If you want to succeed in niche marketing then you need to do a lot of research before you choose a niche. Making the wrong choice of niche can be a total disaster and can lead you to give up because you can’t make any money from it. So follow these steps to research a profitable niche market.
1. Keyword Research
Most online marketers either ignore keyword research or do it half heartedly. This is a big mistake. Knowing what search terms your niche audience uses to find answers to their problems is very valuable and it is easy to find this out.
By using the free Google Keyword Planner you can find lots of keywords related to your niche and also the estimated search volumes which is a good indication of the size of the niche market.
It is really easy to use the Google Keyword Planner. All you need to do is to enter a seed keyword and then you will automatically receive other related keywords for the niche. You will also discover the average cost per click for PPC advertising using Google Adwords and the competition for ads around individual keywords.
You can export lists of keywords very easily with the Google Keyword Planner and create a master spreadsheet with all of the keywords in it. Then you can go through them all and decide which ones to use.
2. Know the Niche Audience
If you are interested in a particular niche idea then find out as much as you can about the audience. You want to know what problems they are having and what interests them the most. It is all about understanding their needs as much as possible.
When you know your audience well you have a lot more chance of succeeding with the niche. You can publish content that will resonate with them and make offers for products and services that will solve their problems.
3. How Competitive is the Niche?
You need to determine how competitive the niche is that you are considering. Whether you will drive traffic using paid ads, SEO or social media (or a combination of them all) it is important that you know what you are up against.
The Google Keyword Planner will tell you the ad competition for Google Adwords and the average cost per click. Analyzing how difficult it will be to rank in the search engines for specific keywords is not so easy but there are services and tools available to help you with this.
4. Look at Trends
Using a tool like Google Trends will tell you whether there is steady demand for a specific keyword or whether there are extreme peaks and troughs. It will also show you if the demand is going up or tapering off.
There are other ways to look at trends too. With most social media platforms you can see the trends for keywords or “hashtags” and again you will discover if there are upward or downward trends. This is definitely worth doing when you are considering a niche idea.
5. Is the Niche right for you?
This is not a method of research but it is still important. Do you feel comfortable operating in a specific niche? Is it something that you can be interested in and even passionate about? If the idea of entering a niche leads to negative thoughts about it then move on to another niche idea.
Learn more about this in our Modern Niche Marketing eBook.
