Finding your niche

Everyone needs to have a marketing niche, or two. Replacing shovel handles may be a narrow niche, but it might not be a tiny one. The sign shown above is in Meridian, which is west of Boise and at one edge of Ada County. There are about 1200 farms in Ada County. Adjacent Canyon County has almost 2000 farms, the most for any county in Idaho. How many shovels does a farm use?

An article in the May 15, 2008 issue of Business Week discussed how Best Buy found some unexpected marketing niches, like a retiree club near Mooresville, North Carolina (for digital TV sets), and sailors from Eastern European ships visiting their Baytown, Texas store (for Apple iPods and laptop computers).

Fear of public speaking is one topical niche for this blog. If you scroll to the bottom of the page and click the label for Surveys you will see 15 posts ranging from humorous to serious.

Susan Friedmann has been on the board of the National Speakers Association and is a Certified Speaking Professional. She has carved out a career niche in speaking, writing, and blogging about niche marketing. In 2007 Susan published a book on Riches in Niches (How to make it BIG in a small market). In 2009 she published another, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Target Marketing.