How to Identify and Select an Appropriate Niche Market

 

Previously, we explained the basic process that’s required to help you identify your target customer profile. We discussed the process you need to use to discover their physical and emotional traits, and now it’s time for you to identify and select an appropriate niche market, one that caters to your personal passion while positioning your business as unique.

You first identified your target customer’s physical profile. The physical profile describes the physical traits that make up the entire universe of available prospects that need what you sell.

These traits are important since you will use them later to find your target customers once you begin marketing to them. But physical traits are only responsible for about 10% of the small business success equation.

The remaining 90% of your success is determined by your target customer’s emotional profile. The emotional profile identifies what it is that all those available prospects in your universe WANT. We often refer to their emotions as their “hot buttons.”

Hot buttons describe the problems, frustrations, fears, and concerns that your prospects have when they buy what you sell. They define the emotions your prospects are experiencing, and it’s those emotions that are attracting them to your product or service as they look for a solution. In most cases, hot buttons are not dependent on an individual business. They tend to be the same for every business in your market.

For example, when you go to the dentist, what immediately comes to mind that you find frustrating or concerned about. Typically, it’s the long wait we’re usually forced to endure when we go to their office for our appointment. And then we get to fill out all the paperwork that we have filled out a hundred times before. How aggravating.

Can you see how this hot button issue isn’t related to any specific business, it’s common to the entire industry? Basically, everyone shares in these same emotions whenever these specific situations intrude into their lives.

These are the hot buttons that small business owners MUST know, understand, and conquer. This explains why the emotional profile determines the success, or failure of your marketing program.

Since your prospects buy based on emotion, they’re looking for the business that will remove their hot button issues from their lives forever. For the small business owner who does that, they will have a customer for life. That’s why the emotional profile represents 90% of your potential success.

The physical profile defines the prospects that have a logical NEED to use your product or service, whereas the emotional profile defines the prospects that have an emotional reason to buy, and they WANT what you sell.

The moment you know and understand their emotions, you can then create a marketing message that laser targets their emotions, a message that’s powerful and emotionally compelling. This is a message that resonates deeply within your prospects, attracts only those prospects who want what you sell, and compels them to take a specific action.

Next, we are going to address why you must be specific in your messaging to your niche market.