Edmonton Marketing Firm claims "the riches are in the niches", and smart compani es are taking advantage

when advertising in Edmonton. But what does that mean? In marketing terms, a niche is a particular segment or subset of a larger market . However, this Edmonton marketing firm prefers Eben Pagan's more elegant defini tion: niches are needsspecific, unfilled needs of a particular group of customers . When you view niches through this filter, identifying and marketing to a parti cular segment becomes much easier than selling to a larger group because you can narrowly target your product to meet the exact wants and needs of these specifi c buyers. As I have preached time and time again to my consulting clients and mentorship s tudents when advertising in Edmonton, knowing exactly who your target customer i sand building an avatar from their demographics and psychographicsis a critical st ep in selling your products and/or services. Niche marketing is essentially anot her approach to this process that involves identifying and selling to customers who may be (1) a subset of your current customer base or (2) similar but perhaps outside your traditional customer profile. Let's break these two groups down further to discover how you can use niche mark eting when advertising in Edmonton a new businessor enhance your existing operati ons. Creating a Subset of Your Customer Base Let's say you develop a diet and exercise program for business executives that y ou sell in DVD format. In communicating with your customers, you discover that m any of them spend a lot of time on the road and have trouble following your regi men using only hotel gyms. By discovering an unmet need in these road warriors, you've identified a new niche within your current customer base. In order to serve the needs of this new nicheand monetize your discoveryyou could develop a 20-minute "on the road" version of your program with exercises that an yone can do in any location and deliver this program in a convenient, downloadab le MP3 format. To take it a step further, you might even partner with someone wh o sells lightweight, portable exercise equipment, like resistance bands or water -filled weights. With a little research and product development, you've identified a new niche wi thin your business with existing needs that you can easily fill. If you can do t his for several segments within your customer base, the results will easily begi n to stack. Pretty soon, you'll have several, tightly-focused product offerings specifically designed to meet the needs of very specific avatars. Because they'r e so targeted toward your customers' needs these are the kinds of products that have the potential to sell on auto-pilot to provide you with a continuous income stream. Identifying New Target Audiences To expand this idea to its full potential, you'll also want to look outside your traditional customer profile for new segments. Ask yourself, "Who else has the same wants and needs as my current customers?" Road warriors have limited time a nd limited access to gym facilities, and so do busy moms. After doing your resea rch to confirm that your product is on-target for this customer base, you could shoot a new DVD with the same exercise program but with a female demonstrator an d dialogue scripted toward mothers. Voila! A new niche, a new customer base, and a new stream of revenue. By noting similarities between your avatars and other customer groups, you can e asily create new products, or, even better, modify your existing products to exp

and your offerings and multiply your income. Finding the Rich in the Niche Edmonton Marketing Firm focuses on your niche markets when advertising in Edmont on. Niche marketing isn't about identifying any niche. It's about finding the right niche, which starts with targeted research. First, survey and/or interview your current customers. Pay particular attention to comments and suggestions in your online forums. See which topics get the most attention, as this usually will lea d you to discover your customers' unfulfilled desires, wants, or needs. What are n't you providing that they are asking for? Are they saying things like, "It wou ld be nice if your product did X"? Your best follow-up product is often one that fulfills the needs of a smaller se gment of your current customer base. When you can appeal to people who already l ike your stuff and believe you provide value, you're putting yourself a step ahe ad of the game. Second, use the proven search capabilities of the Internet to research new poten tial niches. After you check Google Keywords and AdSense to see which keywords a ssociated with your product have high volume and competition, check sites like G oogle Trends and Yahoo! Answers for questions and topics with rising interest. G oogle Trends also will show you which keywords or products have spikes in search volume at particular times of yearincome tax preparation services in February an d March, for instance. This can help you time your product launches to capture t he greatest amount of traffic. Type in query lines around your particular product"exercise on the road"and see wh ich results come up first, and how many results there are. Look at the related s earches as well. Remember, your niche needs to be specific and narrow, but not s o narrow there aren't enough visitors to warrant creating a product or marketing your stuff to them. However, it's not enough simply to identify a potential niche of clickers. You n eed buyers, so you must make sure that this is a potentially profitable niche. T hat means people must be in enough pain or want something enough to lay down the ir hard-earned money. A quick way to determine the profitability of a niche is t o see how many sponsored listings appear when you search on the topic. If there are several ads, it indicates others are selling profitably to that particular n iche. You also can visit popular shopping sites like Amazon, or use sites like C lickBank, to see which products are already being offered to this audience. Third, do a comparative analysis of these competing products in the niche. What' s already working? Is your solution differentiated enough to draw the kind of tr affic and purchases that will make the effort worthwhile? Is the way you present your message suited to this new customer? You need to determine how receptive t his new market will be to your message, product, price point, and delivery. Remember, competition in a particular niche is good, but you do want to look for niches where no particular competitor has established a dominant presence. If J oe Schmo has been the pre-eminent sports memorabilia dealer for the past twenty years, for example, don't try and compete directly with him. Instead, set up a s ite and a business focused on Olympics-only collectiblesa narrower niche with a p assionate (and international) customer base. Your goal is to find a niche with h igh demand and several competitors, and then differentiate your product or servi ce with a unique solution or approach. Finally, test-market your product to this niche in a limited way before doing a full rollout. Start small; test with a smaller, lower-cost product that will att

ract these new customers into your client path. Better to invest small amounts o f time, energy and capital until you are certain this new niche will be worth a larger investment. Yes, there are "riches in the niches" for the savvy producer. Careful research a nd consideration of your customers' and prospects' unmet needs can help you crea te extremely targeted productsand a whole new stream of revenue.