TARGET A NICHE MARKET TO
INCREASE YOUR SALES AND PROFITS
Copyright 2001 By Bob Leduc

Contrary to what you may want to believe, the whole world is not your market.
Even if everybody CAN use your product or service, there is a specific
group with an intense need or desire for the benefits you offer.  Find
that "niche" market and commit your efforts to getting business from it.
You'll soon discover how profitable your business can be.

A niche or target market is a group of potential customers who share common
characteristics making them especially receptive to your product, service
or opportunity.  For example, I have a good friend in the life insurance
business who happens to live near 2 large US military bases.  Almost all
of Frank's sales are to career military personnel at these 2 bases.  He
tells me the US military provides an excellent group life insurance program
for military members but no life insurance for their spouses.  This creates
a potential financial problem for military families with children.  If
the service member's spouse dies, it will be expensive to provide care
for the children when the member is on remote assignment or on extended
training duty.  By targeting active duty military families and providing
a solution to their "special" life insurance problem, Frank became one
of the top sales agents in his company.

BENEFITS OF TARGETING A NICHE MARKET

Identifying a target market makes it easy for you to plan effective marketing
activity.  It also makes it easy for you to develop a winning sales message.
When you know the specific concerns of your market, you can tailor your
message to focus on solutions to those concerns.  You can even create different
sales messages for different target markets.

For example, one of the books I wrote is a manual about how to use simple
postcards to generate inexpensive sales leads.  The information and examples
in it apply to all businesses.  However, one of the most profitable target
markets for this manual is businesses that use a network marketing or MLM
distribution system.  The promotional material I developed for that market
emphasizes the special advantages postcards offer for recruiting new independent
distributors.  That's the #1 concern of every network marketer.  I identify
their biggest problem and offer a simple, low cost solution to it.  As
a result, a high percentage of the orders for this manual come from network
marketers.

HOW TO FIND A NICHE MARKET

If you've been in business for some time you're probably already targeting
one or more niche markets with your sales efforts.  If you haven't or if
you're just starting your business, here are some things you can do to
uncover profitable niche markets for your business.

Start by listing all of the benefits offered by your product, service or
business opportunity.  Be sure you're listing benefits, not features. 
You must know the difference between benefits and features to market anything
successfully.

A feature is what something is.  A benefit is what it does.  For example,
my favorite donuts are now delivered in a re-
sealable box.  That's a feature.  The donuts stay fresh for a week after
I first open the box.  That's the benefit.  Understanding this difference
is important. People never buy something to get a feature.  They always
buy to get the benefit produced by the feature.

After listing all the benefits you can think of, list some of the characteristics
of prospects whose current situation would be dramatically improved by
those benefits.  You should begin to see a definable group emerging as
a niche or target market.

Next, you want to determine if the group you've identified is a market
you can reach and develop profitably.  If it is, you will be able to answer
"yes" to all of the following questions:

1. Can I identify individual prospects within the group including contact
information to communicate with them?

2. Do prospects in this group have a strong need for (or a strong desire
to have) my product, service or opportunity?

3. Do the prospects in this group have the money to pay for what I'm offering?

4. Can I deliver my sales message to these prospects under favorable circumstances?

5. Is this group large enough to produce the volume of business I need?

Don't waste your time on this market if there is a "no" answer to any of
these questions.  It's not a niche market for you.

Be sure to use the information you developed in finding your target market
to create the sales material for it.  You already know the overwhelming
benefit(s) you offer to this market and why it's so important to them.
Just build your advertising and sales material around this benefit and
you'll soon enjoy the profits of successfully targeting a niche market.

Bob Leduc retired from a 30 year career of recruiting sales
personnel and developing sales leads. He is now a Sales
Consultant. Bob recently wrote a manual for small business
owners titled "How to Build Your Small Business Fast With
Simple Postcards" and several other publications to help
small businesses grow and prosper. For more information...
<mailto:BobLeduc@aol.com?subject=Postcards>
Phone: (702) 658-1707 (After 10 AM Pacific time)
Or write: Bob Leduc, PO Box 33628, Las Vegas,