#42/111: Mastering Niche Marketing

What is it about?

How do you build a niche product, e.g. an ebook and market it properly? Eric Van Der Hope shows how to find product ideas, create products and sell them.

Key points?

Write your goals down: Before you start, you should think about your goals. What do you want and how can you reach this? You can start at a farer horizon, e.g. 5 years in the future and plan top-down how to reach these goals.

Test your idea: He presents some key features of good niche markets. You need to check if there is few competition. If there’s too much, it’s already too hard to enter, but if there’s none, you should ask yourself why nobody had the idea, yet. The next step is to check the willingness to buy. Do people in this market normally pay money? For example, it’s probably hard to sell to open source developers because they aren’t accustomed to pay for most stuff. The next step is to check if there is any need, you have a hard time to sell if nobody really wants your product. The last step is to check if this is a sustainable market. I.e. is it just a hype or can it bring your steady revenue for the next years?

Know your customer: If you found your niche market, you should try to find out as much as possible about your customers. To write your copy and set your pricing, you should know what their problems are, a little bit demographics, maybe whom they trust, etc.

Conclusion

I think the cover looks extremely scammy, though some chapters are really useful. Especially, I like the niche finding and the very first chapter about setting goals. Sadly, most of the book got some dubious practices.

#40/111: Niche and Grow Rich

What is it about?

Jennifer and Peter Sander show how to find a niche, receive press coverage and write a business plan. I’ll focus on the idea/niche generation because this is the best part of this book.

Key points?

Shrink big markets: Let’s take the cook book market. There are a lot of generic cook books but also a lot of niches, like cook books for allergic persons or cook books for students. You can try this in nearly every market.

Adapt working niches: Take an existing successful niche and try to use it in another environment. For example, Stack Overflow created a niche Q&A site for programmers, today there are Q&A sites for sys admins, cooking or startups.

Update old ideas: This approach is probably a bit harder. You take old ideas and try to change a fundamental key attribute. E.g. Starbucks took the idea of Italian Cafés and combined it with an extreme growth strategy.

Conclusion

The first quarter of this book was pretty good, which covered the idea generation. The rest is sadly a bit outdated and partly too shallow. Though, these tips for finding niches are great!

#38/111: Riches in Niches

What is it about?

How to thrive at being a niche entrepreneur? Susan Friedmann focuses on service businesses and embraces promotion, promotion and promotion.

Key points?

GEL – Growing, Experience, Love: Consider these three things if you look for a niche. Firstly, the industry should be growing, e.g. elderly care. Secondly, it’s easier to work with your existing knowledge than to learn everything new. Thirdly, choose a niche that you love because it will be hard enough to be motivated the years building your business.

Be an expert: The first step in being a nichepreneur is to build credibility. Learn as much as you can about your niche and share this knowledge. Write a blog, offer webinars, offer seminars or even write a book. This will help your recognition as an expert.

Cultivate your contact with the media: For even greater exposure try to publicize in industry magazines or even regional newspapers. Try to stay in touch with journalists or editors, if you gave them once useful great advice, they will probably contact you in the future.

Conclusion

This book gives a nice view on marketing from an other perspective. I think it works extremely good if you offer your expertise as a service, e.g. coaches, consultants, attorneys, etc. For product companies the most important lesson is to offer free useful information to your customers and prospects.

#36/111: The Knack

What is it about?

What should you know before starting a business? Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham try to answer this question. They focus on some topics from money management to hiring. The Knack is especially targeted at former sales persons.

Key points?

Know your metrics: Most sales people focus on the sales volume only. This doesn’t work for your business is your profit margin is too low. Brodsky recommends to calculate your profit margins by hand to get a feeling for the numbers.

Search a niche in an old market: You should focus on an old market because you don’t have to generate demand and often the leading companies are pretty rigid. If you can find a niche which undermines these companies, you can earn a fortune.

Keep your old customers: You already know that it’s easier to sell to your existing customers than to new ones. So try to generate more profit from them.

Build a culture: You will reach a point where it is impossible to do everything by yourself. If you hire people try to hire for cultural fit. This way you will trust them more and they will know what’s important for your business.

Conclusion

The first quarter was extremely good. He told a story from two friends of him who wanted to start a business and he explained lots of steps and how they developed their company. Sadly, stories of other people decreased and it become more and more egocentric. The name of the book is a bit misleading, maybe it would be better if it was named “My Business Life by Norm Brodsky”.