TARGET A NICHE MARKET TO
INCREASE YOUR SALES AND PROFITS
Copyright 1998 By Bob Leduc.Send this report to me by auto-responder
Contrary to what you may want to believe, the whole world is not your market. Even if
everybody CAN use your product or service, there is a specific group with an intense need
or desire for the benefits you offer. Find that "niche" market and commit your
efforts to getting business from it. You'll soon discover how profitable your business can
be.
A niche or target market is a group of potential customers
who share common characteristics making them especially
receptive to your product, service or opportunity.
I have a good friend in the life insurance business who
happens to live near 2 large US military bases. Almost all
of Frank's sales are to career military personnel at these 2
bases. He tells me the US military provides an excellent
group life insurance program for military members but no
life insurance for their spouses. This creates a potential
financial problem for military families with children. If
the service member's spouse dies, it will be expensive to
provide care for the children when the member is on remote
assignment or on extended training duty. By targeting
active duty military families and providing a solution to
their "special" life insurance problem, Frank became one of the top sales agents
in his company.
BENEFITS OF TARGETING A NICHE MARKET
Identifying a target market makes it easy for you to plan
effective marketing activity. It also makes it easy for you
to develop a winning sales message. When you know the
specific concerns of your market, you can tailor your
message to focus on solutions to those concerns. You can
even create different sales messages for different target
markets.
For example, one of the books I wrote is a manual about how to use simple postcards to
generate inexpensive sales leads. The information and examples in it apply to all
businesses. However, one of the most profitable target markets for this manual is
businesses that use a network marketing or MLM distribution system. The promotional
material I developed for that market emphasizes the special advantages postcards offer for
recruiting new independent distributors. That's the #1 concern of every network marketer.
I identify their biggest problem and offer a simple, low cost solution to it. As a result,
a high percentage of the orders for this manual come from network marketers.
HOW TO FIND A NICHE MARKET
If you've been in business for some time you're probably
already targeting one or more niche markets with your sales efforts. If you haven't or if
you're just starting your
business, here are some things you can do to uncover
profitable niche markets for your business.
Start by listing all of the benefits offered by your
product, service or business opportunity. Be sure you're
listing benefits, not features. You must know the
difference between benefits and features to market anything successfully.
A feature is what something is. A benefit is what it does.
For example, my favorite donuts are now delivered in a re-
sealable box. That's a feature. The donuts stay fresh for
a week after I first open the box. That's the benefit.
Understanding this difference is important. People never buy something to get a feature.
They always buy to get the
benefit produced by the feature.
After listing all the benefits you can think of, list some
of the characteristics of prospects whose current situation
would be dramatically improved by those benefits. You
should begin to see a definable group emerging as a niche or target market.
Next, you want to determine if the group you've identified
is a market you can reach and develop profitably. If it is,
you will be able to answer "yes" to all of the following
questions:
1. Can I identify individual prospects within the group
including contact information to communicate with them?
2. Do prospects in this group have a strong need for (or a
strong desire to have) my product, service or opportunity?
3. Do the prospects in this group have the money to pay for
what I'm offering?
4. Can I deliver my sales message to these prospects under
favorable circumstances?
5. Is this group large enough to produce the volume of
business I need?
Don't waste your time on this market if there is a "no"
answer to any of these questions. It's not a niche market
for you.
Be sure to use the information you developed in finding your target market to create the
sales material for it. You
already know the overwhelming benefit(s) you offer to this
market and why it's so important to them. Just build your
advertising and sales material around this benefit and
you'll soon enjoy the profits of successfully targeting a
niche market.
Bob Leduc retired from a 30 year career of recruiting sales
personnel and developing sales leads. He is now a Sales
Consultant. Bob recently wrote a manual for small business
owners titled "How to Build Your Small Business Fast With
Simple Postcards" and several other publications to help
small businesses grow and prosper. For more information...
Email: BobLeduc@aol.com Subject: "Postcards".
Phone: (702) 658-1707 (After 10 AM Pacific time)
Or write: Bob Leduc, PO Box 33628, Las Vegas, NV 89133
