Want to know why your business is not taking off? It's probably because you don't have a niche.
If you try to please everyone then you please no one. That's what the affluent Madison Avenue marketing executives told me.
Marketing is bilateral. You have grift marketing and niche marketing.
Grift marketing is like the "fidget spinner frenzy" for drop shippers. Or the so-called "hoverboards." Reselling toys is a lucrative business in and of itself. Grift marketing draws its cash flow from proven products. The grifter need only wiggle in somewhere and be a middleman in the transaction.
But products that are proven more often than not, follow niche marketing.
(If you need a few hustles check out our Money section)
Amazon
Amazon deserves its seat of primacy. Amazon understands the phenomenon of SPEED and EASE.
Ordering from Amazon is enjoyable because your packages arrive quickly. You open so many packages that it feels like Christmas and now you're addicted to Amazon.
And their payment system is lightning-fast. It's so easy to buy on Amazon that it's frightening.
The other day their algorithm put together a bundle of products for me based on the item I was browsing and suggested them at the bottom of the page. They also mastered UPSELLING.
But none of these would happen until later...
How did Amazon begin?
As a book company.
Today, bookstores are going out of business and Amazon is the reason why. If Amazon tried to do then what they do now they would have failed. They first had to master getting something as simple as a book to their customers with SPEED AND EASE.
Trying to do everything would have been impossible. But by focusing on managing the little, they learned how to manage the gigantic.
Niche marketing conserves dollars and time. Let's call this Promotional Potency.
The greatest of BIG TECH were all founded on niche marketing.
Facebook (Meta)
Meta is a multinational corporation, thanks to their advertising platform which was frankly accused of being spyware. Facebook is (was?) listening to your real-life conversations.
But Meta had humble beginnings on a college campus. I remember when you couldn't get on Facebook unless you had a @edu email address.
The application was designed for college students to communicate with each other. Now, it's something grandma uses to stay in contact with family or post twerk videos. Get it, granny! LOL
Niche marketing could also be termed Exclusivity Marketing. By catering to a particular group by default you exclude others. Exclusivity often creates a higher perceived value and piques curiosity.
People in the excluded group may draw feelings of envy and either join you or become trolls. Both are great for business if you know how to use them. "How to use trolls for profit" is in my Twitter Manifesto.
Before Google there was Yahoo! At one point Yahoo! was worth $125 billion. Verizon bought it for about $4.5 billion. Yahoo! had the opportunity to buy Google but dropped the ball.
Google followed the rule of niche marketing. Their original landing page only displayed a search bar, a submit button, and five links. Today, Google.com has nine links. But the homepage is absolutely bare.
However, Google now owns YouTube. These are the number one and two search engines in the world. By focusing on search Google dominated many other spaces, like email. And they even dominated that space with SPEED AND EASE.
With data, they have also been able to sell your life to brands.
Google controls access to information. This power with worth more than the current valuation of Google. When you control the information you control...
Anyway, the moral of the story is niche marketing.
When you try to target everyone you're not special. Nothing about you is memorable. Consider your brand to be boring.
If you're having trouble finding a niche, try to think about who your brand is NOT for and go from there.
