Marketing Riches in Niches

There are riches in niches. “Small Business Stacey” shares how your small business can build a fence around your herd so they won’t want to do business with anyone else, and how using this formula for finding niches will bring in more business quickly.

Episode Transcript

Today, I want to show you how you can research a niche. Whether you are new in business or you’re already established, it’s really important to dive down and get as deep as you can in finding out what the needs, challenges and problems are of specific subsets of different niches that you can serve. When you do that, you will be having a one-on-one conversation with that person, you’ll build a fence around your herd, and you’ll put more money in your pocket.

There are two tools that you can use that are absolutely free that will help you do this research. The first is Google Trends. If you go to trends.google.com, you can see what’s already trending, but let’s say you want to do some research.

I’m going to look up what’s going on with Hawaiian shirts, so I’m going to type in “Hawaiian shirt.” As you type it, you’ll see that some other terms come up, which give you some insight immediately into other potentially trending topics that you could look into, but I’m going to look at the search term for Hawaiian shirt.

When I open that up, I can see that the term “Hawaiian shirt,” good news, it’s sort of upward trending over time and, yes, there are these downward spikes, but these, this is sort of in December and January when you would expect that type of downward trend in someone looking for a Hawaiian shirt, but, overall, it is trending upwards, so that’s a positive thing.

You can also see where that term is trending. For example, if you want to get really targeted on where you offer your products or services, you can see that 100 is actually the highest score you can get in Google Trends. It’s a very popular search term in the United States, and then, further down on the screen, you can look into related topics, which give you additional research opportunities, but the queries are great to see these are the terms that people are typing in to their search bar to find this thing, this Hawaiian shirt.

The most popular search query is going to be “Hawaiian shirts,” but, as you can see, we could get really more specific and focus on men’s Hawaiian shirts, so that’s even a subset that’s getting more into the niche. If we click on this, we can get even more information. We can see how that search term is trending over time. We can get more information on a specific area. We can look at, again, related topics and perhaps search terms.

Now, if I wanted to get more information on men’s Hawaiian shirts, I could click on that, let’s see what comes up, and we get even more details. As you can see, we’re getting deeper and deeper. We’ve got Hawaiian shirts for men, but we could target men’s Hawaiian shirts in the U.K.

A great niche to focus on, for example, could be men’s Hawaiian shirts that are focused on wedding. A popular search term is people are looking for men’s Hawaiian wedding shirts, and then, of course, there are brands, so, instead of just selling Hawaiian shirts, we can get very specific. We can focus on men’s Hawaiian shirts. We could focus on selling shirts just in the United Kingdom. We could focus on wedding shirts. These are the types of things that people are searching for .

Another tool that I want to share with you is this little site called Amazon. Ever heard of it? Amazon gives you really great information in researching a niche particularly when it comes to finding out the pain points of people in regard to your product.

If I’m looking for what are people finding about Hawaiian shirts, I also like here that it pulls up suggested words so you can kind of also see what people are searching for when it comes to, in regard to that. If I type in “Hawaiian shirt,” there’s Hawaiian shirts for men. There’s Hawaiian shirts for women, for boys, for kids, even for dogs. Did you know that there are Hawaiian shirts for dogs? What a fabulous niche to focus on Hawaiian shirts for dogs. Amazon is a great way to search potential niche opportunities and what’s going on within those niches.

Let’s stay focused on what we were searching on, which was Hawaiian shirts for men. If I pull up all of the Hawaiian shirts, you can see the different brands, all the different shirts, so I’m just going to pick one to show you what I really want you to look at, and that is the customer reviews.

Amazon products get so many reviews, and you may be thinking, “Oh, let’s focus on the ones that have the most positive reviews.” Nope. I want you to do the opposite. I want you to look at the ones that have one and two-star reviews because that’s going to tell you what the pain point is.

If we look at these reviews, you can see that, in general, people are happy with the shirts, and we may not be able to compete in that regard, but if we look at the one-star reviews, what people are unhappy about, you can see they’re really not happy. “I washed this. Waste of money after it arrived. The blue ran into the white so badly, it is now a rag.”

I could focus on this if I have a quality product. I know that this is a problem for people, that we have our shirts aren’t going to bleed. They’re machine washable. If you read these comments, you can just see, “The quality is poor.” There’s problems with the sizing. A lot of people comment about the sizing being wrong and that they shrink when they’re washed.

This is a huge opportunity for me if I’m selling men’s Hawaiian shirts. I can focus on these pain points and use that in my marketing and focus in on a niche that wants a shirt that’s going to be quality, it’s not going to shrink or bleed when you wash it and it’s authentic Hawaiian.

That’s how you focus in on what’s going on in a potential niche. You can use Google Trends to search and get some broad related information either by search terms, topics and/or location, and then you can use Amazon to get really specific on the problems that people are facing with those products.

If you offer a service, I don’t have it pulled up, but I suggest going to sites like Yelp or Angie’s List or the types of review sites that cater to the type of service that you offer.

I hope that helps you in researching your niche.

About Stacey Riska

Stacey Riska, aka “Small Business Stacey” is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small business and rebuilding Main Street. She helps small and local business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients, MORE sales, and MORE money. Stacey is the founder of Small Biz Marketing Specialist, THE go-to place for marketing tips, techniques and strategies that get results. Stacey is also the creator of the Daily Deals for Massive Profits Training Program, an online video training program that teaches small and local business owners how to use daily deal sites like Groupon to skyrocket their business growth and get massive profits. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn’t!) and spending time with her amazing husband.