If you're racking your brains to choose products and don't know what to start with, it's better to look for them from the niche market. There are many niche products in the market, which can be further subdivided. The key is to make sure that you are in control of the niche and that there are enough active audiences in the niche.
In this paper, we will mainly give the seller what is the niche market, and how to find their own niche market.
What is a niche market?
Niche market is a part of the market, but it has unique consumer needs, preferences and characteristics, and can also be recognized by consumers.
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For example, in the big market of women's shoes, such as women's shoes made of non animal fur, large size shoes, nurses' shoes and shoes suitable for transgender people are their niche markets. In other words, niche market is a more special and subdivided market.
Almost every market can be further refined or differentiated according to specific needs and preferences. To determine whether it is a niche market, we can usually judge by the following points:
- Price (luxury, medium, discount)
- Consumer characteristics (gender, age, income level, education level)
- Quality (high quality, handmade, economical)
- Psychology (values, interests, attitudes)
- Geographical characteristics (residents of a country, city or even community)
Focusing on niche market can better serve specific consumer groups, and the competition will not be so fierce compared with expanding the market.
If you have some trend products in mind, you can start from the niche market and dig for niche products with market demand. Now, let's take a look at how others find a niche market, and how you can find a niche market yourself.
Looking for niche market examples - From the perspective of consumer cognition
Sustainable development has become a hot topic for consumers recently. According to a survey by Nielsen, a well-known global market monitoring company, 48% of American consumers say that if they can reduce the harm to the environment, they are likely or absolutely will change their consumption habits. The rise of these thoughtful and cognitive consumers paves the way for zero cruelty, no animal experiments, and environmentally friendly products. If there is a product that is often purchased in the mass market, there is likely to be a niche market - a market where consumers prefer green products.
Nowadays, most consumers are concerned about the source and production mode of products. Therefore, bee's wrap is trying to replace traditional plastic packaging with environmentally friendly packaging made of beeswax. This is not only environmentally friendly, for consumers, environmentally friendly packaging bags can not only be reused, but also save more money.
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More examples of product ideas:
Reusable straw
Zero cruelty cosmetics
Clothes made of non animal fur
Menstrual cup - From the perspective of pet owners
In the United States alone, total pet industry spending is expected to reach $75.38 billion in 2019. In this market, there are many opportunities to develop the niche market. We can start from the pet variety, owner style and other aspects.
Example: Patricia's Couture has opened up its own niche in this market. They sell custom-made gowns, pillows, pajamas, blankets, and other items that can be pasted with pictures of pets.
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Although most people keep fish, cats and dogs as pets, some people keep special pets, such as horses, lizards and turtles, and some even raise chickens as pets. The niche market of these pets can be considered.
More niche product ideas:
Pet monitoring camera can monitor and interact with pets when you go out
Pet locator
Customized products with pet photos
Natural pet food and snacks
Pets and clothes - From the perspective of LGBTQ + group
Let's briefly explain what LGBTQ + is, collectively referred to as non heterosexual.
50: Lesbians - Lesbian
G: Gay
B: Bisexuals
T: Transgender - transgender
Q: Queer: a person with gender identity disorder
LGBTQ + group is large in scale, and rainbow color is their logo color. They are relatively small, and their demand is relatively unique, so their consumption habits are also relatively unique.
According to Nielsen, a market research firm, they shop 10% more frequently than the average American consumer, and they are willing to spend 7% more.
Example: tomboy x, a underwear brand, started from this market. It started as a T-shirt brand, but its founders found an opportunity to cater to the needs of specific consumer groups, that is, the LGBTQ group can also wear the right underwear.
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More niche product ideas:
Cosmetics designed for specific skin types
Products that can arouse group awareness
Customized clothing for specific body shape - From the perspective of tourism industry
In 2018, the sales volume of the tourism industry increased by more than 10%, reaching a total of US $694.41 billion. Coupled with the lower cost of air travel in the past 30 years, consumers' attitude towards travel is also changing. They are more and more environmentally conscious. According to booking.com, a travel e-commerce company, more than half of people want to choose environmentally friendly accommodation, but it's hard to find.
This demand gap provides a great opportunity for brands to start offering eco-friendly products. Passengers want more than "green" products. They also want to truly experience local customs and plan long-term travel.
According to CNN, by 2020, nearly half of the workforce in the UK and the United States will be self-employed, with at least 40% more children educated at home in 2017 than in 2014. So more people will travel and travel longer, especially telecommuters.
Example: nomadic is a travel bag brand, focusing on practical. You can see that from their products to copywriting, and the whole business, they reflect the audience they care about.
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More niche product ideas:
Smart phone accessories for travel bloggers
Provide practical and comfortable sports leisure bag for people who often fly
Hand held maps for people who like to collect travel experiences - From a gamer's point of view
Gamer is a general word, it includes: hand game player, computer game player, game player, desktop game player and so on. There are more than 2.3 billion active gamers in the world, and nearly half of them spend their money on their hobbies. The total value of the game industry in 2018 was $137.9 billion.
As a result, shazim Mohammad has opened an online store, glorious PC gaming race, which specializes in providing products for computer game players. Now, the store has made millions of years.
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Mobile games, in particular, account for 91% of the market share. In addition, there are more female players in the market, and the trend is still rising. Even in the mobile game category, you can subdivide it according to the popular types (such as first person shooting games) or game console (such as Nintendo game console).
More niche product ideas:
Provide humanized products for playing games for a long time (e.g. handle, e-chair, anti blue light glasses)
Personalized decoration of game handle, etc
Game culture T-shirt
Provide mobile phone accessories for mobile game players - From the perspective of property rights
Housing property rights are constantly changing, and the proportion of people who own homes in the United States is also declining. There are many reasons for this situation, such as the rising cost of living and wages can not keep up.
In addition, the definition of landlord has changed. With the emergence of aibiying and VRBO shared housing services, houses are more used to share rent and investment, thus generating passive income.
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The brand of August has grasped the trend, providing corresponding services for landlords, introducing keyless door locks and security monitoring products. One of the main functions is guest access. The landlord can set the tenant access time.
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More niche product ideas:
Family safety camera (home, doorbell, smart home devices, etc.)
Furniture / home decoration of small apartment
Furniture for rent (e.g. blinds without holes) - From the perspective of telecommuting mode
The rise of telecommuting mode is largely due to two aspects: the emergence of more and more freelancers and more companies accepting team work.
There are many reasons for this phenomenon. Firstly, telecommuting can improve job satisfaction and efficiency. Employees are also more involved, doubling the likelihood of working more than 40 hours a week. The self-employed usually want more freedom and harmony between life and family.
As a result, Freelander at work launched a service for this niche. They sell laptop stickers so that telecommuters can advertise their expertise at any time.Remembering the purpose and lifestyle of these teleworkers can help you come up with product ideas to meet the needs of them and their employers.
More niche product ideas:
Desk decorations
Home office decoration
Notebook accessories for people who like to work in a coffee shop - From the perspective of local consumers
Even the world's largest brands will be local marketing, advertising. They are scrambling to grab local customers to support doing business there.
But if you only sell online, it can be difficult to "brush presence" locally. However, e-commerce sellers can conduct business by treating their city or country as a niche market.
Peace collective, for example, is a clothing company founded in Toronto, but the brand has expanded enough to attract all Canadians and fans of various NBA teams.
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More niche product ideas:
T-shirt with specific culture or city slogan
A design or photo album of a city landscape
How to find your own niche market
Niche market ⊆ big market. Whether it is for novice sellers or veteran sellers, when selecting products, they should start from the big market first, and then slowly dig deep into the subdivision categories. This helps:
Determine the characteristics of subdivided products
Understand product price range
Grasp the quality of production
Determine brand positioning
Formulate corresponding marketing strategies
Choose niche markets that give you a competitive advantage in the first place. If there are many sellers in the category or market you choose, you will face a "fight". Focusing on niche markets will help you avoid this "scuffle". It's not that you have to sell completely different products, but that you have to focus on more special products in the market.
There is not only one way to find a niche market. Here are several ways to find a niche market:
- Use Google search
The best way to choose products is to refer to what kind of products other sellers are selling, or what kind of consumer groups they are selling. How to get a reference?
It is recommended that sellers use Google to search.
For example, if you search Google with "zero cruelty cosmetics" as the starting point, as shown in the figure below, you will see many words like "vegan skincare" and "not tested on animals". You can start from this.
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Keep trying to find product trends from different perspectives until you find products that can meet the needs of minority consumers. Even if there are competitors in the niche, you can subdivide the audience and increase your competitive advantage. - Create mind map
There is an entry point, but can't think of a product concept? Try creating a mind map. Brain, pen and action, mind map can help us to construct what we think more intuitively and spread our thinking. There are thousands of roads. You can choose which one you want to take.
Text2mindmap, a tool for creating mind maps, can be edited online for free.
Here's a mind map based on zero cruelty make up:
Image title - Refer to Google recommended search terms
As we all know, in the Google search box has not fully entered keywords, the bottom will appear automatically recommend search terms. These are the most relevant search terms calculated by Google algorithm, and you can use them to find your niche category.
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Google will only display a few recommended content, and collect and organize all the search content suggested by Google with the help of keyword tool or answer the public.
In the keyword tool, enter cry free. There may be potential products you want in the result. Here are some examples of the results:
Image title - In depth study of key words
The method of in-depth research on keywords, that is, through keyword research tools, such as Google keyword planner launched by Google ads, keyword research tools are more advanced and customizable than the keywords recommended by Google.
To use this tool, you need to have a Google ads account (which you can sign up for free). After logging in to the account, select tools from the top menu and then keyword planner.
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After entering the keyword planner, enter the keywords you want to view in the search box and view the results. You can set the position in the left navigation bar to make sure the target position is covered. You can also add filtering criteria, delete registered brand keywords, and view other recommended search terms.
Through these search results, you can have a good understanding of the potential niche related to the initial search term, and sometimes you may even need to consider some popular special products. Try to enter various keywords. If you don't have a Google ads account, you can download a keywords everywhere browser plug-in and view the search volume directly on the Google search results page. - Search for active communities Online
It's easy for Internet users to form a community based on common interests, passions and hobbies, that is, a niche market.
According to the characteristics of your product, find the community to which it belongs, or find the potential community, through the following ways:
Wikipedia: Search "hobbies" to screen out the most visited pages;
Reddit: mining the most active subreddits (sub sections), looking for active users and watching what they are discussing;
Follow the topic tags on instagram and twitter, such as vegansofig or vegancommunity.
How to evaluate the niche market
Now that you've decided what to sell, you need to make sure that someone buys your product.
In a niche market, it's not difficult to persuade the audience to buy your product, but you have to make sure that the audience base in the market is large enough, otherwise, you have to consider repositioning the audience or simply changing the product.
Even if you develop well in the niche market in the early days, the market is changing, and you need to constantly improve and adjust your market positioning. If necessary, new products need to be launched in the product line.
Here's how to evaluate the niche market:
First, build an audience. The advertising series of KickStarter (overseas crowdfunding platform) caused a sensation and attention before product development. It's not suitable for you, but you can introduce it to the audience and attract attention through licensed e-mail marketing, social media advertising or other online promotion strategies before your idea is realized. In this way, you will be able to harvest a number of potential customers, who are likely to buy your new product after you launch it.
Testing before investment. First, we make a small batch of products and launch advertising series to the target audience. Ask for feedback from the first batch of customers who buy your new product, or send the product to some online celebrities to ask for their opinions. The earlier you get feedback, the better, so you can improve before you go into production.
Dig deep into the niche market. Keyword research, after determining the niche market, you can also dig deeper into your niche market. Gain deeper market insight from niche related blogs, social media, online celebrities and other key channels.
Study the trend of market consumption. Market research tools like Facebook IQ and think with Google, as well as Nielsen's consumer research information, help sellers understand consumers' pain points, needs and unexpected trends. Set keywords, subscribe to Google Alerts, and regularly monitor social media messages for the latest trends.
When actually promoting your product, remember the needs and commonalities of a specific audience. What's the difference between this niche market and the big market? How can you meet the needs and preferences of specific consumers?
Understand the unique needs of each niche market so you can reach a specific audience directly when promoting your product. Communicate to the audience that your product is specifically designed for them and that your product is more likely to get their attention.