The concept of ‘Marketing Niche’ has always been very popular among entrepreneurs. Diving into a microniche is widely discussed nowadays and has been ever so popular among business freaks for the past few months in India. While this has been a topic of intense discussion, customer avatar needs no introduction, as we all are aware of the significance and importance of a customer avatar.

First, let’s get into the topic of ‘niche’, and then we’ll jump into customer avatars.

Most beginners or newbies in the industry are not conscious of the niche and its importance. At Internet Moguls of The World School, I and my team is dedicated to bringing value to everyone. Hence, before delving deep into the matter, let me briefly explain the significance of niche down.

Niche Clarity: What And Why

It is better to start by stating what a niche is. According to the definition from Oxford Languages, as most of us know, a niche is a ‘specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service’. But that is not enough to explain a niche. So, let’s look at another elaborated definition.

According to HubSpot, “A niche market is a focused set of people or businesses who are in the market to purchase a product or service you sell. This group of individuals has a specific set of needs that can be met by a targeted product or service that addresses those needs.”

Does it seem a little complicated? Confused? Well, then let me simplify it for you with an example.

For example, some people offer digital marketing services that include social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and so on. They are not focused on a particular sub-category; they do it all. But it is a special market for a particular service called marketing. This is their niche.

On the other hand, some people only provide social media marketing services. These people have expertise in this area and are focused on this service only. Hence, their sub-niche is ‘Social Media Marketing (SMM)’.

You can even go further into choosing a more specific segment called microniche. For the above example, one can be a FB ad expert. That means, they do not take care of the whole social media marketing thing. They will only manage your Facebook ad campaigns. This is their micro-niche 

By now you must have understood what a niche is. But WHY is it important?

I’ll keep this answer simple and crisp. 

We tend to trust the subject matter experts more than the generalists. Hence, a social media marketer is far more reliable to a person who is intended to run his FB ad campaign. That is why choosing a particular niche is crucial.

According to Charlene Walters, establishing a niche sets your company apart from the competition and allows you to succeed in your field.

So far you have known what a niche is and why it is important. Now the question is about clarity. 

What is niche clarity?

 

If you ask me, I would say to call your best friend with whom you almost share everything, and request him/her to answer a question. Ask, “Tell me what do I do within 30 seconds.” 

If he or she can completely and minutely comprehend your business in that short amount of time, it signifies that individuals have a good understanding of it. If your business is not transparent to others, everything goes in vain. 

Niche clarity simply means your audience is well-aware of your products or services. It has to be very much clear to everyone.

How To Discover Your Niche And Sub-niche

So far you must have understood what a niche is. Hence finding out your niche is going to be pretty much easier for you. But I want to talk to you more about sub-niche. But before diving into that, here are examples of the 20 most popular niches for you so that you have a better understanding.

• Creator Economy
• Travel & Tourism IT industry
• Finance
• Education/Training/ Consulting
• Art & Creativity
• Relationships
• Manufacturing
• Human Resources
• Health and well-being
• Life skills
• Marketing
• Fashion
• Pets & animal care
• Automobiles
• Food & Nutrition
• Beauty & skincare
• Logistics
• Events
• Real Estate

Now, how can you choose a niche under a niche i.e. sub-niche? Or, how can you choose a micro-niche? The process of it is pretty straightforward.

I will not go into telling five or six-step process. I think this can be sorted out in only 2 simple steps, the first one being the most important.

Step 1: Evaluation of Passion And Skills

You may have already done this. However, if you haven’t already done so, do so right away. Let’s discuss passion first.

Evaluation of Passion

Business isn’t simple, and it will put you to the test at some point. If you’re working in a field you don’t enjoy, you’re more likely to leave – especially if you’re a first-time business owner.

This isn’t to say that you have to find the perfect match. You will stick with a particular aspect of the business if you are passionate about it. You might not be able to find the motivation to keep on if you don’t care about the subject.

If you don’t know what your passion is, that’s okay! Whatever you are doing, whatever you are good at, whatever people think you to be amazing in, work on that and take it to the next level. As simple as that !!

Yet, if you are still in dilemma, here are some questions that you can ask yourself to figure out your hobbies and passions:

1. What excites you?
2. Do you organize and prioritize the day around your passion?
3. Does fear of change prevent you from moving out of your comfort zone?
4. How do you respond to the fear of failure?

Now you must be wondering how to explore skills, right? Let’s see.

Evaluation of Skills

A skills evaluation might be deceptively difficult. We’re not always particularly excellent at expressing what we’re good at! However, other elements are quite relevant and should be addressed, one of which is your skills.

When it comes to talking about ourselves, our abilities, and our achievements, we appear to have an innate modesty. This can give a setback to our professional advancement because it can be used against us at work.

Hence identify your skills. You can observe what is the particular matter where people are seeking your help and trusting you. In most cases, that is the best skill of a person.

Once you identify your best skill, asses it. How better are you in it than that of your top competitors. Alongside, continuously nurture your skill so that you can be invincible.

When it comes to entrepreneurship, two things are of utmost importance:

1. Skill identification
2. Skill assessment

You can again use some prompts, such as:

1. What you are good at and how much is your strength?
2. Can you add value to people’s lives with your skill?
3. Are others’ feedbacks positive and encouraging?

Work on these things, and you will undoubtedly notice improvements.

Step 2: Narrow Down Your Niche And Sub-niche

Now that you have known your passion and interest, you have to shortlist some of the great ideas that suit your interest. You might want to narrow your niche even more at this point. Keep the above social media marketing example in mind to get clarity, here are some more examples:

Visiting related forums, Facebook groups, and subreddits is one of the greatest methods to achieve this.

To identify which subtopics or sub-niches you might wish to investigate, use a program like Redditlist. Simply enter in your core keywords and browse the most popular subreddits to see if any catch your attention.

Visit these subreddits, as well as specialist groups and forums, to observe which topics or queries are frequently discussed. This can help you narrow down your niche and come up with new sub-niches or blog topic ideas in the future.

Meanwhile do not neglect the keyword research part. You can use tools as well as you can apply simple tricks to discover it by yourself. You can follow the below process to explore it yourself.

• When you Google some of the keywords you’ve selected for your sub-niche, see which sites appear on page one. One of three things will be found:

1. For those keywords, there is already a slew of well-known websites ranking. Because this industry may be overcrowded, it’s advisable to choose a less well-known option.
2. For those terms, there are no websites that rank. This could indicate that there are numerous prospects, but it’s more likely that others have already discovered that there isn’t a demand for this type of product.
3. Some websites rank for those terms, but they are usually smaller or of lower quality. This is typically an indication that a specialty is worth pursuing. Niche products within this category are likely to have a market, and there is not likely to be much competition.

You’ve chosen a niche and conducted market research. It’s time to see if this niche is as popular and lucrative as you had imagined.

Understanding The Market Of Your Niche

You should now have a fair sense of which niche you’ll pursue. Even if you didn’t limit yourself to a specific topic, you’ve probably come up with a few ideas you like. It’s vital to figure out how much money you could make in your location at this point.

Several tools can contribute to determining the demand of the market you’re planning to dive in. Market research is an inevitable part of starting any business. You can –

• Analyze trends related to the market you’re going into with the tools like Google Keyword Tool.
• Verify geographic demand using tools like Google trends, etc.
• Utilize tools such as SEMrush to analyze competitors.
• Use different social media platforms to get an abundance of data.

Calculating market demand does a lot more than just validating that people will buy your product. Furthermore, it informs pricing plans, aids in the creation of marketing activities, depicts purchasing requirements, and many other essential variables.

Demand is driven by a lot of things, including not only the number of individuals actively looking for a product like yours, but also how much they’re prepared to pay for it and how much of your product is available to customers, both in terms of your firm and competitors.

It’s fantastic to get enthused about a company idea, but it’s much better to be able to properly explain that the great idea will succeed. It’s also critical to evaluate the viability of your product logically and objectively by first finding and demonstrating that there is a clear, positive market demand for it.

This also works in the opposite direction, as effective product demand research may show you when an idea is likely to fail, saving you the time, effort, and money you would have spent otherwise. It becomes much easier to effectively anticipate the breadth of product demand analysis once you comprehend and apply it.

How To Figure Out Your Customer Avatar

Okay, so before trying to figure out your customer avatar, you need to know what a customer avatar is. Isn’t it? 

A customer avatar (sometimes referred to as a buyer persona, marketing persona, or customer profile) is a description of your ideal customer, the kind of person who would buy your products.

In the avatar, one individual is described in detail. It goes considerably deeper than a standard marketing persona, giving marketers a lot more targeting options.

But you must be wondering the significance of it, right? Why am I telling you all this? Why is there a need of creating an avatar? Well here’s your answer.

Though the importance of a customer avatar can be and should be elaborated into a full article, yet as of now, I’m just summarizing the whole idea into some points based on my several years of experience in it.

1. Because of the customer avatar, you’ll focus on the right people.
2. You’ll focus on the market before media and not the other way around.
3. You will always say the right things, meaning you’ll know what to say.
4. You’ll stop wasting your hard-earned money as you will be focusing on targeted people.
5. You will save your precious time around.

Now let’s jump into the process. I’ll keep it concise. So, read carefully !!

 

Firstly, you need to collect certain information about your customer for your customer avatar. Here are they:

In the above infographic, you can see the details that are supposed to be collected. Work towards that and make your customer avatar. I know it is probably not completely clear. So, here are some steps that you can follow.

Let’s look at some examples:

I hope I can make it clear to you by now. Through the execution of the process, you will gradually get more lucidity and confidence.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that discovering a specialty isn’t always a straightforward task. You’ll want to get started on your task as soon as possible, but if you get bogged down in the planning stage, you’ll never get there. You must learn how to start a business as an entrepreneur.

The journey does not begin unless you have a clear understanding of your specialization. It’s an important component, but it’s not the final step. Verifying the viability of your niche idea is vital to your success.

On the other hand, take care of your customer avatar as well. Create a single avatar, to begin with, but don’t stop there. There are virtually definitely multiple ideal buyers for your company.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you’ll be able to create various avatars to represent different market groups.

This ultimate guide should offer you some ideas and a good place to start. It will also assist you in lowering the danger of starting your company, saving you time, money, and aggravation.