Understanding clearly what it is that you offer, and who’s buying it, can help you take your business to the next level. If you offer a service for example – say you trim trees for homeowners – then you have an obvious niche that you serve. If you’re based in Wheat Ridge (like we are) you can say you serve the Denver Metro Area. You don’t want someone from New Jersey contacting you about trimming their trees and they don’t want to waste their time either. So you can focus on your immediate area.
Continuing on the localization theme, why not target the key phrase “Wheat Ridge” or “Wheat Ridge tree trimmer”? Sure there many only be a handful of people who search for that each year. But wouldn’t you want those people to be your customers? So localization is one way of determining your niche.
But there are others. The constant message I hammer is Define Your Target. Some of my customers get hung up on the fact that “well my target is here but I also have customers over in this category”. Don’t think about that! Define your ideal target customer. Then develop all of your marketing, including your web site marketing strategies, around that target. When you’re playing darts, you never hit the bullseye with every dart. But the more you practice aiming straight for the bullseye, the better you get at hitting it. And some of your darts will inevitably end up missing the target all together. Same with your clients. Some will not be anything like your target. And that’s OK. But the more you aim for your target, the more customers you’ll get that are in close to your idea.
Other examples of defining your niche or target:
Deal in Real Estate? Residential or Commercial? New homes or existing homes? Sell alot of ranch homes? A lot of tudor homes?
Selling stick dolls online? Who has been buying them? What do you know about them? Mostly female? Mostly in their 30’s? Single? Married? Buying for themselves? Buying as a gift?
Once you’ve defined your niche, make sure that you’re targeting keywords that fit that niche. Also if you have identified a certain demographic, use tools such as Claritas or Mark Kassof (focuses on Radio but a lot of carryover to the web) to help you understand how to target that niche that you have defined.