Niche marketing

The phrase opportunity gap exploitation is one I’ve borrowed from Dan Kennedy and it refers to one of the ways to find your unique selling proposition or, if you want to get fancier, your differentiated value proposition.

A great example is Dominos USP – fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes – guaranteed.

It is a classic example of a positioning statement although it stopped being unique when Dominos grew so quickly and competitors started copying the idea.

The opportunity gap is based on looking at what competitors do badly and which irritates customers or even stops them from buying – and then designing a business and offer to take the problem away.

Domino’s didn’t invent home delivery of pizza but they did put an end to the problem of ringing up, ordering it and waiting…

and waiting…

and then when it was finally delivered, finding that the pizza was cold.

How do you use the idea of opportunity gap exploitation to build a business?

It goes back to my differentiation process.

You need to know what your competitors are offering.

You need to know what your customers want… and what they don’t want.

And you need a clear understanding of what you can promise and deliver consistently through capabilities your business has or can quickly and reliably deliver.

The Domino’s guarantee – you get the pizza in 30 minutes or it’s free – meant that they couldn’t afford to make a promise in their marketing which they couldn’t deliver. This isn’t a bad case of shallow differentiation or selling the sizzle not the steak.

Domino’s would have gone bust if they’d had to give away many free pizzas and you can bet with a USP like this, the customers were watching the clock.

What Opportunity Gaps Exist In Your Market?

Can you take this opportunity gap idea and find a gap in your market to exploit?

It’s not the only way to differentiate your business but working from customer frustrations and competitors’ weaknesses is a pretty good place to start to create a business concept which will succeed.

Domino’s used it to build their brand and although it’s not used any more, I bet it’s still how many people think of Domino’s.

Even if competitors copy, once one company has claimed such a strong positioning for hot, fresh pizza FAST, it’s very difficult to beat when you’re tired and hungry and you want to get something to eat.

It is very tempting when you are starting a business to cast your net too widely and to try to appeal to many types of customer.

The problem is that by being so general, you finish up talking to no one.

I think it’s easier to see how crazy this is by stepping out of the business world.

Who To Date?

Imagine that you are a lonely man looking for a date.

The problem is, you don’t seem to meet many women in your everyday life so you decide to do what many others do and write a personal advertisement in your local newspaper. (Or go through one of the dating websites/apps.)

You could take the easy way out because you’re not sure what you want.

“Woman wanted – any age”

That’s pretty clear and you’ve not ruled out anyone because they are just outside any artificial criteria you set.

Not many words either so it won’t cost much.

You advertise.

Nothing happens.

Why?

Because the advert is from a desperate man.

You may as well have said

“I am a desperate man. Any woman will do.”

And that’s not a very attractive proposition.

So you stop to think what you want and narrow it down a bit.

If Cheryl Cole is your ideal woman, you identify the following characteristics:

Beautiful

Slim

Wealthy

Successful singer and personality

Geordie

Aged 37 (she was born 30 June 1983)

That’s given you something to work with.

Now Cheryl Cole probably doesn’t read the personal ads in your local paper so your ad has to say more than “Cheryl Cole call me” but someone like her may.

Which characteristics are most important to you?

Does a woman have to be beautiful, or the less exclusive “nice looking” or perhaps looks aren’t important to you.

Does she have to be a Geordie or just support Newcastle United?

The more you refine what you are looking for, the more you can write a personal ad which will attract the type of woman you do want to meet. Of course, you need to tell the truth but you’ll want to emphasise certain things your ideal woman finds attractive.

The alternative is, you are so desperate any woman will do.

It’s the same in business.

Holding your arms out and shouting “Any customer will do” won’t attract anyone.

You want to attract those customers who are right for you.

Those who give you an opportunity to do your best work. You need to define your marketing bullseye.

The book Battling Big Box referred to four niche marketing myths identified by entrepreneur, speaker and author Harvey Mackay which I thought were well worth telling you about.

Many business advisers and marketing experts say “get a niche” without saying much about how to choose a niche.

Let’s Go Niche Marketing Myths-Busting:

1. Myth one – a niche market has to be chic.
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2. Myth two – a niche has to be new.
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3. Myth three – a niche shouldn’t be too narrow.
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4. Myth four – a niche has to be neat.

Now let’s dig deeper into each.

Niche Marketing Myth 1 – A Niche Market Has To Be Chic

This is nothing to do with Nile Rodgers disco band called Chic in the 1970s although Chic were leaders of the disco music niche.

Chic normally means stylish or smart. If you want to build a business to be proud of, then the temptation is to pick something fashionable and potentially also move your business upmarket.

If you wanted to own a hotel or restaurant, wouldn’t you prefer it to be chic?

But it may not be where the money is.

There’s an old Northern English expression that says “where there’s muck, there’s brass” and brass means money. This line of thinking suggests that there’s a lot of money to be made doing jobs that other people think are dirty or unpleasant.

When I was a trainee accountant, I audited a local Funeral Director’s business, and I was shocked by how profitable it was. The thought of doing the work – although much needed – makes me shudder but it does prove the point.

To prove the myth wrong, that niches have to be stylish, you don’t even have to go from one extreme to the another. Everyday ordinary things may provide an opportunity for a successful niche. The book mentions Turtle Wax for cleaning cars and Harvey Mackay built a huge business selling envelopes.

Niche Marketing Myth 2 – A Niche Has To Be New

There’s a temptation to think that you’ll only find niche marketing opportunities in new markets.

It’s wrong.

Markets are in a constant state of movement:

• Customer needs, wants and populations change.
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• Competitors change – some competitors leave the industry sector, others lose their niche appeal by chasing growth and new competitors enter the market.
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• The wider business environment changes – there are many markets that looked good five years ago (property as an example) but these crashed in the 2008/9 recession and have stayed in the doldrums.

Niche marketing positions can emerge if you’ve got the imagination to spot them, or they can be vacated when the incumbent steps away.

In declining industries, the decline can be very unpleasant and involve lots of red ink but the position of being “last man standing” can be very profitable and explains why some players in declining marketers will help competitors to leave the market.

Niche Marketing Myth 3 A Niche Shouldn’t Be Too Narrow

I talked about this in my article on niche marketing and differentiation.

You can work in a niche market but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have any competitors in that niche. A big niche often creates the opportunity for micro-niches with products and services designed for an even smaller group of customers with special needs.

Take my business as an example. I help small business owners to differentiate their businesses from competitors and that will often involve focusing in on one niche.

I am a specialist as an expert in differentiation and the variety is something that I love but I know that a rival coach or consultant could specialise in differentiation for hotels and restaurants. That’s two markets I am interested in so it could hurt my positioning. On the other hand I think there’s potential for a contradiction because industry specialists can apply industry recipes and in effect create local clones, much as a franchising business might do.

There is a risk that you can focus on a niche that is too narrow. The essence of niching is captured in the idea of bullseye marketing – a highly targeted match of what the customer wants and what you offer. Some times the bullseye is too small and you need to focus on the next ring out on the target.

Niche Marketing Myth 4 A Niche Has To Be Neat

This may seem a contradiction since you establish a niche position so that customers have a very clear understanding of what you offer and what makes you special but a couple of examples will help it to make sense.

The book talks about liquor stores in affluent areas that sell specialist wines but also sell a lot of popular, low-priced wines. The reason is simple, people want variety and just because customers can afford the most expensive bottles, it doesn’t mean they want to drink vintage champagne every night. Sometimes a couple of glasses of a pleasant, fruity plonk is all they want.

A second example is my own business and that of many other business advisers. While we can focus on a specialist subject, the relationship can easily move to trusted advisor because we get to know the owner and the business so well and our knowledge base often has to be broad to understand how the speciality fits in with other situations.

Are There Other Niche Marketing Myths?

Yes I think there are.

That you must operate within a niche market is a myth.

You can differentiate your business across a wide market and appeal to many customers. In some cases you don’t even need to think about niche marketing and differentiation because the business opportunity creates its own local pocket of demand.

The easy example are local shops and pubs. If there’s a gap in the market – perhaps because a business has closed (although this may be a warning sign) – then you can open and sell all the usual stuff without any consideration of these concepts. The geographical location creates its own local monopoly.

In the UK TV soap Emmerdale, The Woolpack is the only pub in the village which gives it a big advantage but it does have some indirect competition. Eric Pollard’s restaurant at the B&B and the cafe give villagers plenty of opportunity to eat out when they don’t want to cook for themselves.

Are there other myths of niching?

Do you agree or disagree with the myths identified?

Please let me know by leaving a comment.

I was asked “Paul, what’s the difference between niche marketing and differentiation?”

I can understand the confusion because niche marketing and differentiating your business are related concepts but you can:

• use niche marketing principles and not be differentiated; or
• differentiate your business and not practice niche marketing.

Most of the time, successful businesses do both – they are differentiated within a niche market.

Let’s see how they do it.

Niche Marketing Concepts

Niche marketing means that your business focuses on particular types of customers or customer problems to the exclusion of other types of customers and problems.

It’s what I think of as bullseye marketing.

The aim is to attract customers who fit the characteristics of the bullseye in a target and the further a potential customer is away from the centre, the less mutual appeal. A customer from an outside ring isn’t interested in the business and the business isn’t interested in the customer.

The opposite of niche marketing is the problem I describe in Any Woman Will Do Says The Desperate Man.  This is casting the net wide and lacks any appeal to anyone – it’s the sign of desperate marketing.

Niche marketing is powerful because the specific needs of particular groups of customers are not being fully met by more general suppliers. Customers are being forced to buy products and services which are in the outer rings of the bullseye target because they can’t find anything better and buying is better than not buying.

Imagine you’re on holiday in a place where you expect it to be warm and sunny but when you get there, it’s cold and rainy. You may find yourself buying a coat and umbrella that don’t match your personal tastes. You wouldn’t buy them if you were at home and had plenty of time and choice but you don’t want to be cold and wet.

That’s quite an extreme example to make the point of buying “make do” products but if you consider what you’ve bought in the last few months, it may well have happened more often than you’d have liked.

The basic dimensions for establishing a niche market position are:

• Who is the target customer?
• What is the customer problem and what is the solution?
• Where is the business operating and where are the customers?

A niche market position requires a deliberate choice since it implies exclusion of customers outside the targeted area.

Many businesses only appeal to the local market because customers will only travel so far or it’s only economical for the business to travel a limited distance to customers. If all you have is a geographical restriction, then I don’t consider that you’re using niche marketing.

You can have a niche position with:

• a specific who and general what – clothes for teenagers
• a general who and specific what – hats
• a specific who and a specific what – hand made suits for male executives

These may or may not be restricted geographically. The development of e-commerce stores on the Internet has made many niche markets commercially viable precisely because the products can be sold throughout the world.

This concept of whether the niche is big enough is important and the bullseye target analogy is useful again. Market research may show the following likely sales:

• bullseye – £150,000  – no niche competition
• inner ring £750,000 – no niche competition
• middle ring £5,000,000 – two niche competitors
• outer ring £25,000,000

Imagine you’ve done your numbers work and you know that you need at least £500,000 sales to have a worthwhile business which is going to generate enough profit.

This clearly shows that the niche for the inner ring isn’t viable but the inner ring is and gives you considerable upside. It can be further extended by making small incursions with specialised products into the middle ring without destroying your position.

On the other hand, the £500,000 needed for a viable business might be right but your research shows you:

• Bullseye – £5 million – no niche competition
• Inner ring – £20 million

Here I’d say that your business opportunity looks good but I’d question whether you’ve really identified a bullseye. Your business may be vulnerable to being micro-niched.

Differentiation Concepts

Differentiating your business is about establishing clear reasons for winning buyer preference.

The biggest name guru on competitive advantage, Harvard professor Michael Porter made it clear that businesses can be:

• Differentiated in the wide market.
• Differentiated in a narrow, focused market – what we’d think of as a niche market.

Personally I think it’s much more natural to differentiate in a narrow market because you can precisely target the needs and wants of buyers.

Differentiation in broad markets is often based on either unique technology protected by patents, networking effects (thinks Windows for PCs as the de facto standard operating system) or brands.

People will buy an iPad or an iPhone because it is Apple. The basic product functionality may be very similar to other makes but the differentiating factor is the brand – “I want an Apple because my friends have an Apple and I want to be part of the in-crowd.”

They will buy a BMW car because of the prestige of the brand name and the image of the ultimate driving machine.

My blog is devoted to how to differentiate your business and you’ll see that I believe there are seven key dimensions to differentiation which you can get to by answering who, what, how, why, where, when and how many. Your answers need to be both multi-directional (e.g. who can refer to whom the customer is, who you are as the business owner, who the employees are, who the suppliers are) and specific (if you define your business with general rather than precise words, you’ll lose the power of any differentiation.)

The Difference Between Niche Market Positioning & Differentiation

The cross0ver is clear in the core questions:

Niche marketing is primarily about who, what and where.

Differentiation is about who, what, where, when, how, why and how many and takes a broader view.

You can be differentiated by staking out a clear niche position and you’ll appeal to bullseye customers e.g. think of a business expert who has identified his niche as marketing advice for accountants in the UK.

That’s very clear on the who, what and where and you can see that staff retention issues for financial advisers falls well outside the specification but it would fit a wider definition of “business advice for professional service providers”.

Any accountant who wants marketing advice is going to be attracted to the specialist. It’s a bullseye.

But what if the “marketing advice for accountants” is a big market?

It will attract new competitors who have a choice:

• Battling it out in the niche without any differentiation
• Differentiating by sub-niching and focusing on marketing advice for small accountancy practices with limited marketing budgets
• Differentiating by providing done-for-you marketing campaigns with a guaranteed return on investment of 500%

Having a niche may be enough to differentiate your business but you need to be looking for ways to go beyond it if a new competitor appears.

It’s no different from the shoe shop owner who makes a good profit in the town where he or she has a monopoly. The problems start when a new competitor moves in – and that may be another shoe shop or a supermarket superstore which sells shoes.

There has to be a clear reason for some customers to decide to buy from you.

My advice is to think “niche marketing AND differentiation.”

In this article, I will look at the issues involved with finding and selecting a niche market that will help your business to attract, convert and keep customers.

What Is A Niche Market?

A niche market is a small segment of a bigger, more general market that you can specifically target in your marketing and sales efforts. Done right, niche marketing goes even further because it completely affects the way you design and operate your business.

Defining a niche market needs me to define a market.

A market is a group of customers with specific wants and needs who decide to buy particular products and services for what those items can do for them.

By definition, the car market is the big group of people who buy cars.

That’s self evident.

But you need to go further.

The car market is the group of people who buy cars because they want or need flexible, personal transport that puts them in control of where they go and when they go.

That definition helps you to understand why people buy cars rather than use public transport as a viable substitute product or service.

Two seater sports cars is a niche within the car market for people who only need to worry about transporting themselves and possibly a passenger and want to do it in a certain style. Buying a sports car says a lot about the person and what he or she values. Even this niche can be to big which is why there is a one seater sports car (the Briggs Mono).

Why You Need A Niche Market

In some ways it makes sense to think that you want to target a big market rather than a small one. It gives you more customers who could buy your product.

There are two flaws in this thinking.

1. You should be more interested in the balance between demand and supply in a market. A huge market where there is already more supply than demand is going to be extremely competitive and it’s going to be difficult to make a profit. If demand is much bigger than supply, then prices and profits can be high and customers have little choice than to buy (although this may change over the long term as new competitors enter the market).
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2. A smaller, more focused market means that your product can match the wants and needs of the customers while a bigger, more general market has more diverse needs and you can struggle to convince possible customers to make the buying decision, which means you miss the marketing bullseye.

Effective marketing is all about getting the right marketing message or offer in front of the right customers in the right way at the right time or as often as necessary (the 4 Ms Of Marketing).

Having a niche makes it much easier to:

• get the message right
• get the choices about marketing media right
• keep putting the message and offer in front of the eyes and ears of possible customers.

I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to see marketing as a process where through a series of contacts you turn someone who has a general problem, want or need into someone who trusts you enough to give you money for the product or services you can provide. It rarely happens in one contact or touch unless the problem is urgent.

The Three Big Issues To Confront When Choosing Your Niche Market

In my article, Will Your New Business Succeed? I talked about the three big risks:

• Demand risk
• Competitive risk
• Capability risk

All three need to be considered when you are looking to choose your niche market.

Thinking about the demand risk for your niche market:

• is the demand real? Will customers pay enough money to solve the problem or to meet their wants and needs? You only need to watch a TV programme like Dragons Den to see would be entrepreneurs trying to solve a problem that few other people care about.
• is demand big enough to support your business? This is a particular problem for businesses who find that demand is restricted by location issues. Conversely the Internet has made many more niche markets viable because it can bring customers from all over the world to a business.

Competitive risk means facing up to issues like:

• Will the business be able to sustain a competitive advantage in terms of cusstomer alue that encourages people to buy based on a low price or superior value?
• Will new suppliers enter the market or are there effective barriers to entry to stop or delay competitors?

Capability risk looks at the issue of whether the business has the capabilities and competences needed to deliver on the promises made in marketing to attract and convert customers.

Niche Marketing And Differentiation

Are niche marketing and differentiation the same concept?

No I don’t think they are but the ideas are related.

When you select a niche market, you cut down the number of competitors and customers who will be attracted to that niche.

Perhaps there are 50 competitors in the general market but only 5 in the niche. Think about moving from looking at small hotels to 5 star luxury hotels in a small city for example. The differences between the two groups is much bigger than teh difference within the groups.

When you’re differentiated, you create a market of one. If the customer wants the value proposition you offer, he or she has to buy from you.

Some times, selecting a niche automatically differentiate you from your competitors because no other business has chosen to target that particular niche. Going back to the hotel example, perhaps there is only one 5 star luxury hotel in a small city.

How To Find Your Niche Market

At its core, your niche market defines:

• Who your customers are:
• What they want and need to buy

Occasionally it can also involve some of the other big questions that can be used to differentiate your business – where, why, how, how many and how much.

I think it’s useful to draw a customer value map of the market you are working within or thinking about entering. This will encourage you to think about the different price points that customers buy at and the different customer value alternatives.

Many people find it difficult to think abstractly about a market and what customers want and need and persuades them to buy. It’s easier to compare two offerings at a similar price point and to see how they are similar and different. This lets you focus on the factors of differentiation.

You can do the same exercise at a different price point (it can be useful to look at economy, mid-market and premium prices) to get a better idea of the dimensions of differentiation.

Let’s think about cars again as the brands are meaningful worldwide.

A Rolls Royce and a Lamborghini may have very similar prices and they both meet the need to combine personalised transport with status but the attributes of the customer value proposition are very different and aren’t in the same niche market.

The customer value attributes of these cars are very different in some ways but similar in others. Both are expensive, offer massive prestige and status (who says “he only has a Lamborghini or Rolls Royce”?) and have big powerful engines that make the cars much faster than the average car.

The Rolls Royce emphasises comfort, space, ride quality. The Lamborghini has head-turning looks, incredible performance and astonishing road-holding and handling.

It can be worth looking at where customers have to make compromises and how readily the customers accept the problems. Anyone who can afford a Lamborghini or Rolls Royce probably doesn’t need to care about fuel consumption but perhaps the person has green views and would prefer lower emissions and more miles to the gallon. Depreciation may also be an issue if the person wants to replace the car every twelve months. These issues can help to explain how products can be differentiated within a niche market.

Once you’re clear on the main dimensions of differentiation, you can look at the different combinations that already exist in the market.

It can be useful to map two dimensions on an x-y graph so you can see how the competitors fit together. A 2×2 or 3×3 matrix can give you enough detail or you can increase the number of categories along each axis.

Think about the car market and the number of seats and price for example. To my knowledge, there is only the Briggs Mono that has one seat, so whatever price point it occupies, there is a potential niche to either side in price. In the mass market sectors, there will be a lot of cars with four and five seats around the main price points. These niches already have competition.

However, if you take one of those differentiation dimensions (e.g. number of seats) and then combine it with another (fuel economy) you may find that what looked like a busy niche has an opportunity gap.

Remember, if you’re looking at a niche market without any existing competitors, you need to consider demand risk very carefully. Perhaps there’s a good reason why this niche market is empty. If there are already competitors and the niche doesn’t subdivide nicely on another factor of differentiation, you need to think about whether you can survive competition by having low costs by producing at the minimum efficient scale.

By this stage, you should have a few ideas for the niche market you want to target in terms of the who and want (and possibly the other big questions).

At this stage your niche can have competitors because you’ll be looking at how to differentiate it within the niche later on.

The concern is whether the niche provides the opportunity for profit over the longer term. You don’t want to target a niche and find that it disappears after a couple of years.

The two main strategy models to think about are:

• PEST Analysis
• The Five Forces Of Industry Profitability

Many people are familiar with these two techniques but they are often done badly and therefore provide little of the long term insight that may be available about how the niche market can develop.

The SKEPTIC Model combines them together which can be useful if you’re jaded about the two individual strategy techniques.

As you look forward, you may find yourself looking at different potential trends and perhaps a few either/or situations. If these look to offer significant strategic risk, you may need to use scenario planning to develop a clearer view of the future.

Once you’re satisfied that your proposed niche has a good future, you can start looking in more detail at your strategic options. This will usually involve summarising the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in a SWOT chart.

If you’ve got an established business, you need to look at how well it can serve the chosen niche market. The value chain is a useful technique for looking at internal capabilities and resources and how everything you do ties together to form your competitive advantages.

If you’re starting a new business in a niche, you have the luxury of designing your business model from scratch.

Either way, you need to try to avoid the mistakes made in differentiation and not let your mind fall into any of the niche marketing myths.

Summary Of How To Choose Your Niche Market

Choosing a niche market can be easy for some people. The answer is obvious based on their past knowledge and experience or a huge gap in the market that is crying out to be filled.

Other people find it much harder. It is scary to choose a niche market or to differentiate a business within a niche.

Selecting a niche means saying Yes to some combination of customers and products/services.

More importantly it involves saying No to many more alternative combinations.

The strength and big advantage of niche marketing is that it gives the business focus, hopefully laser focus on a particular set of customers, products and services and the underlying capabilities needed to deliver customer value at a fair price. It gives the business a strong vision and makes it easier to ignore opportunities that arise outside of the vision.

How Did You Select Your Niche Market?

I’d like to collect a series of stories about how businesses decided on particular niches so if you’ve got a niche, please leave a comment.

Bullseye marketing is a powerful analogy for niche marketing and differentiating your business.

Imagine You Are A Buyer

I’d like you to put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer looking for what you sell.

You have some idea of what you want or need so you go out looking.

You see something but it doesn’t measure up – it’s in the outer ring of our buying bullseye target. You’d have to have a desperate and urgent need to make do with that product.

Then you see another offer.

It’s a bit better but it’s still not close enough to the centre to make you reach for your credit card.

And then you see another offer which has some things you want but not others or it has a deal-breaker – something you want to avoid so again you don’t buy.

As you look at options, you clarify your thoughts on what you really want – what represents a bullseye – because you learn about what’s available (including features, advantages and benefits you’d never thought of previously) and what you need and like.

Have You Found The Bullseye When Buying?

Sometimes you find what you’re looking for.

Sometimes you find something that’s good enough and you buy that because the extra value you get from a bullseye purchase isn’t enough to compensate you for the extra time and effort you need to hit the bullseye.

Other times you find a collection of products and services which are all stuck in the outer-rings. None are what you are looking for so you have to decide to:

• Seriously compromise what you want and buy the best of a bad bunch (often a short-cut to dissatisfaction and frustration);
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• Delay your purchase while you either keep looking or hope that the ideal product appears; or
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• Find another way to solve the underlying problem.

Me-too, generic products are often in the outer-rings of the buyers’ bullseye and that’s why they are vulnerable to a business who focuses on a particular niche.

Sure, the product will miss the target for many people but for some it will either hit the bullseye or the inner-ring and be a convincing “good enough” to persuade you that it makes sense to buy rather than delay.

Are You Using Bullseye Marketing In Your Business?

How is your marketing doing?

Is it attracting customers who are a natural fit for your business and what you offer? Does your product or service match their bullseye?

And are your identifying and emphasising what makes you a bullseye fit in your marketing in a way that is compelling? Does your marketing promote the few factors that make your product uniquely meet their needs?

Your marketing can fail if:

• You have the perfect product and in theory it hits the bullseye but your marketing doesn’t show that it’s perfect for your target customers.

• Your product doesn’t hit the bullseye of (m)any potential customers.

Solving the first is a marketing problem, solving the second is a product or process innovation problem. To use an analogy, you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig.

Bullseye Marketing Is A Powerful Analogy

The bullseye marketing target is a powerful analogy that helps to explain why some people buy and why some don’t.

Your task is to make sure that your offer reaches those who it will appeal to. You do that by targeting a niche and using bullseye marketing.

In my review of

Niche Marketing for Coaches by Hannah McNamara

posted at Amazon.co.uk, I gave it 3 Stars.

Here is my review.

More about marketing than selecting a niche

In my experience coaches are nice people. They are attracted to start a coaching business because they want to help people and make a genuine difference.

They also see it as a way to make a nice living – and of course, the best known coaches make an absolute fortune (e.g. Tony Robbins). [continue reading…]

The full title of this book by James Harkin is

Niche: The missing middle and why business needs to specialise to survive

In my review posted on Amazon.co.uk, I gave it Two Stars.

Here is my review.

Perhaps an interesting book but it’s struggling to get out because it jumps around so much

Every now and again a book comes along that makes me question why I read so many business books and this is such a book.

I began to read, eager to find out why the middle market has collapsed in many markets but the more I read, the more I despaired. [continue reading…]

The full title of this book by Gary Booth is

“Niche Marketing Expert: The Art of Selling to a Hungry Crowd“.

In my review on Amazon, I gave the book a rating of Four Stars. This means I think it is Good and Well Worth Reading.

Here is my book review.

Internet MARKETING rather than INTERNET marketing

This is a book about Internet marketing but not about the technology side of building a website or getting more traffic. It’s not about bright shiny objects and the next big thing that will prise money out of your wallet with a promise that you’ll get rich, just like these other people.

Instead it’s about choosing a niche, building a tribe and strengthening the relationship with them. Yes it’s Internet MARKETING rather than INTERNET marketing. The difference is huge. [continue reading…]