Niche Product Marketing

Niche Product Marketing:
Embracing Innovation in the Social Era

Foreword
Before search engines came in, reaching out to prospective customers was an expensive affair.
Fresh products were a relative rarity because few businesses could afford the marketing
expenses to fight the incumbents. Small businesses could at best fight the bigger players at the
local level. Specialty designer boutiques survived on lower volumes by setting relatively higher
margins per sale and catering to exclusive local clientele. Other
“I don’t want to be a smaller businesses survived in regions where large players had
small fish in the ocean. not yet made their presence felt.
I am the ocean!”
The coming of Google changed everything. Finally businesses of
all sizes could fight alongside each other for consumer
attention, based purely on the merit of their products- not capital. Genius overtook corporate
bureaucracy almost overnight. All you had to do was build products that consumers needed
and they would seek you out. Search engine optimization and adwords became necessary
knowledge tools for the online marketer. And the marketing world forgot all about “need
arousal”!
“I have an 85% bounce rate… my
But what about the niche players in unborn
SEO says I must write content to
categories? How would you optimize your site to
match the popular keywords”
sell a product through search if nobody even knows
the category yet?

The newer startups offering niche products in unborn categories are being convinced by the
‘SEO gurus’ to boost hits by broadening their content. The result? A gradual dilution of the
niche! Ambitious products are steadily evolving into generics attempting to claim the rabbit’s
share of the lion’s market.

But now the niche is making a come-back. The era of search is now getting replaced by a more
powerful one- an era that brings people and minds together, reshaping marketing thought. The
era of niche businesses in niche markets- the era of Social Media!

Table of Contents
Foreword ............................................................................................................ 1
Introduction ........................................................................................................ 3
Niche Products and Game Changers ................................................................... 3
The Failure of Search .......................................................................................... 3
The Long Tail of Search .................................................................................... 4
The Relevance Paradox .................................................................................... 4
Reaching Your Customers ................................................................................... 5
Identifying the Key Customers ......................................................................... 5
Empowering with the Right Tools .................................................................... 6
Driving Passion through Personalization .......................................................... 6
Plugging the Holes ........................................................................................... 7
Maximizing the Passion Chain .......................................................................... 7
About the Author ................................................................................................ 8

Copyright © GoJeeno 2010 | Niche Product Marketing | http://www.gojeeno.com

Introduction
The greatest advantage of game changing startups often becomes their first hurdle- they are
NOT mainstream. The advantages of having a unique product, monopolizing a niche market are
many. But that comes at a price- nobody is looking for you!

Niche Products and Game Changers
An increasing number of startups are providing products and services targeting a highly focused
customer niche. To quote Guy Kawasaki, the art of innovation
lies in developing unique products that provide a high value to
consumers.

A decade ago nobody was actively seeking a touch-only mobile
phone with just one button. So how do these niche products
and services break the initial inertia?

The Failure of Search
Search engine marketing has been a blessing for small and medium business over the last
decade. Content and quality have allowed SMBs to fight and steal market share from larger
businesses.

The success of search Nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to buy a robot
engine marketing is limited made from household appliances.
by keyword focus and the
number of search queries.
By loosening the focus of keywords, you could get displayed on a larger number of queries.
However, this would be less meaningful to a consumer, and therefore result in lower
conversion rates. A highly focused keyword set implies a lower reach, but higher conversion
rates.

Search engine marketing is therefore invaluable for low capital mainstream
players. With a huge market size, even a negligible share of the total market
could make ends meet.

Unfortunately, this mindset breaks down with niche product offerings due to two major
reasons:


The Long Tail of Search
The long tail effect refers to the property that a disproportionally higher majority of something
occur at a large number of low frequency ‘events’. Search volumes are intrinsically
characterized by the long tail, resulting in two observations of interest to the niche business
owner. First, while the search volume for niche products as a whole is greater than generic
brands, the demand for each particular niche
is low. Second, since a consumer searching
within a particular niche is more focused in
that domain, advertising across niches results
in poor clicks and conversions.

In a final attempt to win more hits and
audience, the business owner is forced to
follow the advice of SEO gurus- target high
frequency keywords and effectively dilute
the essence of the product. To make matters worse, the actual customer base that was initially
targeted gets alienated and the super unique product idea becomes a ‘me-too’ player in the
congested market place.

The Relevance Paradox
The relevance paradox refers to the fact that people only seek
information that they perceive as relevant to them. With access to
instant information, thanks to today’s search engines, consumers
interested in a particular product- say an IPhone application would go
ahead and search for that. Again, search works great for products and
services that easily fall into an existing domain or category. Niche
products and category breakers are not as lucky. Since such a category
did not even exist
“Your customers won’t look for you until they before the unique product was born,
know you exist… But if they knew it, why consumers who are unaware of the
would they look for you in the first place?!” product would not even feel the need to
seek it out. What’s even more paradoxical
is the fact that if they knew such a product
existed they would have probably been interested enough to seek it out!

So how does the niche business owner reach the target audience?


Reaching Your Customers
Niche businesses have one major advantage over others- their customers. Imagine the first few
customers buying robotic toys made from household junk. They are characterized by their
passion towards the product. In fact, these customers are almost as passionate as the business
owners themselves.

A passionate customer is the greatest
asset a business can have. First, as
Traits of the Passionate Customer
human beings, we all feel the need to
-lends voice to your problems and concerns
‘educate’ others about the things we are
-spreads positive word of mouth about you
passionate about. Passionate customers
- breaks the paradox by talking to friends
actively voice their opinions about you in
-energizes your prospects with the ‘Need’
a related discussion, advising prospects
and recommending your product to
friends.

Second, a passionate person is able to bring people around her into a similar level of
excitement and passion. By nurturing a single passionate customer, a business can create a self-
propelling chain of excited prospects that actively spread word about
the product. Finally, passion attracts passion. That is the reason why
geeks stick with geeks, and most of our social circle likes to discuss
the same games and TV shows as us.

Niche products, consequently, have or target a set of consumers who
not only have the desire to talk and the capacity to make others
excited about their product, but also have the ability to do so through
strong social connections with similar people. So how can a business
capitalize on this passion to drive growth? How can businesses create the “Passion Chain
Reaction”?

The most logical solution is- by conducting a methodical Passion Audit comprising of three
stages.

Identifying the Key Customers
The first step in creating a passion chain reaction is identifying the key customers. The first trait
is passion. Businesses can readily identify this attribute in a customer from her activities within
support forums and the tendency to actively seek and provide information about the product in
social media.


However, the key customer is not just
“The best customer need not necessarily be passionate. She is surrounded by people
the one surrounded by a million friends- who engage in discussions surrounding
they merely have to be surrounded by a similar product categories.
handful of similar people with similar
interests.” So once the business identifies the right
customers, how does it go about initiating
the passion chain reaction?

Empowering with the Right Tools
Social media is truly a heaven for the niche business provider. The right customer is already
eager to spread the word about the product. All the business has to do is empower the
customer with the capabilities to do so. At the least, businesses can add a Twitter and/or
Facebook button at the ecommerce store or website for customers to share product knowledge
with friends.

Businesses that can afford it may even How to create a Passion Chain Reaction
educate their customers and get them -Identify Key Customers
active on social media by aggregating and -Empower them with the tools to talk
providing customers with the vast -Drive Passion through Personalization
amount of information on the subject -Plug Holes and Sinks
available online. -Maximize the Flow
It would be ingenious for businesses to
allow customers to view and add opinions for each product. Businesses could create default
Twitter handles (like @robonerdreviews) that automatically aggregate and broadcast these
customer opinions.

Driving Passion through Personalization
Since consumers of niche products have a strong similarity in their preference,
it makes sense to foster social media relationships between them. Customers
and prospects would love connecting to like-minded people. By creating a
social network of people who like the product, the business eventually creates
a sense of brand identity among the
“Internalize your customers. network members.
Engage them. Don’t just
One of the ways to enable such inter-customer
acquire customers-
relationships is by creating a social shopping
acquire Patrons!”
environment. In such an environment, prospects can
see what their friends think about the product.


Additionally, customers gain visibility into others who they might want to initiate a friendship
with.

Letting customers ‘in’ on your internal information makes them feel like they are a part of your
team. Post pictures of your Halloween night and ask customers to reply. Host a video or a photo
contest and display your customer’s pictures on your blogs.

By creating such an atmosphere, niche product consumers become one with the business and
spread positive word of mouth more actively.

Plugging the Holes
Every system tends to move towards a system of disorder. Loyal customers sometimes form
closed groups between themselves, or word of mouth just does not seem to
filter down to the prospective customers. Identifying the ‘information leaks’
and holes in the customer social network is imperative. Once identified and
validated, the business manager needs to identify the prospect’s interest
areas and craft out strategic content to impress the prospect.

Maximizing the Passion Chain
The final step in driving the passion chain reaction is maximization. Without periodic watering,
even the most passionate customers are bound to eventually lose interest and move
elsewhere. However, with the limited resources available, small businesses cannot make sure
that all customers remain permanently excited. It is therefore crucial to undertake periodic
passion audits and maximize the overall passion levels.

Nurtured customers become evangelists. An evangelist stimulates the passion chain reaction.
The chain reaction is the tipper your business needs to explode into exponential growth.


About the Author
Vikram Bhaskaran is the co-founder and Director of Products at GoJeeno.
He holds an undergraduate degree in engineering and a Masters in Marketing, with a
specialization in marketing modeling and social network analytics. Vikram is the winner of
numerous awards and honors, including the prestigious Google & WPP Marketing Rewards
Award in the year 2010. He is also a Certified Expert in Customer and Brand Management.
Before starting GoJeeno, Vikram worked as an engineer, a marketer, analyst, researcher and
consultant in various organizations.

You can get in touch with Vikram through his Linkedin Profile: http://linkedin.com/in/markalive
or through Twitter: @vkrm20

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0
Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco,
California, 94105, USA.


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