Posts Tagged: Niche Marketing

Authentic Marketing / Marketing 101 / Trust — No Comments
4
May 11

How to find a Niche Market?

There are many misconceptions about niche marketing.  Niche marketing is simply creating your own market system. Many service professionals will resist a suggestion that tells them they must restrict the ways in which they offer value to the marketplace.  The good news is that choosing a niche market strategy will do exactly the opposite: it will free you to be the biggest, most authentic, and most complete offer possible.

To summarise, good niche market is one in which:

  • You are highly visible and easily accessible to the people who are most likely to benefit from your services or products, including prospective customers, prospective collaborators and partners, and others with whom value-adding activities are most likely to be mutually beneficial.
  • You can employ the widest range of your talents, skills, and training (your authentic offer.)

A highly targeted niche marketing strategy not only attracts significantly more business but also provides richer opportunities for self expression and natural competitive advantage.

The following questions will help you identify your own market niche:

  • Where do you consistently find people whose values match your own?
  • Where do you feel that you are most credible?
  • Where is there the greatest need coupled with the greatest appreciation for your services or products?
  • What problems do the people have that would cause them to seek your services or products as solutions?
  • Who is naturally drawn to you and to your services or products?
  • Who is beginning the journey that you have successfully walked yourself?
  • Whose language do you speak?
  • Whose concerns can you reliably anticipate and address?
  • Who is it easy for you to serve?

Knowing and working from your strengths are essential parts of developing your niche marketing strategy.  There are probably several ways in which your strengths can add value in the marketplace. Therefore, developing a niche is a process of exploring several possibilities and gradually refining them.

As you refine your market niche, you may experience some anxiety that focusing on your niche will deprive you of needed business. What do you do if someone outside of your niche wants to hire you?  That is a decision you take depending on an assessment of fit and your current working circumstances, but always bearing in mind that it must not divert you from time with your ideal customer market.  The point of a niche is not to confine you, but to create the “healthiest” market system for your business.

Are you looking for an authentic marketing coach to trust, understand and be inspired by? Contact Zenworkz today.

About the author:Teresa Bassham is the Principle of Zenworkz – Authentic Marketing Coaching and helps small businesses be successful authentic marketers; either we do it all for you or coach you to do it yourself.All or parts of this blog are able to be published with permission from the author – provided that the author is acknowledged and a link is given to the original source blog.  This blog is original content influenced by years of experience within the Australian business culture and may not be applicable to other countries business cultures.

 

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Authentic Marketing / Marketing 101 — No Comments
21
Apr 11

Marketing Authentically – Must Do Tips

Teresa BasshamWhat you say actually matters but creating a strong message is not simple!
Authentic Marketing is really about being an excellent communicator. Create a strong message, and then communicate it with confidence so that the people who are in need of your service, can know who you truly are.
Traditional marketing is not dead, as most online marketers would have you believe – but there is a need to integrate both in your authentic marketing.
Barriers to reach the minds of customers are increasing!
Increased noise, choice and increasing customer sophistication is leading to increasing choosiness online.  Customers will grow tired following people on social media, unless what you say matters to them.  As the volume of information online exponentially increases, we will see customers cutting back on attention.
Social media!
Small professional businesses understand that social media is part of an integrated and authentic approach towards promoting their business.  At Zenworkz, we provide a difference through the integration of the authentic marketing planning process – being clear about your values – your business and marketing objectives – your authentic message – your ideal customers – who you want to talk to and how.
Many small businesses know they need to enter the online marketing world but either don’t know where to start or fear the consequences of missing the mark.  That consequence can be wasted effort in time as well as money.
Create a remarkable positioning statement!
It does not matter if your business is online or offline – you need to have a remarkable positioning statement. Your positioning is what you stand for, what you represent.  It is what separates you from all the rest in your field and lends you credibility.  Your positioning is a mixture of your values, your personality, your target audience, and your strong selling points. You can convey your positioning through a website if you are an online business.  What is your positioning? What is your business all about? What makes you stand out? And furthermore – can prospective customers tell what that difference is?
Create a niche marketing strategy, a strong message and stay consistent!
Authentic Marketing and marketing well should be at the core of your business. Although there are many mediums you can use to market yourself, always keep your message consistent and simple. This is especially true if you are a small business and have a tight budget.  While you may definitely want to be all things to all people, a niche market strategy will help you keep your message clear, consistent and cost effective.
Look after and leverage current customers!
It is very easy to forget existing customers while soliciting new ones. Strong, authentic marketing messages will bring you new customers, but the quality of your customer service delivery is what will keep customers coming back; and keep them raving about you.
Measure your marketing efforts!
Marketing is a process, and there are two very important points about this process.
1. It takes time.
2. You must be able to measure results.
One of the most common marketing mistakes small businesses make is that they don’t give their marketing campaign time to really kick in.  Marketing does take time.  It takes time to catch on, and it takes time to reveal results.
More details on Marketing Measurement.  Zenworkz provides a range of tools to help you measure your results.
About the author: Teresa Bassham is the Principle of Zenworkz – Authentic Marketing Coaching and helps small businesses be successful authentic marketers; either we do it all for you or coach you to do it yourself.
All or parts of this blog are able to be published with permission from the author – provided that the author is acknowledged and a link is
given to the original source blog.  This blog is original content influenced by years of experience within the Australian business culture and may not be applicable to other countries business cultures.
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