Niche marketing strategies are more important than ever in 2021. Rather than appealing to everyone with large, sweeping strategies, you need to get personal. After 2020, customers want connection, and your brand needs to reach out and make that connection with each and every potential customer. This approach is called niche marketing and it really works.
What is niche marketing?
It’s marketing to very specific people within very specific parameters. If you’ve heard the phrase “mile wide and inch deep,” this means you cover a lot of the population but not in a meaningful, deep way. In contrast, you want your niche marketing strategy to be “inch wide, mile deep.” You want a small audience, but plenty of substance to offer.
Niche marketing isn’t a new concept, but how it’s done in 2021 is completely fresh. So now you know the idea behind it, here’s how to do it:
1. Build a meaningful, inclusive community around your brand
While the world is living with COVID, marketing is no longer about your product or services, it’s about your community. In a time when ‘isolation’ is a common phrase, making people feel included is more important than ever. Try to:
- Use social media such as FB groups to create conversations.
- Create talking points on social media on your pages.
- Use a unique hashtag for your community users.
- Use online chats Share photos of your community on your socials and encourage them to do the same.
When your customers feel part of something bigger than themselves, they’re more likely to trust and believe in your product and brand.
2. Conversational commerce is key
Conversational commerce is the buzz word of 2021. Consumers decide in less than a second whether they know, like and trust your brand. In that second, the key is to speak directly to them and tell them how you can help them, which builds instant rapport. Conversational commerce makes your customer feel like they have a trusted friend or advisor rather than a company trying to sell them things. This helps to establish brand loyalty too.
Examples of conversational commerce
- direct chat,
- Shopify ping,
- direct messages on social media,
- and comments are all ways to directly engage directly with your customer.
Why does direct chat matter? In 2021, the customer relationship has become about more than just transactions. Using a real-time chat on your website is an accurate way to integrate this relationship into a customer journey. This helps them feel connected to a real person, rather than alone in their purchasing journey.
3. Increase opportunities for expansion of your business
Niche marketing means you’re speaking to a few specific people who really connect with your brand. This makes you more likely to expand successfully with a loyal customer based, rather than competing in a broad, vague marketplace against thousands of other similar brands.
Get specific with your message and brand ethos; Ete Swimwear isn’t just about swimwear, it’s about feminine adventure. By honing in on that specific niche, this brand could expand into other aspects of adventure as the brand has positioned itself in this way from the beginning. If it were solely about swimwear, the opportunity for expansion would be limited.
Top benefits of evolving your niche marketing strategy in 2021
- You have already built the audience and trust.
- It is about how you can serve the current audience better and continue to grow with them so you don’t get left behind as many online businesses do these days.
- Your customers will buy whatever you release because you have done 1 and 2 so well, therefore allowing you to grow and scale your business.
Niche marketing is set to dominate 2021 because being specific is more powerful than being broad. Whilst your product might be able to cater to everyone, your content and marketing is going to tell consumers who you want to talk to. So choose your community and reach out to them. They’ll love you and your brand for it.
Jessica Williamson, Business Coach and Founder of Mindset
