Niche market

Marketing
Key concepts
Product marketing · Pricing Distribution · Service · Retail Brand management Account-based marketing Ethics · Effectiveness · Research Segmentation · Strategy · Activation Management · Dominance Marketing operations
Promotional content
Advertising · Branding · Underwriting Direct marketing · Personal sales Product placement · Publicity Sales promotion · Sex in advertising Loyalty marketing · SMS marketing Premiums · Prizes
Promotional media
Printing · Publication · Broadcasting Out-of-home advertising · Internet Point of sale · Merchandise Digital marketing · In-game advertising In-store demonstration · Word-of-mouth Brand ambassador · Drip marketing · Visual merchandising
v · d · e

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact. It is also a small market segment and an example would be a bridal shoe shop because there is not very many of them around.

Every single product that is on sale can be defined by its niche market. As of special note, the products aimed at a wide demographic audience, with the resulting low price (due to price elasticity of demand), are said to belong to the mainstream niche—in practice referred to only as mainstream or of high demand. Narrower demographics lead to elevated prices due to the same principle. So to speak, the Niche Market is the highly specialized market that tries to survive among the competition from numerous super companies.

In practice, product vendors and trade businesses are commonly referred as mainstream providers or narrow demographics niche market providers (colloquially shortened to just niche market providers). Small capital providers usually opt for a niche market with narrow demographics as a measure of increasing their gain margins.

Nevertheless, the final product quality (low or high) is not dependent on the price elasticity of demand; it is associated more with the specific needs that the product is aimed at satisfy and in some cases with brand recognition with which the vendor wants to be associated (e.g., prestige, practicability, money saving, expensiveness, planet environment conscience, power, &c.).

Niche audience

Technology and industrial practices changed with the post-network era. There is a new drive for niche audiences because audiences are now in full control of what they watch. It is very rare to have a substantially large audience to watch at once, with the few exceptions of "American Idol", "Superbowl" and the Olympics. They specifically target a demographic. For example, Lifetime targets women and MTV targets youth. Today networks and production companies are trying to discover ways to profit greatly by trying new scheduling, new shows, and relying on syndication so television prospers through this new era where the viewer is in absolute control.

Online niche marketing

An often used technique for affiliate marketers is Internet-based niche segments of larger markets, referred to as niches, a website can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted and usually loyal customer base, giving the affiliate a small but regular income stream. This technique is then repeated across several other niche websites until a desired income level is achieved. A bigger niche is harder to market to as the expense of online advertisements increases according to the popularity of the keywords used (on Adwords, for example).

Some niches may become saturated with marketers, increasing competition and thus, according to the economic law of supply and demand, reducing the slice of the pie available to each competitor. One solution is to find smaller, "undiscovered," but still profitable, niches, usually by searching out the best keywords to target. These lower cost keywords are called long-tailed keywords, as in the long tail of secondary keyword phrases that usually follow the main keyword in popularity of number of searches conducted by internet users. Some are too obscure and may have very few or even no clicks per month, and therefore not much use to target.

The concept of niche marketing can be well understood by the following example: A number of television channels cater to the need of a particular niche; for example, sports channels like STAR Sports, ESPN, STAR Cricket, and Fox target a niche of sports lovers.

Many business industries use niche marketing today. The use of High Impact eMarketing styles along with the Microsite or Landing Page builds company recognition and brand trust.

References

Lotz, Amanda D. (2007) The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New York, NY: New York University Press. Ch. 3