Defining your "Superniche"
When you decide to create a niche, be specific and avoid generalities. A niche is best described as the most strategic market of your core audience. An audience, however, can hold a few potential niches, some with more potential than others.
A superniche is the niche with the highest potential return. That means adding an extra layer of analysis to the niche definition exercise, and determining a niche that has the maximum potential to scale.
To do this, you must first qualify your sub-niches from your general audience and data base and then quantify potential returns through experimentation.
Then you can invest your marketing dollars in a more professional way.
While you should always tailor your content to the specific needs of your readers, you can sometimes go too far and completely obscure the details your readers actually care about.
Businesses like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime These are the types of businesses that we have to look at the online business as being a potential superniche. Because they have niche audiences. They have specific groups of people that are clamoring for their product.
How do we even know that we have a superniche, if we're not looking for it?
Let us analyze an example. We have some members who subscribe to a particular site, they like this particular site, they're willing to spend the money. They want the new information every week. And then, we have some people who subscribe to a podcast, but they don't like the specific topic of a topic. They're not willing to spend the money, or listen to it.
It's the same when people are looking for a personal trainer. They have a specific area that they would like to get in, or they don't want to get into. They don't want to get too involved, or be in too much of a hurry.
There's some people who want to start a business, but they don't want to open a restaurant, they don't want to open a hair salon, or whatever it may be. They want to build a web site and sell stuff. They don't care where that stuff comes from, or where that stuff is made. They just want to build this website.
But, we have some people who are like "I want to open up a restaurant." It could be McDonald's. It could be a smaller, niche restaurant, like a pizza place, or a TexMex place.
Some people just don't want to get into all the business details.
It is important to be clear on your concept before determining how to categorize your data. The data you collect will form the basis for defining your niche. For example, in the social media space, this might include:
- Topic
- Language
- Meaning
- Importance
- Audience
- Friendship
Note that the kind of data you collect will make a difference to the classification of your niche. For example, topics collected from social media, press releases and Google alerts.
However, while you can categorize, that doesn't mean you can define a superniche that is a requirement to analyze all your data to achieve your goals. This is especially true in marketing.
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Keyword research
To determine if a niche is a good fit for your specific business, you can look at two main points. First, is it the right audience, i.e. is your business niche close to the interests of your ideal customer? Second, if the answer is "no", are the segments of the audience interested in your niche?
For example, a brand new business can set up a survey to gain feedback on its target audience. If no response is received, it might decide it's not worth the time and resources. It doesn't mean people aren't interested in the brand, but that the niche has not been defined.
Keyword research allows you to look at what your ideal customer is searching for online, what pages in your niche are ranking for these keywords, and identify how many of these pages have at least one other similar keyword associated with them. This allows you to understand what's relevant to your specific niche. It also shows you what to avoid, as too many similar keywords dilutes the focus on your key word.
This provides insight on what keywords and categories people are interested in and what the actual number of people are looking for, which allows you to begin keyword research.
Keyword research tools can help you understand the number of people searching for the keyword you're targeting and where they're searching from.
Building a keyword sheet
Once you understand what keywords are popular, which ones are relevant to your audience, and have a good understanding of how much competition you face, it's time to develop a keyword sheet.
Essentially, the keyword sheet gives you the structure of your business and how the audience searches for the keywords you're targeting. This enables you to be aware of which of your competitors are using keywords that you're not and to begin keyword research.
This tool will help you find your ideal audience, but also allows you to understand how many people in the relevant group are interested in your niche. The content of the sheet should be focused on having broad appeal, so keywords for fashion would have to be valuable and of interest to everyone.
Keywords to avoid
You can't use any keyword you don't identify as relevant to the outcome of the business you're trying to build. That means, if you're building a hospitality business, you're looking for a solution to the concerns of the consumer. That means whatever it is, people in that demographic are using that keyword. So, don't attempt to build a marketing campaign targeting people interested in fishing and trying to make it relevant for hospitality. You can't build a viable business, targeting only one group.
Finally, if your keyword sheet doesn't identify your ideal audience, then it's useless. However, if you have a clear understanding of who your ideal audience is and what's relevant to them, then it's time to start keyword research.
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JD Rico is the founder of Holistics and Partner and Editor of the Digitalist Hub. He is a researcher and entrepreneur in the topics of Business Intelligence, Digital Media and Venture Capital. He holds degrees in Anthropology (BA), Economics (BSc), Project Management- Innovation (MSc), Cultural Studies (Min) and Artificial Intelligence Product and Service Design (Cert.). He serves at the board of companies in Emerging Tech, Wellness, Food Tech and Cultural Impact. He writes Cap∙Hackers, a newsletter for 33,000 business owners and investors.
