Set Yourself Free to Learn, Perfect Your Skill and Make Mistakes
In an earlier blog, we talked about the kind of mindset you need to start and grow a business, in our case, an online business. I referred to it as a growth mindset. A growth mindset is liberating because it sets you free to learn new things, perfect your art through deliberate practice and use mistakes as a platform to do better next time.
Private Victory precedes Public Victory
If you read the biographies of successful people, you often discover that they had many failures and disappointments in their journey. Thomas Edison failed ten thousand times before he made the light bulb. Three hundred banks denied Walt Disney a bank loan before one finally decided to trust his vision. Nelson Mandela wrote his book about the road to Freedom when he was still in prison. The prison wardens confiscated Mandela first copy, but that did not stop him from starting again. The point I am making is that nothing good comes easy. We all have to put in the time to gain particular skills or knowledge.
Finding your Dream customer … the one who will buy your products.
To build and grow a successful online business. You will have to look for strategies to differentiate your hustle. You can distinguish your brand offering through price, product, marketing, or service.
In terms of marketing, differentiation can be achieved through branding, product differentiation or market segmentation, to name only a few. In pursuing such strategies, you will be practising what is commonly called “niche marketing.”
What is a Niche market strategy in a nutshell?
A niche market strategy is “an emphasis on a particular need, geographic, demographic or product segment” (Teplensky et al., 1993)[1]. However, most literature focuses on the market perspective
In a paper, Niche Marketing Revisited (Dalgic and Leeuw (1994, p. 40)[2], they “consider a niche (market) to be a small market consisting of an individual customer or a small group of customers with similar characteristics or needs.”
The final definition by the Father of Marketing Kotler (2003, p. 280)[3] defines a niche as
“a more narrowly defined group seeking a distinctive mix of benefits.” He states that
Niche markets are usually constructed by dividing a segment into sub-segments.
Your task as a business owner is to find a small group of customers that can be served within a segment and then devising different marketing strategies for each of these niches.
The five key features of niche markets:
- The customers in the niche have a distinct set of needs;
- They will pay a premium price to the firm that best satisfies their needs (riches in the niches)
- The niche is not likely to attract competitors;
- The niche business owner develops expertise through specialization
- The niche has size, profit, and growth potential.
Success factors in establishing and growing your Niche
One of the most critical factors in the success of niche marketing is relationships. Social media help small business owners develop and grow relationships with their dream customers. Strong, long-term relationships, in turn, help build and sustain long-term business profitability.
In niche marketing, your company will not only be marketing its product, but also it’s business. Your reputation for delivering value to your niche will, in part, be determined by word-of-mouth communication in your industry. People’s opinions play a crucial role in a product’s success. Social Media will play a significant role in forming a positive attitude about your business.
The first rule of a niche market strategy is “to offer your customer a visibly differentiated product that fills (or creates) a need.” As a small business owner, you must provide products that meet actual customer needs. The niche has to be identifiable, and the product has to satisfy.
The next thing you need to do is to know is your dream customer. Ideally, this is the person that will make your business a success. Your dream customer or Ideal Customer avatar (ICA) is a construct that you make, yes! You have to write it down on paper. Download Dream customer toolkit here.
Who are your Dream Customers?
You need to understand who you’re going to be, helping. In convectional marketing, understanding your target customer involves capturing data on their demographics and psychographics.
Your task as a business owner is to segment or choose a specific group of people (Dream customer that you will relentlessly pursue and woo. According to the fundamental principles of marketing (Kotler, 1999)[4] , businesses adopting a market segmentation can enhance their overall company performance.
One reason for improved organizational results is the fact that your business focuses on a specific customer. You simply cannot serve all of the customers in a market. If you are serving everyone, you are serving no one.
If you can locate your dream customers, identify patterns in buying needs and behaviour. It will help you utilize your resources effectively in delivering value to them.
Become Obsessed with knowing your Dream customer
What do I mean when I say become obsessed? Being obsessed with your customer means understanding them as well, if not better than they know themselves. And then, right now, it may sound complicated, but there is a framework to guide you. In most cases, your Dream customer was you a few years ago. The fears and needs you had then are the same ones your dream customer has right now. Take a trip down memory lane.
Where are they hanging out?
So, here’s the thing you knew where to find them. Where did you go looking for solutions? Where are you looking for answers on YouTube? Where you’re in a Facebook group? If You know where they congregate, then it is easy picking. Get in there are start engaging them.
Are they looking for financial security, well-being or improving their social associations?
Now that you know that to your dream customer. Your next step is to decide what core desire your tribe is seeking. They are three general desires:
- Financial security
- Well-being
- Improved social associations
When people buy your brand, they purchase a product that will help them with their finances, health and relationships. So you have to ask yourself, which of these three desires is my dream customer ready to receive from me?
Always Be Collecting Data from your Dream Customer
A-B-C-D of successful identifying your Dream Customer is to “Always Be Collecting Data“. Successful Customer connection requires many bits of information gathered over some time. This Data results in small insights that compound to a profound understanding of your Dream customer.
Social media platforms now show you simple, easy to read analytics. You can also install various plugins to read your google analytics. Analytics will give you a deeper understanding of who your Dream customer is, their gender, their geographic location, the kind of content they engage with more.
So, the dream customer journey continues, and you get to know them intimately
To start your journey, start now by downloading your toolkit here.
[1] Teplensky, J.D., Kimberly, J.R., Hillman, A.L. and Schwartz, J.S. (1993), “Scope, timing and strategic adjustment in emerging markets: manufacturers strategies and the case of MRI”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 14 No. 7, pp. 505-27.
[2] Dalgic, T. and Leeuw, M. (1994), “Niche marketing revisited: concepts, applications, and some European cases”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 39-55.
[3] Kotler, P. (2003), Marketing Management, 11th ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ
[4] Kotler, P. (1999), Kotler on Marketing: How to Create, Win, and Dominate Markets, The Free Press, New York, NY.