Building Your Marketing Strategy, Step Three - Determining Your Niche...

[As seen in this month's The Stuckey Report]

Moving right along with our marketing plan development series, Step Three. Last month, we focused on understanding your customer. This month we will discuss the third phase of your marketing plan – determining your niche.

Why do I need a niche, you ask? Have you ever been to a networking meeting - and heard an auto repair guy say that a good referral for him is anyone with a car…? That doesn’t help anyone provide a good referral. Everyone they know has a vehicle. They aren’t going to give him a list of everyone they know…

Determining a niche helps narrow the marketing place. What? Don’t I want to expand the marketplace? I will argue that by determining a niche, you are doing exactly that. When you target a specific niche in your field, you make it easier to get referrals, and easier to target your marketing mediums like direct mail, search engine optimization, etc.

Using the example of the auto repair guy, perhaps his niche is that he specializes in Fords. But isn’t he losing out on Toyota's, Honda's, and Chevy’s? Perhaps, but there are A LOT of Fords on the road. Then you become known in the marketplace as the EXPERT Ford repair guy, which can lead to more business.

Determining your niche is a vital step in developing your marketing strategy!

Todd Schnick is the president of the Intrepid Group LLC (www.intrepid-llc.com), a small business marketing firm. You can find his small business marketing blog at http://intrepidgroup.blogspot.com!