Search Engine Optimization News and Views

The other day, my mom shocked me. She asked me what a niche market was, and since she is not an online marketer ( doesn’t turn the computer on regularly enough to use email ), this question appeared quite out of the blue. Perhaps I should not have been surprised because in the area of marketing but particularly online marketing, this term is showing up more and more frequently. In truth, one of those late night, “Be the next internet Millionaire” scams that airs at 4 am for those with insomnia, also trumpets this term.

So, for the newbies amongst us, what is niche marketing? Can we eat it, buy it, use it up or make the ecology green with it?

Perhaps its best explained by first discussing what it’s not. Niche marketing is not marketing to a mysterious marketing segment called niche, nor is there a product called niche that a huge underground swell of people are clamoring over insurmountable walls to get. Nor, is there usually a department within any major corporation that has a position open in their niche marketing department. So don’t call Human Resources at your local City Council and ask for a position in their niche marketing department. Sorry, just had to get that one out of the way, lol.

Niche marketing example

I am going to make up a definition on the fly here. Niche marketing is marketing that is directed very specifically at a very narrow vertical market segment. So, let’s try this one.

Marketing to those that buy – Basketball shoes. Niche or not? Not – Michael Jordan running shoes. Niche or not. Not (What did that surprise you?) – Michael Jordan High-Top running shoes. Niche or not? Feeling the sun yet ? – Michael Jordan HighTops signed by the great one himself . Niche or no Niche? Jackpot !

This last example sounds like a niche for sure. It has a narrow focus and we have eliminated several wider approaches to our target audience. So, should we run out and stock up on these specialty running shoes in anticipation of the demand?

Not by a long shot. If you are reading this now, thinking that I am holding back, stop, don’t do it. Our research hasn’t even begun yet.

Don’t mistake an example of what the end product might look like with the actual process used to find that niche market. That was NOT the process, in fact, its not even close to the process. While the process can be done manually, you really need a tool since you want to examine and reject tens and tens of potential niches before settling on one to promote. And by the way, even if one of the niche tools highlighted this particular example and a week later 4 friends asked me for the same product I would still have some hesitations…

So, did I just give you a really bad Niche Market example?

So, that was a poor example right? Honestly, we dont know yet. People search using specific key phrases. A lot of people end up using the exact same key phrases. To determine whether this product is a niche product or not we need to plum information that only search engines or search engine tools similar to keywordwatcher normally possess. To further quantify all of that data really quickly, we would then need to go beyond even the search engine tools, to a new kind of product that combines the functionality of a search engine tool with niche marketing information

Competitive websites and the number of potential clients would have been enough data to help in quantifying this as a niche product — in the past. But not now. The competition has gone considerably further than that in their analysis and so must you – even as a newbie.

You may be someone with experience with keyword usage based on several of the great tools out there like KeyWordwatcher or the excellent google adwords tool that gives you exact number of potential clients for broad, phrase and exact searches. Perhaps even you were like me, thinking that I could use those excellent tools to find Niche Market products. Well, you probably can if you have an enormous amount of time, but a total newbie using specific niche software would blow us all out of the water due to the specificity of those tools now.

A software based Niche tool can be an extraordinarily powerful piece of arsenal for someone investigating this area. Most tools gave you competitiveness based on the number of sites that had the keyword in them, but most of us know that our search phrase is already on millions of websites but just a few hundred of those might be competitively attempting to get traffic based on that keyword. A Niche market tool, intuitively understands this and in this specific area searches for keywords in the titles, urls and domain names and comes back with a ranking. It can frequently open clickbank and other affiliate sites with your exact keywords to find affiliate products. Sometimes, these tools also understand article marketing and may directly find you an article for reprint.

At this stage in online marketing, it no longer makes sense to find Niche Market products the old way. Watch the videos here and see what I mean

Something new in niche keyword research. Recently there has been a fair amount of research into something called commercial intent. Microsoft’s ad center has an online program that enables one to see if a searched for phrase has more commercial intent than simply mere research behind it.

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