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Niche Research
Niche Marketing Tips For Affiliate Marketers
Niche Marketing Tips For Affiliate Marketers
Every marketer worth his or her salt knows what the most popular niches are – weight loss, pet care, making money online, survival, baby care, etc. are extremely profitable niches with billions of dollars being spent yearly.
These astronomical sums are enough to make many affiliates salivate and want to take a bite out of this pie by promoting products through their affiliate links and this can be a very lucrative affiliate marketing strategy.
Niching Down
While you can make money in these niches, it’s imperative that you niche down to a level that you can compete in. For example, weight loss is just too competitive.
As an affiliate, you’ll struggle to go up against the big boys who have lots of money to spend on building websites, advertising and more.
In some cases, it’ll be next to impossible. But what if you targeted women’s weight loss? Now the market is smaller but it’s still too tough.
What if you niched down further and targeted weight loss for women above 40 who have diabetes? Now, you’re talking! This sub-niche will be much more manageable to target, and you’ll be able to find long tail keywords that you can optimize your blog posts for.
It’s be easier to rank for the low hanging fruit and your marketing efforts will be much more streamlined. The truth of the matter is that the same products that are marketed to the general weight loss crowd will also work with the audience in the sub-niche.
It all comes down to how you slant your content and show that the products will help the reader. If you can do that, your readers will become buyers.
Questions To Ask
Before even picking a niche, you’ll need to plan your attack. Is the competition manageable or is it beyond you? Are there products to promote? Will you be able to find places where you can drive traffic from?
All of these are very important questions that you need to ask yourself before diving into a niche. Jumping in blindly will mean wasting time and effort on a niche that’s either unprofitable or too competitive.
You’ll also need to search on Google to see what sites show up for the keywords you’re targeting.
Are there any affiliate sites? If there are, you have as good a chance as them of ranking. How optimized are their sites? Could you do better than them?
What’s their traffic like? Are there ads being displayed on their sites? What products are they promoting?
All these questions are market research that you should be doing before you even get started with your niche sites. By getting answers to them, you’ll be able to formulate a marketing strategy that will give you your best chance at succeeding in the fastest possible time.
Strategizing For Success
Take notes while doing your research for easy reference. Do not rely on your memory. Try to bulk your tasks. For example, when looking for affiliate products to promote, find as many as you can at one time.
If you’re doing keyword research, spend a day or two compiling as many keywords that you could rank for. By batching your tasks, you’ll be much more productive in the long run. Once you get started, you’ll have everything you need at your fingertips.
Study your niche before you start your affiliate marketing in it. The extra time you spend beforehand will give you a much better picture of how to proceed or if you even should. This is something all experienced affiliates do. Now you know it too. So, do it.
Niching down is just one of a number of affiliate marketing strategies, but do you really understand what affiliate marketing is all about on a basic level?
Understanding Affiliate Marketing To Succeed At It
On the surface, affiliate marketing looks like a very simple concept. You find a product for sale and you recommend it to others who might buy it. In return, you get a percentage of the sale as a commission because you’re associated with it. It’s so simple.
Just like how it is with insurance agents, door to door salesmen and real estate brokers. Affiliate marketing is all about sales and commissions.
But here’s something you should know – simple and easy are two different things.
Trust
When you’re selling online, in most cases, you’re not face to face with the prospect. The human element has been removed from the equation. Visitors to your site can leave with a click of the mouse.
Someone who doesn’t like your email can delete it and unsubscribe in seconds. Selling online while highly profitable, is a slightly different ballgame.
For starters, people come online looking for information or to be entertained. In other words, they’re looking for ‘infotainment’… and even if you’re in a niche like gardening, golf or woodworking, the same rule applies.
Your content not only needs to help the reader, but it must hold their attention… and guess what? Social media sites, instant notifications and a short attention span are all waiting to rob you of that sale.
Door to door salesmen never had it this tough. There is much more rejection online. The only difference is that it’s not so obvious.
So, always make your content relevant, entertaining and useful. The goal is to get the reader to trust you. Use whatever it takes from infographics to videos to pictures of the product, etc. to remove all mental obstacles from the buyers’ minds and show how useful the product can be for solving their problems… and be subtle about it.
Traffic
The next thing you should know is that unlike real-life sales where the prospect comes to your store or you can go knocking on doors prospecting, when it comes to online marketing, things are a little different.
Building a website alone doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll get floods of traffic. You may not get any for years. To sell online, you need to go and GET traffic. It’s all about ‘getting’ and not sitting around waiting.
You’ll need to drive traffic on your own by using free or paid methods. So, you must learn a few traffic generation techniques and take action.
Tracking
When running an online business, you must track your results. Does your site have visitors? Do your products convert? Where is most of your traffic coming from?
Are your emails being opened? Which pages on your site see the most traffic? Which ads are performing well and which need to be shut down?
As you can see, there are many variables involved and by tracking your results, you’ll know where to multiply your efforts and scale up… and where your efforts are yielding no fruit.
You’ll also know where you’re not performing as well as you should and be able to remedy the problem. You’ll never know this if you don’t track.
So, remember the 3 T’s of affiliate marketing. Trust, traffic and tracking. If you follow these T’s to a T, you’ll succeed at affiliate marketing in record time.
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What To Look At When Conducting Market Research
What To Look At When Conducting Market Research
Market research is a critical part of your business and is often overlooked because it can be tedious. But you are seriously hampering your business growth if you don’t do this in the beginning.
When you’re conducting niche research, it’s important to be aware of what you’re looking at and looking for.
The more you’re ready in advance before you start your research, the more likely it is that your research will be accurate.
Define Your Problem
When you start conducting market research, you need to first define the problem and identify the objective of the research that you’re trying to accomplish.
Knowing these things in advance will be helpful.
You need to know what your market wants, not what they need.
Use Google for quick niche keyword research to see what problems people are searching for and how your product or service can provide the solution.
Design The Project First
Think about all the questions you may have and how you’ll get the answers. Some you’ll be able to get via primary research, others via secondary research.
Will you use a focus group, a survey or something else?
Having a vision of where you want to end up is a big part of planning your research. Are you researching potential customers or potential competition, or the market in general?
Know What Question You’re Trying To Answer
When you start researching, you need to have a list prepared of the questions you want to answer before you even start.
This is going to help direct the research that you do.
Look For Official Sources
The best thing to do is to look for government data, trade publication data, and industry data from reputable sources.
Your sources are the most important aspect of your information because they will determine whether or not your research is accurate.
Start With Secondary Market Research
It seems strange, but the best research to start with is secondary research which is research that’s already been conducted.
Secondary research uses information that is organized by outside source like government agencies, media, chambers of commerce etc. and is readily available to you.
Find out what answers you can get from other people’s work first. Then you can use those results to inform your primary research.
End With Primary Market Research
After you’ve done your secondary research, it’s easier to design your primary research in a way that will get the best results.
The results you need will depend on the questions you have so far.
Primary market research is a process, where you get in touch with the end consumers and carry out relevant studies to collect data. This data can be qualitative or quantitative.
There are 2 types of information that you can collect: either exploratory or specific.
Exploratory information is rather general and open-ended, whereas specific information is more targeted and used to solve the problems highlighted from your exploratory research.
Collect And Combine The Information
Once you’ve collected all the information you need in the methods you’ve chosen, you need to put it all together and combine it.
A lot of market research is both creative and scientific, and it’s best to use both.
You don’t want the research to be stifled.
Analyze And Present
As you conduct your research, always remember and keep in mind what you are looking for as the end result.
How you plan to use the information matters a great deal. Is it going to be used internally or externally?
When you conduct market research you need to know what to look for, and the way that starts is that you know what you want the end result to be.
You know what questions the research will answer and how you’ll use it.
Now let’s move onto some of the tools you can use for market research.
Tools To Help You With Your Market Research
When you start conducting market research, you’ll need to collect a few tools of the trade. Thankfully, today there are so many automated tools to help you conduct market research like a pro at very little cost, and in some cases even free.
- Typeform.com – This is a beautiful form creator that you can use to collect information from your audience in an easy way and post them right on your social media accounts. There is a free and paid version. It shows only one question at a time, which can help encourage your audience to finish. You can even accept payments via your forms if you want them to sign up for something after finishing your survey.
- Survey Monkey – This can be used free, or you can upgrade it to get more features. But, you can do a good survey with the free version for up to ten questions and 100 respondents. So, if your audience is small you can get a good enough sample with the free version. There are wonderful analytic features with this software.
- HeatMap Tracker – If you want to know what your audience is doing and looking at when they use your website, this is a great type of software to help you know how to improve your online real-estate and get the best engagement from your visitors.
- Facebook Insights – Included with your Facebook business page, you can use their Insights tool for free. It will tell you the demographics of your viewers, the breakdown of your audience by interest, and much more.
- Active Campaign – Your good old autoresponder service can be used to deliver any survey, questionnaire, or request for interviews to your audience. If you don’t yet have an email list, take some time to build one, because having an active email list will help you with your market research exponentially.
- Google Trends – You can use Google Trends to help you explore what is going on in your market over time. Use that info to create custom infographics, which can help you understand the information that you’ve researched.
- US Census Bureau – Using the information you can find via the US Census Bureau is the best way to find secondary data which can help you figure out where to find the audience to collect primary data.
- Personapp – You’ve heard that you should create personas that represent your target audience, and this app will help you do it even better, using real life stats. Being able to visualize your audience can help immensely.
Conducting marketing research is very important for the future of any business, because it’s the only real way to know for sure what your audience wants and needs.
If you’re not sure who they are, you can’t be sure about what they want. Doing market research will answer all of those questions for you. Using the right tools will make it easy to do.
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7 Tips For Choosing A Profitable Niche
There are thousands and thousands of niches out there and picking one to blog about can be overwhelming to a beginner.
- Do you choose a niche you’re passionate about?
- What if you’re passionate about minimalism? How will you sell anything?
- How can I be sure my niche is profitable?
These are just some of the many questions that many beginners have. Choosing a niche is not rocket science. There are just a few simple criteria to meet and you’ll be able to spot a good niche within 15 minutes or so.
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It’s imperative that you pick a niche that’s profitable if you want your blog to make money. You can’t turn a donkey into a racehorse… and you can’t turn a losing niche into a winner.
1. Is There Money Being Made In Your Niche?
This is the first and most important point to consider. For example, if you’re planning to blog about model airplanes, your first step will be to do a Google search for your main keywords and see if there are other bloggers in the niche and if they’re selling/promoting products. If you see competition, that’s a good sign.
Secondly, you’ll need to check if there are products to sell in your niche. In this case, it may be model airplane sets, magazines, acrylic paints, etc. The more products you have to sell, the better – and the more variations the product has, the higher the chances it’s a profitable niche.
Thirdly, you should analyze if the products in the niche are actually selling well. There are several niches with products that don’t sell well. Visit Amazon.com and do a search for the popular products in your niche.
Look at the number of reviews and you’ll get an idea of the quantity of merchandise being sold, and you can ascertain the profitability and viability of the niche.
2. Do The Niche/Products Solve A Problem?
Generally, if the niche revolves around solving a pressing problem, you can bet that it will be profitable. The ‘make money online’ niche and sub-niches are highly profitable because millions of people have a NEED for more money in their life.
The ‘get your ex back’ niche is very popular because jilted lovers are in pain and will do anything to salve their broken heart.
The same applies to the health niche. In fact, the health niche is the most popular niche of the lot, because when one is in discomfort, they’ll willingly pay to end their pain/discomfort. Weight loss, migraines, back pain, teeth whitening, etc. are very profitable niches because people have problems that need solving.
3. Is The Niche A Sub-Niche Of A Bigger Market?
Ideally, you should pick a niche that’s a sub-niche of a huge market. For example, picking a niche such as ‘keto diet for weight loss’ will allow you to niche down and dominate the niche… and after that, you still have room to grow.
You can promote fitness programs such as yoga courses, resistance training programs, etc. The people who want to lose weight with keto will be interested in exercise too.
So, your blog has room to grow in future. A micro-niche might be easy to dominate but will not have potential for growth.
4. Pricing
The price of the products you’ll be promoting and selling will indicate potential profitability.
The higher the prices of the products in your niche, the more money you’ll make from sales and commissions.
Many people tend to be afraid of pricing products too high, but you don’t want to undervalue your products so don’t be afraid to experiment at different price points; you may be pleasantly surprised at the results.
5. Keyword Competition
When choosing a niche, it’s a good idea to do some keyword research and analyze the competition.
Using a keyword tool such as Ahrefs will give you an understanding of the lay of the land and whether you can beat the competitors.
If there are lots of keyword opportunities and the criteria mentioned in the earlier points are met, this could be a profitable niche.
If authority sites are dominating the search rankings, you might want to niche down further or just find another niche.
6. Trends
It would be a good idea to check on the trends of the niche. Some niches are flash in the pan trends that crash fast once the fad dies. Think Pokemon Go and fidget spinners. There was massive demand for a while… and now, it’s crickets.
Choose a niche that’s stable, evergreen and if possible, trending upwards.
Anything to do with wealth, health and attracting the opposite sex are good places to start as they are always popular and trending in the news, social media etc.
7. Can You Drive Traffic?
Last but not least, are you able to locate your target audience? This is very important because you’ll need to drive traffic to your blog. If you can’t find your audience or they don’t hang out online, you’ll have a major problem here.
Check if there are other websites, forums, Facebook groups, Pinterest boards, Instagram accounts, YouTube channels, etc. dedicated to your niche. These are all possible avenues for you to siphon traffic from in future.
Are there others advertising in your niche?
If you see other companies advertising for products in your niche, that’s a sign that you can reach an audience. Just pay attention to the longevity of the ad. Some ads are here today and gone tomorrow because the advertisers lost money. So, you’ll want to look for winning ads that stand the test of time.
These 7 criteria are easy enough to check for and will give you an excellent idea if the niche you’re looking at is worth getting into. Once you’ve determined the profitability of the niche, you’ll just need to get started and keep going. Don’t hesitate and brainstorm for too long. Action is the key to success.
“If you want to learn to swim, jump into the water.” – Bruce Lee
Niche Marketing: Become An Expert And Master Your Niche
Think you’re not ‘expert’ material? Think again…
When you’re an expert, you command respect in your niche. People listen to you, they pay attention to what you say and most of all they buy your products.
Being the expert in your own niche is like writing your own ticket to freedom.
Granted, you’re never going to become “The Expert” in a massive field such as weight loss.
But niche it down to “Weight loss for new mothers” or “Weight loss for brides-to-be” or Weight loss for video gamers,” and you can indeed become the expert in your niche.
I was reading Russell Brunson’s new book, “Expert Secrets,” and it starts out by giving some examples of just how easy it is to become an expert.
When Russell was in college, he tried internet marketing but failed. Then on spring break when he was bored out of his mind, he and a friend decided to build a potato gun.
The thing was, they didn’t know HOW to build a potato gun. It just sounded like fun. So, they started doing some research.
They discovered things like the correct barrel-to-chamber volume ratio, the right propellants to use, the correct pressure for the pipes, how NOT to blow themselves up and a whole lot more.
Armed with this information, they went to the store and bought their supplies. Then they spent the next few days building the gun, finding a place to shoot it and yes, shooting the gun itself.
They had a great time, and when Russell was in school the next week listening to the professor drone on, he thought about how he’d rather be shooting his potato gun. Then he wondered if there weren’t other people who would rather be shooting a potato gun as well.
Russell checked, and sure enough: the previous month there had been 18,000 searches for the term, ‘potato gun plans.’
Russell talked his friend into creating a DVD on how to source the items needed for building a potato gun, and how to build the gun itself.
Then he sold this DVD online. While he didn’t make a fortune, he did earn enough to get excited about online marketing and his new career was born.
Notice in the above scenario what Russell did to become an expert. He picked a topic he was interested in, researched it, experimented and did his own work, and then created a video.
Not exactly hard work, was it?
Russell gives a few more examples of people who became ‘experts’ in the same manner:
Jacob Hiller always wanted to dunk a basketball, but he was lousy at it. So he started doing research to discover techniques to improve his ability to jump. Every time he found a technique that worked, he made a video.
At first nobody was paying attention, but after awhile he had 100 followers, then 1,000 followers, and pretty soon he had 10,000 followers.
So he made a product and built a company that makes millions of dollars teaching people how to jump. Crazy, but true.
Jermaine Griggs had trouble reading sheet music, so learned to play piano by ear. Now he makes millions teaching others to do the same.
Liz Benny was an excellent social media manager, but it wasn’t until she began teaching others what she knew that she started making millions.
Robert G. Allen once said that he made millions doing real estate deals, but he made hundreds of millions of dollars teaching real estate.
Think of that – he made MILLIONS doing real estate deals, but he made HUNDREDS of millions teaching others what he learned.
Are you an expert at something that other people want to learn? Then as Russell says, you are just one funnel away from making millions.
But maybe you don’t have an expertise yet – that’s okay. As you can see from the above examples, every one of these folks learned to be an expert first and then built their business teaching others to do what they did.
Even Russell wasn’t born an internet marketing guru. He studied and practiced and worked to become what he is today.
And the same goes for me and every single expert making 7 figures on the internet.
One last thing – you might already be an expert, but you’ve got a voice inside your head saying, “Who am I to teach others? I’m nobody special.”
You are indeed special but you just don’t know it yet.
What you know comes easy to you because precisely because you’ve studied and practiced.
Yet to most people, what you know seems like something very difficult.
They need your help.
They WANT your help.
So ask yourself this question: Who are you to deny them the help they need and want?
Think about all the people you can help with your skill. By focusing not on the money you’ll earn, but instead focusing on helping others, you can build a 7-figure business you can feel great about.
And by the way, you can purchase Russell’s book, “Expert Secrets,” here.