How Niching Can Boost Your Online Sales

Using niche markets to narrow down your audience is a fantastic way to boost your business. While it might feel like you’re making your audience too small, this is not the case for online businesses with access to international reach.

First thing’s first, what is niching? Niching in business is selecting a specific audience and purpose that you serve. Niche markets can be more effective than wide target markets because people identify more with them.

For instance, say you’re a cake baker who needs a logo made. You find a designer who specialises in branding for bakers in your region. You also find a branding agency who cater to all types of businesses anywhere in the world. Now you could go either way, but tell me you’re not leaning toward the specialised (or niche) choice!

Niches don’t always have to be based on location or interests, they can also include aspects such as:

• Personality
• Values
• Preferences

These refined aspects of niching can be particularly helpful if you run a business where you select the clients you work with (often service providers). But they can also be utilised for ecommerce businesses through your products, branding, and messaging.

So, how can niching be used to boost online sales?

On social media

Social media is where you target and draw in your niche audience. You want to attract your dream customers.

One of the great things about social media is that you can run ads which only show up for people within your niche. You can send out an ad campaign directed to any group of people based on their location, interests and more. Remember the baker? She can target her ads to chocolate lovers to advertise her new double chocolate mud cake (how good is that?).

On your website

Once your niche audience has landed on your website, that’s where you want to make a great impression.

This should align with your social media as well, but on your website you can cater to your niche through branding, imagery, language, and product or service offerings. Consider who you’re serving through your business. That niche should feel welcomed by every detail on your website.

In your offerings

A common mistake I see is business owners offering multiple services or products that don’t align with each other. They spread themselves too thin. Without learning about niching these business owners are left wondering why their sales aren’t flowing. This may be because they are targeting multiple different audiences rather than one specific niche. This is something that can be learned through trial and error, or can be considered carefully from the beginning.

Your products and/or services should align with each other. Let’s think about the baker again: In her first year of business, she sold baked goods and her handmade pottery. While she loves both offerings, she found that she was confusing potential customers by offering different things within the same business and was spreading herself too thin. In her second year, the baker decided she’d focus on making the best food she could.

Niching not only opens up time to do one thing really well, it also makes your business crystal clear in order to attract dream customers. You can boost your online sales by being damn good at what you offer to your specific niche. All the better to grow a community packed with value!

What’s your niche? Or what niche are you thinking about?