3 Steps to Define a Marketing Strategy for Niche Products

In this article, we will go through how to define a marketing strategy for niche products and how to validate whether your product is niche and requires niche marketing.  

What is Niche Product

A product or service specially targeted to a very small and specific segment of the consumer is a niche product. Niche marketing is promoting that product to your small targeted segment.

“A niche product is one which covers a niche need of the consumer”

A niche product is a product build for a set of individuals who possess a unique interest, behaviour or lifestyle. That particular interest or behaviour is not widely accepted or found. 

Few Examples of Niche Products,

1. Golf is a niche sport and is followed only by a small set of sports enthusiasts.

2. A product specially developed for autistic kids. 

When you create a niche, you should focus mostly on features unique to your audience. You can leave out the features needed by the other segments.

For eg, if you plan to launch a tracker especially for Yoga practitioners, you can exclude the general features of fitness trackers to include special features for Yoga.

Before planning a niche marketing strategy, you should be aware of your product and know whether it is actually a niche. Your product should be part of either of the following 2 criteria,

Here is how to evaluate whether your product is a niche,

1. The product should not have a market size of more than 5% of the market size of your industry or category.

2. The product is creating a new category, and you are focusing on the early adopters. 

Also, a product considered a niche today can be used by a wider audience in future. It could be a new type of product in the early stage of the product lifecycle. For eg: Tesla cars started as a niche and gradually has gained wide appeal. It’s important to know your market. 

You need to study the market and research on competitors or alternatives available. Check out is there any product that includes your USP or any other alternative that fulfils your niche need among the consumers. If there are more than 2 alternate product or brand available for the same niche, then it’s not a good strategy to target the same segment. 

You need to have a USP that creates a new niche in the market or enhances the experience of an already available niche.

“The best way to become a successful niche product is to own the niche”

You should look forward to owning the need. As the market size and volume are small, you need to be the leader in that niche segment to create a successful and sustainable business.
You need to know your consumers really well. 

“As your audience size is small, your target group shares identical personality traits. Your brand or product should display the same traits and personality.” 

Know your consumers and understand their lifestyle and common traits. So, you can hit the right emotion and tone in your communication. 

Here are the steps you should follow to define a marketing strategy for niche products,

1. Develop Product Fit

A niche product fulfils a niche need of the consumer. This need is very specific, to make your product successful you need to understand this need completely. You need to make sure your product fulfils the niche need exactly as a consumer would love to. 

You need your product to fit the niche need of the consumer.

2. Own The Need

Once your product has successfully met the niche need completely, it’s time to promote the product and just own the niche in the market. 

Start by creating a buzz among the consumers and gaining enthusiasts. Use influencers who comes under your consumer persona to talk about the brand.

Once there is an initial buzz and your product has the met need, you should expect an organic word of mouth. 

Your targeting should be very specific, and you need to make sure that you are not reaching to a large number of people out of your target group. You need to keep targeting your target group repeatedly. 

Select appropriate marketing & distributing channels. As a niche, you should not look forward to being present on all the channels. Select only a few channels where a high volume of your target audience is present. Use those channels effectively. 

3. Maintain The Ownership

Once you own the niche, you need to maintain it by constantly engaging with consumers and providing them with a great experience. 

Few of the things that you can do to maintain ownership of the niche product,

1. Build a community forum where your customers discuss the product and the niche topic. These people will connect with each other easily and will enjoy sharing their thoughts to each other. 

2. Create an infrastructure around your product that your consumer loves. Like, if you launched a special tracker for Yoga then you can have a platform where there are videos of Yoga and use of the product in the practice.

3. Have your niche specialist in your customer service team as it’s a niche market and those people should provide great customer service experience. 

While promoting your nice product, you should not even think of mass marketing as it will hamper your niche. You need to make your niche your strongest point. 

Hope with this article you are able to define a strong marketing strategy for niche products.

Read More: Understanding the Rise of Digital Media

Follow Us on LinkedIn to Stay Updated!

{Disclaimer: This article is by one of the members of the Toasters community. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Idea Toasters. You can also share your article and ideas with our community. Click to submit your article}

About Idea Toasters

Idea Toasters is a platform where we share ideas and practices to boost innovation and creativity. Our goal is to build the science of innovation and creativity.