The majority of bloggers have heard the wonders of niche marketing being shouted from the rooftops, but perhaps, due to the fear of limiting the size of their market have opted to play it safe with more generalist positioning to ensure they don’t exclude key market segments.  This article explores the power of niche marketing for bloggers as an alternative to being a more generalist blogger.

WHAT IS A NICHE?

A niche is a focused subset of a particular market group.  There are millions of “mompreneur”, “home sweet home” and “travel” blogs out there - all craving for the world’s attention, yet when you think about the blogs that you’re truly engaged with and loyal to they probably hold your interest and loyalty due to being particularly relevant to you, and within this theme of relevancy, they are helping you solve a particular challenge or stimulating a specific interest within you.

Now, let’s look at it slightly differently - as a product category; if you were to think about pet food, for example, we could break that down to cat food and dog food – but this is still a very broad market.  If, however, we were to look at gourmet pet food this could be considered a niche market… and one step further would be to look at organic gourmet dog food.

WHY HAVING A NICHE IS IMPORTANT

In broader markets (e.g. pet food) you are up against competitors with massive marketing budgets and global brands.  As a blogger, one of the core challenges you face is that of people finding out about you in such a crowded space.  Indeed, you could run multiple ads but these are costly - to the point some bloggers take out an unsecured loan in order to launch their blog via popular channels such as facebook ads; but without a very specific focus on a subset of a particular audience, you can end up wasting  a lot of money this way.

If we were to think of this from a marketing spend perspective you want to get the greatest return on investment possible, and in spending money on digital marketing the cost per click for an advert relating to something broad like “dog food” is going to be much higher than something more niche such as “organic dog food” because the search term is less competitive.

When looking at this as a blogger, you could consider the term “marketing blog” to be highly competitive and somewhat generic - whereas, albeit particularly obscure just to make the point - “marketing blog for mompreneurs selling clogs” is going to get you much more noticed by this very specific (perhaps too specific) group of people.

It means that the person clicking on your advert is a more relevant customer that is actively looking for your particular solution rather than just browsing through marketing blogs.  Realistically, you don’t want thousands of people clicking on your adverts – as that would cost you a fortune; you only want qualified prospects – and the more niche focused your marketing is, the better the conversion rate will be meaning the higher the return on your investment.

Moreover, it means that your audience are going to be more interested in what you have to say because they have a natural affinity and alignment with the purpose of your blog.

In summary, the power of finding your niche within blogging makes you more relevant to your target audience which means people the right people will start being drawn toward you as the go-to expert within your specific area of expertise; so stop being so broad and generic - stand out and start getting more specific.