Niche Markets Are Out There Waiting for You to Find Them

By: John Bradley Jackson

The media spends most of its time telling us about the next big thing, while overlooking the power and the size of niche markets. For example, when the media speaks to us about retail, they tell us about the retail juggernaut Wal-Mart and not about the innovative niche marketers on eBay who serve unique buyers with special needs. The funny thing is that these eBay competitors collectively dwarf Wal-Mart.

Chris Anderson's book, THE LONG TAIL, cites the example of Wal-Mart's music selection of 4,500 titles; those titles have to sell to be carried as in-store inventory at Wal-Mart. If a title doesn't sell it is quickly removed from the shelves. End of story. Meanwhile, Amazon.com, which Anderson calls a "long tail aggregator", happily carries 800,000 titles since it has no worries about the costs of managing retail shelf space. In an exaggerated sense, Amazon is a giant niche provider, which serves hundreds, or maybe thousands of specialized niche music segments. His book suggests that it is harder and harder to be a Wal-Mart and that the marketplace is rapidly fragmenting into a highly diverse universe of unique niche markets that can now be easily served by internet-centric providers. The next big thing is actually going to be many new little things.

I have personally witnessed a similar metamorphosis in how I watch television. Maybe you have too. When I was kid living on the Kansas prairie, we had two television stations: CBS and NBC. I watched the same television shows that my friends did at the same time on the same night every week. For instance, the popular western TV series "Bonanza" was on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. My family watched this show, along with the mandatory commercial advertisements, as did most of my friends and their families. Flash forward to today and I have satellite TV with hundreds of stations along with TiVo. I have no idea what shows are on the networks and I have not watched a commercial in months. I watch only what I want when I want to watch it.

Our marketplace is being "personalized" with people buying goods ands services as individuals, not as crowds. This personalization of the overall marketplace is creating huge opportunities for the niche marketer. The key is to identify the niche market and make the solution available to the buyer, while visualizing your customer as an individual buyer with unique needs. The more you can personalize your product and the accompanying purchase process, the more likely you will sell your products or services. The one-size-fits-all mindsets are quickly giving away to an internet bazaar of niche providers. This won't happen overnight, but I recommend that you embrace the change rather than fight it.

It has never been better to be an entrepreneur. Go find your niche.

John Bradley Jackson brings street-savvy sales and marketing experience from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. His resume also includes entrepreneur, angel investor, corporate trainer, philanthropist, and consultant. His book is called "First, Best, or Different: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know About Niche Marketing". Check out his website at www.firstbestordifferent.com and his blog at www.firstbestordifferent.com/blog

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