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Vol. 4 :: No. 1 January,
2002 (Paush
- Magh)
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E-Marketing |
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Finding a Niche in the Online world By Smriti Shrestha It is often easy to get intimidated by big websites offering similar services that your website offers. These bigger sites may be spending thousands of rupees for its promotion and may also be employing larger number of employees. Chances are also that your online business idea may already have been used. But does this mean that the market is saturated and there is no room on board for you? No. Not by a long shot. There is no doubt that the Internet is hyper-competitive and to be successful in an online business, one needs to be the BEST. Now that doesn’t mean being the best overall or even the best in a general category such as cotton garment or jewellery or travel services or even current news. What it means is being the best in a specific category and that is. .…Your Niche. So, how exactly do you go about finding or creating your niche? Here are some of the ways to find a niche in a certain category to help you make your online existence stand out from the rest. The aim is to provide an approach and the motivation to take on the big competitors you never thought you could match.
This is the most important rule that one should remember when trying to create a niche. I have visited a lot of big websites, which offer lot of information, services, products on sale and even opportunity to win a prize by taking part in a quiz. But when I started probing into them in search of few specific information, I found only a handful of very general information. More probing on other categories and section of these sites, and results were still negative. Now, as I think of these sites, I cannot remember any particular thing about them that was really useful. But yes, all of them had a lot of pages with lots of information. What I’m trying to point is that most of theses sites did not offer anything that makes them different, and nothing that creates in the prospects the want to have that special uniqueness. Therefore, to start with, after you select the general category (e.g. health and fitness, travel services, pets etc.) you’re interested in becoming involved (or you may already be involved in the offline world), you have to check if you can narrow down your area of interest a little. Lets say your interest lies in ‘Health and Fitness products and services’. But can you be more specific? Does your interest lie in aerobic exercise, weight training, exercise machines or nutritional supplement diet? Your niche lies in one or more of these subcategories.
A vast majority of the websites put up too much emphasis and focus on their company and their products and services. Most of them are telling the visitors about the company and the products/services they offer, how wonderful they are and how great their quality is and all about them. People do not come online in search of information about the company. They are there to find out if the products/services are useful to them. For example, people do not go online and say " I am going to go online to find out which restaurant serves what food at what price’. They say" I am going online to find out best place to find a way to celebrate my birthday with my girlfriend’" It’s the job of the marketer to turn that yearning for information into a yearning for his/her restaurant/resort. Therefore, when trying to find a niche, it is utmost important to find out the real needs of the prospects and customers for it by meeting their specific need that one becomes stronger in his/her niche. For this, you have to listen to what people are interested in, what they are looking for. A good place to start is to sign up to various mailing lists and read newsgroups relevant to your category. You could participate in discussion groups relating to the subject. You will often find forums around the Internet with real customers discussing their likes and dislikes about certain products and services. Follow close the discussion or query forums where people chat or place their opinions about a particular topic. In particular, pay attention to the questions that people are putting up because they have been raised since they have not yet found a solution to it.
Armed with the potential niches, try to find if you can fulfill some specific needs of the customers. Pay particular attention to your experience and interest and expertise and also how you could outsource the required resources. Newsletters, articles, etc. are good tools, which will help to establish you as an expert in the area. Remember that since you are meeting an unmet need, setting yourself as an expert in your niche is important. This will give you enormous competitive advantage at least in the beginning. Lets say, you sub category of interest within the general category of travel services is ‘Two wheeler rental facility for tourists in Pokhara’. You might find out that the need for lighter two wheelers like the moped and scooters have not been met sufficiently. Similarly, if your area of interest is the category of health and fitness, then perhaps you might find that some potential areas of unmet needs exist for exercising machines for those recuperating from injury. A niche may not remain a niche for long. The nature of competition offline or online is that your success will entice new entrants into your niche. To stay on top the heap you need to have continuously evolving and ever vigilant within your niche. So, make sure that you are continuously innovating and out performing your competitors in you niche.
It is important that you do not over-charge your customers. Nothing scares customers off quicker than ridiculously exhorbitant price. On the other hand, most of the customers may not mind paying that little extra if it is going to get them a service, which the big competitors do not provide so well.
Failure to take down the customers’ or visitors’ contact information is one of the many marketing mistakes that could cause companies to lose their niche in the online world. It is no use spending a lot of money to get a customer to visit a site and let them leave without getting their names and addresses and other basic information. Remember, it takes more than twice an effort to bring in new prospect than retain the existing ones. Next step obviously is to develop a good database of the visitors and develop a marketing program tailored to attract more of such customers so that the focus of your niche marketing is a group of customers whose needs can be best satisfied by you. You could also use consumer database to personalize your service. Listening to a user feedback, being available to talk and offering opinions on different issues all contribute to personalizing a service. Personalizing a service is an excellent way of gaining customer trust. If the customers trust you they will buy from and vice versa. By taking the time to find the right niche for you, and then building your business around that niche, you will make a valuable contribution and addition to the internet community. Now, if you think that you already have found a niche in the online and even offline world then you should be glad that you are traveling on the road towards online marketing success. If not, you may be completely and unknowingly sabotaging the chances of success. Share Prices in Nepal
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