Operate Within the Right Market Segment

It is not easy to run a business! Most of the times you find yourself to become a solopreneur without anyone to support you in the various things you have to do.

And on the top of it, you need to find more time to do, all the things you have to do. How that’s sound?

Are You Operating in the Right Market Segment?

Making business is not always so easy at it first looks. Most people believe that a great idea can produce a great business. But this is not always true; no truer than that a great electrician can make a great owner of an electrical company.

Today business and the market has changed a lot. And this is not just because of the technology.

Modern people, are far more informed and educated from earlier times and sometimes have strong affiliations with one or more brands. To try to persuade them for something different to what they really like and use, usually it is useless (or time-consuming)!

To really succeed in business you need to operate in a market segment (niche) that can support your business vision and plans.

The ideal situation is, as Allan Dib says to work in a niche market that is”an inch wide, and a mile deep“! But that is not so easy.

First of all, perhaps, today there aren’t so reach niche markets, and second may be already “occupied” by your competitors.

So what a clever entrepreneur as yourself should do? First of all, you need to work where your clients are. And this is means to know who your clients are!

There are 3+1 choices actually:

1. Select a niche market, and work from the start all the way up, developing your brand and business along the way, and trying to keep up with your competitors (bottom-up approach). This is the normal way, for most new entrepreneurs, trying to develop a brand that would sustain their business.
2. Position yourself to a “less demanding” sub-segment of your selected niche market and work all way to make your brand strong and comparable to the leaders of your niche market.
3. Make a name to a different niche market and after your successful course, you have decided to move inside a new niche market (this is a top-bottom approach). Your previous experience and your brand would help you to work successful to the new niche market and perhaps can gain you 1-2 points against the existing players.

These are the 3 ways you can use to work to your niche market of your choice. And there is one more, the fourth one and the most difficult of all.

This way focusing on how to develop a new niche market.

Developing A New Niche Market

To develop a new niche market is not easy and not all people are well equipped to do it! It is a matter of hard work, of certain specialized skills and of a set of differentiating and in-demand factors can sustain the interest and develop a small pool of interested persons for this particular market.

The key factors here are research and diversification.

As a clever entrepreneur, you are you should place yourself in a less-known segment of a market (as in #2 point further above) or start your research for finding real needs and ways of cure.

There are many ways to research the market to find the “pains” your prospects might have! And of course, there are methods which can help you in such a venture.

Some are better than others for developing a product people want to buy, but at the end of the day, all is a matter of how to understand if there is a problem you can help in solving it!

If you find a problem, many people want a solution for, then you are on the right track. Especially if you are also the person can provide a workable solution to the problem you have identified.

If you are combining these two features (and you should since if you are following a consistent way of researching existing problems, is undoubted to finding a problem in an area you don’t know anything about) and a number of interested people you have a solid foundation for developing your brand new niche market.

Before some years, the weren’t any market for electronic books, while today there are vertical niches for almost any aspect of the process of how you develop, market and sell a kindle book.

If you can combine all 3 elements of developing a new niche market:

• A “pain” or problem needs to be solved
• A solution (product, service or approach) you can provide and can solve the given problem and
• A number of interested people about this particular problem

then you have found your prospects. But prospects are not clients. Are people belonging to broad demographic categories and potentially interested in your solutions, but … they do not know anything about you.

From here on, is a matter of business development, how you “package” your solution, how to communicate it to your audience, how to build your unique value proposition, etc. to convert prospects to leads or even to clients.

But that is another story!