What is niche marketing?

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1. A niche is a specialty. Let's say you sell coffee mugs. Your product might be of interest to everyone. But, not really... why would a person who doesn't drink coffee want a coffee mug? Let's say your coffee mugs have pictures of cats on them. They won't sell well to dog lovers. A niche is a specific group of people who you are trying to attract. Would you market your cat coffee mugs in Dog Fancy magazine? Probably not. The niche marketing is to attract the right customers through the right marketing efforts. Keep in mind there are alot of computer users out there but not every product or service is best marketed online because not everyone has a computer or even knows how to use one. Therefore you are better off looking for online and offline marketing efforts to attract the customer base (or niche) that you are aiming for.

2. Instead of selling your product to 10 million consumers, you target 2,000 consumers. Instead of competing against 100 other products , you might be competing against only one other manufacturer or seller.

Think of $15,000 "super-thin" television sets. Not many people can afford them so you don't need to advertise to the ones who can't.

3. A niche market is a focused target-able portion ( subset ) of a market niche.
Niche marketing means selling a specific product to a specific type of buyer, there are far less competitive niches than an internet marketing niche.

4. niche means some small market with a specific type of customers. It might be the high margin customers and it mostly has a little competitor since it is the market that the market leader doesn't look for.

The marketing strategy for niche market is to focus on this market and be specialized in it so that it can be number one in this segment and get the margin (probably high according to lower competition.)

5. NICHE MAARKETING
Market segments are normally large identifiable groups within a market—for example, luxury car buyers, performance car buyers, utility car buyers, and economy car buyers. Niche marketing (or “niching”) focuses on subgroups within these segments. A “niche” is a more narrowly defined group, usually identified by dividing a segment into subsegments or by defining a group with a distinctive set of traits which may seek a special combination of benefits.

For example, the utility vehicles segment might include light-duty pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs). And the sport utility vehicles subsegment might be further divided into standard SUV (as served by Ford and Chevrolet) and luxury SUV (as served by Lexus) niches.

Whereas segments are fairly large and normally attract several competitors, niches are smaller and normally attract only one or a few competitors. Niche marketers presumably understand their niches’ needs so well that their customers willingly pay a price premium. For example, Ferrari gets a high price for its cars because its loyal buyers feel that no other car comes close to offering the product-service-membership benefits that Ferrari does.

Niching offers smaller companies an opportunity to compete by focusing their limited resources on servicing niches that may be unimportant to or overlooked by larger competitors. For example, the Cleveland car insurer Progressive Corp., sells “nonstandard” auto insurance to high-risk drivers with a record of auto accidents or drunkenness. Progressive charges a high price for coverage, has made a lot of money, and had the field to itself for several years.

However, large companies also practice niche marketing. For example, American Express offers not only its traditional green cards, but also gold cards, corporate cards, and even platinum cards aimed at the niche of the top-spending 1 percent of its 40 million cardholders. And Nike makes athletic gear for basketball, running, and soccer but also for smaller niches such as biking and street hockey.

In many markets today, niches are the norm. Companies will have to niche or be niched. There is one kind of marketing that is sold on niche marketing. This is “Direct Marketing.” Direct marketers have always practiced niche marketing. Instead of using shotguns and blasting away at whatever is out there, they use the equivalent of target rifles with powerful telescopic sights — aiming only at their particular part of the market. There’s a direct marketing blog that talks about this: word-jobber.blogspot.com.