How to Refine Your Niche Market
Refine your Niche Market – If you are into business, however big or small it might be, there are a few basic truths that can never be changed. You are running a business for sales, profitability, and other important takeaways. All these can happen only when you have the right customers who would be ready to buy your products and services. In a highly competitive and tough environment, getting customers is not easy and retaining the existing ones is also quite difficult. You also cannot rest on your laurels and be happy with the clients that you have. Fresh client acquisition is also extremely important and vital. This again can be tough unless you know how to go about it. To begin with, you and your products and services should have a clearly defined niche market. Without this in place, you will be beating around the bush and just wandering aimlessly. Therefore, in this article, we will learn more about the right answer to the question: HOW TO REFINE YOUR NICHE MARKET.
WHY NICHE MARKET IDENTIFICATION IS VITAL?
Any business in general and financial advisory and other such businesses, in particular, should be razor-sharp and clear when it comes to identifying their niche market. Those financial houses who have been able to follow this approach and have the right niche market in place are the ones who have been successful in finding new clients and that too quite efficiently, regularly, and speedily. They will be able to leave the competition behind. Hence understanding the process of identifying the niche market is not just an exercise but an absolute necessity. Here are a few things that you must take into account while you are planning to identify the niche market.
START WITH EXISTING CLIENTS
Shortlist a few of your favorite clients and find out a few things that may have made your relationships with them successful. It could be certain products or services, or the experience that they may have had when dealing with financial products and services offered by the financial company. The service providers should make the customers feel that they are offering something new and adding value to them. Rather than making them feel good, the customers should be able to find some measurable differences. Once you are able to identify these positive traits of your service as a financial company, you could template a part of them when it comes to identifying the right customers from the right niche market. For example, there could be many single women or men in their early forties or fifties. They could have lots of money, but not know how, when, or where to invest. Based on your success earlier, you could identify such clients and they could become new customers having the same requirements and they also could be mostly from the same niche market.
WALK IN THEIR SHOES
As an entity that is into relationships, financial companies should be in a position to shortlist a few of their favorite clients. You should evaluate their levels of happiness and satisfaction. You will certainly be able to come across certain things that may have appealed to the clients. Try to always put yourself in the shoes of the client rather than trying to do something or offer something that you think is the best in the market. Your best offering may or may not appeal to the clients and therefore your job is to try and offer something that meets their requirements. Instead of you offering a financial product or solution, the best starting point would be to look at things from their perspective instead of trying to thrust something which you feel is the best for them. Understanding the needs of the clients and then offering a solution would always be a much better option. It will help you to define the niche market and the niche customers much better.
BE IN A POSITION TO DEFINE YOUR NICHE
This is another important point to be kept in mind when defining your niche market. This requires special skills and special qualifications. It may not be possible to pick up a niche client or a market based on a single attribute, quality, or character. Clients need to spend time with their finance and portfolio managers and therefore you must always keep this in mind. If you are planning a list of high net worth niche customers, there is no point in including somebody who hardly has a few minutes to spare when it comes to understanding the financial products being offered by them. In other words, such high net worth clients who are short on time should be pushed into some other niches. Sub-classification of clients and markets within a niche is also not a bad idea and it should be looked into.
NICHE MARKETING SELECTION CAN NOT BE DONE OVERNIGHT
Target markets are not stationary and they cannot be the same for years at length. They keep changing. Therefore, once you have fixed a target market or a niche market, make sure that you keep making changes to the time. These changes should be based on changing and evolving market conditions, customer preferences, and other such things. Never keep things fixed when it comes to fixing your niche market. The markets cannot be cast in stone and they need to change with time. Always take time to identify the niche market and never do anything in a hurry. Spend time with the clients and the prospective clients. Try to understand their needs, their financial strength, their risk-taking capabilities, and other such things. Take also into account their age, general health condition, medical expenses, and so on. This will help you to tabulate each and every parameter and then arrive at a financial product. You may have to combine one or more financial products and offer something that is tailored and customized keeping in mind their specific needs and requirements. The whole process may take some time and you should not be worried about it.
THE FINAL WORD
Niche market identification in a financial business is a combination of art and science. It is not just skill, and it is not just about tabulating numbers. There has to be a deeper understanding of the psyche of the clients, and this calls for knowledge and also a bit of mind-reading of the clients in general. As mentioned above, it is a time-consuming job and it cannot be completed overnight.