t even aware that an apple as perfect as yours exists. You have to decide how you are going to solve their problem or how you are will make them aware that they have a need they didn’t know about.
You also need to know where you can reach your Niche market. Since you want a location independent lifestyle you will not have a physical shop or office. How will you reach your target market? Where are they shopping? Do you want people to buy directly from your website? If so, where are you going to find them so you can make them aware of your offer. You will need to know where to advertise.
In order to sell your apple pie perfect apples you will need to have an answer to all of these questions and once you’ve defined your Niche market your offer and marketing strategy will also start falling into place.