Finding your niche might seem overwhelming. You might not know exactly where to start or even how to go about developing a specific niche. A good place to start? Demographic research.
Demographic research allows you to narrow in on a specific type of audience that you are trying to sell your product to. You may think that being specific on who you target is excluding a whole bunch of people that “might” purchase your product. But, in all reality, finding and developing your niche will not only save you money in the long run — it will also save you time.
Imagine spending your time and money marketing a fitness shoe to an extremely broad audience, i.e. women over 50. While you might get 1 to 5% of those people to purchase your product, you might be marketing to women who will never workout a day in their life and have no interest in the product.
You have just spent money marketing towards an audience that has absolutely no interest in your product. Instead you could narrow in your niche to women over 50, then to women over 50 who workout, and finally women over 50 who workout specifically in pilates. Now you have a specific niche of women that you are targeting who you know will be interested in your product.
But, what is the most effective way to conduct demographic research to create your niche?
Look at Your Current Customer
In order to understand your niche, you need to understand who specifically is already purchasing your product. You could do this by conducting a survey of people who purchase the product, or you could do it through platforms like Facebook.
Did you know that you can go to your Ads Manager and look at your Audience Insights? From there you can type in your niche keywords and learn what percent of your audience shares the same interests as your keywords. Then, you can see the most liked pages with those specific keywords; boom, now you have found your competitors.
Understand Your Competition
What is your competition doing? Are they being successful with their current marketing efforts in your shared niche? Do you see something that is working for them that you can adapt to your own business? While it might be tempting to turn a blind eye to the competition, they could prove a key role in helping you identify your demographic.
You could sit down and do this all by hand, if your budget is tight, or you could outsource the work. There are sites like Sprout Social that actually do the analytics of you and your competition for you. It breaks down your social posts to show the reach and engagement each post got. You can then easily see what works and does not in posting towards your demographic. You can also hire a virtual assistant who is experienced in gathering and interpreting this kind of data.
Dive Into Psychographics
Demographics explain “who” your buyer is, while psychographics explains “why” they buy. Demographic information includes gender, age, income, marital status – the cut and dry — while psychographics dives more into the buyer’s habits, hobbies, spending patterns, and values. Demographics and psychographics go hand in hand when trying to determine your target audience within your niche.
Understanding the psychographics of your target demographic will help you understand the emotional aspect of someone wanting to purchase your product and what motivates them to actually purchase the product. Understanding that your audience — women over 50 — are emotionally motivated to take pilates classes because it might help them live longer helps you create a stronger niche that is emotionally motivated.
Conduct Analytics
Trial and error are your best friends when trying to develop a stronger niche. You can conduct analytics through multiple platforms, including Facebook or Google. Seeing who is reacting to your product — and understanding how that is translating to people actually purchasing your product — creates a plan for you to follow in the future.
There is always room to tweak your niche because your niche is always changing. It is important to keep up with that change and be proactive in understanding your audience and who is purchasing your products.
Finding your niche might seem overwhelming, simple as that. Seriously, we understand. There is a lot that goes into finding who to specifically market your product toward, but the result is worth the effort. The result will ultimately be more sales and a bigger audience for you to market your products to. It sounds appealing, doesn’t it?
Want to hand off finding your niche to someone else? Contact Monkey VA today. We can help you find your audience and reach them in an effective way.
