Designs For Niche Marketing
A niche market is a specific portion of the market that you can focus your marketing efforts on. Often by targeting a niche like this the business that does so is addressing a need that hasn’t been fully serviced by existing providers.
A niche can be indentified by seeking out a smaller customer base that are not currently having their needs fully met, or by discovering a new type of customer and a new type of need that has yet to be catered to. New needs can arise by changes to technology or society for example.
Though a niche customer base may be small, niche marketing can be very profitable if most customers with that need are visiting just one or two suppliers because mainstream businesses don’t fully cater to their needs.
A mainstream business may deem it unprofitable to cater to the needs of one small group of people when they aim to cater to more and sell in higher volumes. This is often the case for large brands, and this then leaves niche markets open for the small business owner to exploit.
Designing for niche markets is actually less complicated than designing for brands that need to appeal to more than one customer type. For instance if a company identity needs to appeal, to the young, the old, men women, and so on, you can imagine that it takes some skill to avoid alienating groups of people that are so diverse in nature.
When a target market is more narrowly defined, brand design becomes more clear cut, and hence so does the marketing activity that ensues from the brand designs.
The Designing For Children Niche
Designing to appeal to the niche market of children between the ages of 3 and 5 seems clear cut enough and this was the case for a recent project; Phonics Fit.
However, one needs to consider that when you are designing for a business that has a specific age range of children as it’s customers, you aren’t just designing to appeal to the children, you must also take care to appeal to the parents also - after all it, it’s the parent that holds the purse strings and not the child!
Tips For Building A Niche Businesses
1. Ideally find a product or service that you are highly knowledgeable in, perhaps something that stems from a hobby or a pursuit you are passionate about.
2. Research your niche; is there enough demand for your product/service for example; a niche by definition is small, but of course you still need it to be big enough to sustain good profits for your intended business size.
3. Find out where your niche market customers ‘hang out’ - this may be online (forums, clubs etc), and/or in the ‘real world’. You will need to spend time at these locations also, this not only aids in your research in what they are specifically looking for by talking directly to your potential customers, it’s also where you be focusing your marketing activities once the business has launched.
4. Niche marketing not only works because there are fewer suppliers for the target market, but because people like to feel they are dealing with an expert, so utilise this in your marketing activity. Writing a high quality blog for example is one way of displaying your expertise for a business that has significant online operations or is an online business by definition.
However even a bricks and mortar shop with little online activity can become renowned for their expertise in their niche. For example a local running shop is ‘the place to go’ for serious runners needing shoes and other running equipment/clothing and that’s because we (us locals) know that the staff will be knowledgeable on foot types and running styles sufficient to offer good advice on which shoes to purchase compared to the big chains, whose staff, lets face it know next to nothing.
5. Finally before you think about launching your business and marketing your niche, make sure you have a designer on board that understands what a niche market is and how to design for it 
