The term Niche marketing is bandied about by online marketers like it’s the cure for all ills. You can’t turn around in one of those heavily trafficked internet seminars where thousands meet to “find the cure” without running into half a dozen splinter groups discussing the merits/demerits ( but mostly merits ) of tightly focused Niche marketing.

So, for the newbies amongst us, what is niche marketing? Can we eat it, buy it, use it up or make the ecology green with it?

So how would we define it ? * It’s the current fad, but its not ( This one has really long legs ) * It’s not going to be a good Xmas present – so don’t look for it * It’s not going to make anything bigger longer or … ( u get the msg ) * It’s not likely to be a new job opening anywhere soon

So Let’s Look at An Example

Some would say that the definition of Niche marketing is narrowing down a broader need in the market places until one derives at a much more focused segment that has little or a smaller but reasonable number of competitors.

Marketing to those that buy – Basketball shoes. Niche or not? Not – Michael Jordan running shoes. Niche or not. Not (What did that surprise you?) – Michael Jordan HighTop running shoes. Niche or not? Feeling the sun yet ? – Michael Jordan HighTops signed by the great one himself . Niche or no Niche? Jackpot !

So, the warmth of the sun is shining on our face, its going to be a great day. We can now see the light, yaddy yaddy, yaw. So where do we go from here? We have accurately identified a niche right? And isn’t that what everyone is talking about? Do we stock up now or wait for Christmas?

Not by a long shot. If you are reading this now, thinking that I am holding back, stop, don’t do it. Our research hasn’t even begun yet.

Don’t mistake an example of what the end product might look like with the actual process used to find that niche market. That was NOT the process, in fact, its not even close to the process. While the process can be done manually, you really need a tool since you want to examine and reject tens and tens of potential niches before settling on one to promote. And by the way, even if one of the niche tools highlighted this particular example and a week later 4 friends asked me for the same product I would still have some hesitations…

So, did I just give you a really bad Niche Market example?

It wasn’t necessarily a poor example, but the truth is – far more research is required. To start off with, are those actually the keywords that people use to search for this product? In the past, only search engine statistics could tell us that. Then there were great search engine tools that could help further filter that information. But to help determine whether its a great Niche product, even search engine tools like wordwatcher can only go so far.

Competitive websites and the number of potential clients would have been enough data to help in quantifying this as a niche product — in the past. But not now. The competition has gone considerably further than that in their analysis and so must you – even as a newbie.

Perhaps you are experienced and know that this was not the process used to find niches. Perhaps you are still using the tools inside google adwords, or google trends or wordwatcher. They are time tested and have worked wonderfully for the past few years but a newbie using a niche market tool and having little or no knowledge of the existing search tools from Google could blow you and I out of the competitive water in less than 5 minutes.

Competitive Niche tool products go significantly further than just how many potential clients are searching and whether the competition has the keyword on their site. They use algorithms that use several additional variables for ranking competition. They can immediately open affiliate sites like clickbank and others with a related product already found and ready for you to use. They can find articles from Private Label Sources for reprint. And this is less than a 1/10th of their abilities.

Why anyone would want to search for niche products the old manual way is really beyond me. Save yourself some time have a look at a few potential products that you can use. There is a list on my site.