How to Build a Lasting Niche Business Community

Building a lasting niche business community accomplishes two very important things for

your brand. First, niche marketing is a great way to make marketing efforts more effective. Even though you will be targeting a smaller group of people, your marketing efforts will be more specific and applicable to this group, which makes the end result more profitable. Second, a lasting niche community allows your business to create permanent relationships with customers who can be relied upon to support your company by investing in products, services, and even ideas.

Susan Friedmann, in an article at Entrepreneurship.org, suggests that "microblogging" through social media platforms like Twitter is a great way to continually connect with a niche audience and ensure that they will continue to follow your brand through its development and expansion over the years. Twitter is an excellent marketing strategy for creating a niche community, and here are a few other tips that will help your niche stay loyal to your brand throughout its lifetime.

Choose the Right Niche

First, you'll have to choose the right niche for any of this to work. Your niche must be the most specific group of people who are interested in the products and services offered by your brand. Niche marketing is being recognized as one of the most effective marketing strategies available today because it helps businesses eliminate competition, focus their efforts on a more intimate group of people, and establish dynamic relationships with potential customers. All of this, of course, depends on choosing the right niche. Spend some time testing your products and services on different demographics. When you find a general group of people interested in your brand, it's time to subdivide.

Subdivide, Subdivide, Subdivide

Subdivision is the most important part of creating a lasting niche community. Your niche must be the smallest possible group of consumers who are interested in your brand. If you start by subdividing the consumer population into male and female, decide which group will be most interested in your company. The female consumer population, though, is much too large to be an effective niche. Continue subdividing based on demographics, socioeconomic statuses, habits, hobbies, location, age, marital status, family status, occupation, etc. The more specific your niche description is, the more effective your marketing efforts will be.

Create Relevant Content

Next, you must continually offer relevant content to your niche community. Consumers are the most forgetful creatures on the planet. If you spend months reaching your brand through high quality content that is informative, engaging, and applicable, and then take a week off to focus on something else, you'll return to a niche that has largely lost interest. Only by continuing to reach your niche with high quality, well-written, and relevant content can you build a community that will last.

Offer Value at all Times

If you want your niche community to last through your business's lifetime, you must always offer value to the consumer. A consumer will always be loyal to a brand that makes him feel valued and heard. Value doesn't have to be a coupon or a free giveaway. Value can be a response to a Facebook comment, a direct thank you via social media, or a regular e-mail update that lets the consumer know what is happening in your company. By consistently offering value to the consumer, you'll ensure that your niche community will continue coming back to your brand when they need real, applicable, and immediate solutions.

Communicate in a Personal Way

Personal and intimate communication is one of the core principles of effective niche marketing. Unless your content encourages two-way communication, your brand will not be able to separate itself from the thousands of other brands trying to reach consumers. Consumers want to feel like they are talking to people and not corporations. Using social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or even YouTube to start dialogues with your niche is a great way to establish a trusting relationship that will benefit your brand.

Develop Complementary Niche Strategies

One of the best ways to ensure that your niche business community lasts throughout the life of your business is to create and maintain complementary niche strategies. Your business is likely to grow and expand with time. When your niche grows along with it and you start subdividing again and again to keep your target audience small and manageable, you may be wondering what to do with those consumer who fall out of your target niche. You have two options. You can focus all of your efforts on those consumers who still fit into your business's niche, or you can expand your business's focus to several different niches that complement one another.

Here's a great example of this strategy. Imagine that your brand sells clothing to young, professional, single women. In the early years of your business, your niche will be narrowly focused on working professional women without hectic family schedules or divided focuses. However, as your company ages, so will your target audience. The women to whom you initially focused your marketing efforts will age, change careers, move to new locations, start families, and develop new tastes, interests, and habits. Your brand may be able to keep these customers by developing a complementary niche strategy that targets young mothers or more mature working women. To make this strategy work, of course, you'll have to ensure that you are focusing on each niche equally. If you do, you'll be able to expand your business's reach, preserve your niche community for years, and keep that intimate focus your customers love.

A niche business community is a great way to personally and intimately focus on a small group of consumers. Because online marketing efforts often make blanket statements about the consumer population or try to sell to a target audience group that is simply too large, a niche business strategy will make consumers feel valued and heard. Building a long-lasting niche business community is the only way to make sure your strategies do not become obsolete in a few years, and these tips can help you create a community that will be loyal to your brand for years to come.

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