Market, Niche and Micro Niche

In online business, when we talk about ‘Market’ what do we mean? What actually is a market?  A market is a particular segment of people who have a common need or desire i.e. a group of people that want or need the same thing. They must have the capacity to pay for that need and they must be ready to actually buy something to satisfy that want or need. It is only when people are ready to buy from you that you can make money online.

When I talked about ‘niche’ and ‘micro-niche’ in my previous post, what did I mean? A niche is just a subset (division or detachment) of the market while a micro-niche is a subset of a niche. Let’s look at a company here in Nigeria as an example. There are a group of people who are interested in the ‘Chi’ company and they will be a large number of people because ‘Chi’ makes a lot of products like fruit juice, milk products, poultry, confectionery, etc.

But there is a smaller group of people that are interested in only the Chivita range of fruit juice. Chivita Juice would be a niche out of the large Chi market. Still again, there are a smaller group of people that are interested in only one particular juice; maybe they are only interested in Chivita Apple Juice. This will be the micro-niche.  People interested in Chivita Apple Juice represent a micro-niche within the overall niche of people interested in Chivita Juice, which is within the market of people interested in the ‘Chi’ company

I digress. Let me explain the word ‘phrase’ to you because we are going to be using it a lot in this coaching. Usually, when people go to the internet to search for anything, what they do is to type in a phrase into the search box.  For example, if you want to learn how to make money on the internet, you’ll go to Google and type “how to make money online” or “make money online“. What you have just typed in is what we call a “phrase”. Phrases are very important in your niche market research because it tells you how people are searching for products/services in your niche.  

Some phrases are quite useful because people use them frequently more than other ones, when doing their searches online.  Usually, these are phrases people use when they are actually looking to buy something and we call them ‘buying phrases’. They are commercially viable. The phrases that people use when they are looking for free content are not really profitable, so we say they are ‘bad phrases’.

Individuals or smaller sized businesses who cannot afford big advertising budget, are able to target a specific group of people (niche or micro niche) if they focus on keyword phrases that the smaller group (niche, micro niche) are interested in.

About Olakitan Wellington

I am a Social Media Marketing Strategist and Facebook Marketing Expert, a business coach, seminar resource person, published and serial entrepreneur. I help businesses to get extraordinary results from their marketing campaign thus ensuring steady increase in their incomes.