If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you’ve heard me talk about Eben Pagan. I am just continually inspired by his teaching and his outlook on life. If you want to change the way you look at not only business, but time management, productivity, and even the world and life in general, sit and listen to this guy for a while.
Jon and I have been trying out one of his coaching/membership programs for the last month or so, and a bonus with that program is videos of another training that he did – so we’ve been getting plenty of Eben-time the last while. I just love learning from the guy and tend to soak up everything I can.
Lately, I’ve been learning about choosing and narrowing a niche. See, the whole idea with the online marketing is that you pick a niche, a very specific topic, and you target a very specific group of people.
It’s counter-intuitive to narrow your niche – most people think they should be trying to reach as many people as possible. When you actually narrow your focus and target a specific group of people, though, you can then speak directly to them! You can get to know your customer, what they think, what they want, what their fears, frustrations and worries are. Particularly their irrational fears. This will help you to speak to them in a language that they understand, that resonates with them. And it will help you to provide products and services that help them specifically.
We’ve been watching a couple of videos this week specifically on narrowing your niche. It fascinates me! I started my romantic website in August 2008, and didn’t understand about narrowing my niche. I still got it fairly narrow – romantic games for couples – but there’s definitely room to niche down even within that! Do I want to talk to young couples who are just starting out? Older couples who have been together a while? And more importantly who is searching for that kind of information and products?
That last question leads me to the topic of researching your niche. Before you narrow it too much, it’s a good idea to do some research. Eben recommends searching for forums, discussion groups, newsletters, communities, social networks, and other similar websites on the topic. Your goal is to find out what people are talking about, what they are looking for, what their fears, worries, etc are.
For example, if you want to do a product and website on dog training, you would do a google search for dog training forums, dog training discussion, dog training newsletter, etc. Then just look around and see what you find. Check out the top sites in google for those search terms and see what they are doing. What is the conversation about? What words are they using? These guys are at the top of google, so they are obviously doing something right.
You may find from those searches that puppy potty training is a particularly popular topic, and then you can do more searches on that term – narrowing it down! Eben says in one video that you want to narrow it until it gets ridiculous. If your puppy potty training niche gets so narrow that you are talking only about potty training for poodle puppies with black fur, that’s what is meant by ridiculous. That’s a little bit too narrow. Potty training for poodle puppies might be a little bit too narrow, as well – I haven’t actually researched the niche, so I’m not sure. I’m sure you get the idea, though!
I can’t wait to really start putting this into practice. I tried it a bit yesterday, during my lunch hour – researching the niche for “acne”. It is interesting to see what kind of information is out there, what people are talking about, and so on. I’m not sure if that is the niche I am going to go with right now, but it certainly has potential!
This applies to offline business as well! In fact, you can do research online for an offline business. Chances are, if they are talking about it online, they will be interested in it offline too. And narrowing your niche for an offline business can be a very good thing to help you really target the customers that want what you are offering.
I’m going to dig more into this research stuff in the next days and weeks, as we get into the StomperNet program and go through picking and researching a niche. I’ll keep you updated as I go and let you know what I am learning.
If you are also interested in internet marketing and starting your own online business, drop me a comment or an email and let me know! I’m always looking for people to brainstorm with, share tips and tools with, and network with. For that matter, you don’t have to interested only in an online business either – you can be in an offline business and still be like-minded and interested in learning how to be successful at it. 
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