What is a niche and how to find your niche

What Is a Niche and How to Find Your Niche?

“Everyone from the age of 18-55”, he said. 

He was the fifth person on the same day to give me the same answer when I asked: “Who is your target audience?”

And I knew he wouldn’t be the last.

There will be many more to come who will respond the same way in the future. 

And that bothers me. 

Why? 

Because if you approach marketing like that, you are bound to fail.

Why?

Because when you say 18-55, your audience is pretty much everybody. 

And if everybody is your audience, then nobody is your audience.

If nobody is your audience, then what are you even doing?

To illustrate my point, imagine this: I ask you to sell a mobile phone to an 18-year-old boy and a 55-year-old woman.

Would you try to sell to both of them the same way? What factors do you think you will change in the way you sell to these two different people? Just think about it for a minute.

If your sales pitch is going to be different, then how can your target audience be anyone who falls in the 18-55 category? How will you make sure that your communication appeals to both an 18-year-old AND a 55-year-old?

You simply can’t.

I have a feeling you are currently thinking “Thank god, my target market is only the people who are in the age group of 18-30” or something on those lines. 

Do you think an 18-year-old and a 30-year-old think the same way? Are they motivated in the same way? They have similar needs and wants? That they have the same priorities? 

Absolutely not.

18-30 is still not a niche market.

Then what is a niche market, you ask? 

Allow me to explain what it is, why you must go niche, and how to choose your niche market.

What is a niche market?

how to target a niche market

A niche is a submarket of a submarket of a market.

That’s how a 5-year-old would explain it because that’s how I would explain it to him or her. It is also the simplest way to understand what a niche market means.

(And btw, the British pronunciation is nee-sh.)

To understand what a niche market is, let’s zoom out.

You see, pretty much everything that we consume can be put under three major markets: 

Health, Wealth & Relationships. 

Every single one of your audience, including yourself, is trying to improve these aspects of their life. Whatever they do, whatever they buy and whatever they consume is directly related to either their health, wealth and relationships

These are needs, or desires, that is hardwired into all of us. 

You cannot escape it. 

You cannot control it. 

It’s something that has always been there, and we have come to terms with it. 

You have a desire to survive, enjoy life and extend it as much as possible (Health)

You desire to have a roof over your head, food on your plate and means to acquire it (Wealth)

You crave for sexual companionship, social approval and a sense of belonging. (Relationships)

best online niche markets for SEO

You will do everything to satisfy these core biological instincts.

And to satisfy these needs, the industry, where all businesses operate in, exists.

And everyone who is seeking to satisfy these needs forms a market.

(A crude way to understand this is that all sellers form an industry and all buyers form a market)

For example, let’s consider the “Wealth” market.

To acquire wealth, a person might want to get a job or start a business or invest. These different segments of people are your target markets.

Now, not everyone would want to satisfy their needs the same way. For example, not everyone would want to get a job the same way. So might want to be an engineer, some a doctor, or some like you, might want to become a digital marketer. These segments of your market are your submarket. 

Even a submarket, might have a lot of people, especially in a country like India. So if you want a more specific market, you add a layer of demographic data with specific needs.

For instance, let’s take the example from above of someone trying to get a digital marketing job. Instead of targeting everyone who wants a digital marketing job, I will add a few demographic layers, let’s say both men and women between the age of 18-22, from metro cities, who are into engineering but want a digital marketing job. 

Now that is a niche market.

A very specific market with a very specific need.

You can “niche-it-down” further and go even more specific by adding more demographic layers. For example, men who are 21-22, from Bangalore, who are in the final year of engineering, who are planning to get into a digital marketing job.

You can continue doing this until you are addressing a very specific audience which is big enough with a very specific need AND has enough demand.

But why go through this trouble at all in the first place? Why should you go niche? 

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Why is it important to go niche?

advantages of going niche,

Going niche is not just a phrase that keeps getting thrown around in digital marketing.

It is a marketing function. In fact, it’s a business function.

As a business function, there is one simple reason to go niche: less competition.

The more niche you go, the lesser your competition will be. The lesser your competition, the higher the chances of your success. 

Now, as a marketing function, to increase your chances of success, you should achieve what is called category leadership. Al Ries and Jack Trout first suggested this concept in their book, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

To help you understand category leadership, let me ask you this question: who was the first prime minister of India?

There is a good chance most of you know that Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister of India.

But can you tell me, without googling, who the second prime minister of India is? 

It’s unfortunate not enough people know that Lal Bahadur Shashtri was the second prime minister of India.

It’s ok, don’t be too hard on yourself, it’s not your fault, it’s the way we function. We always try to remember the most important things. And the way we do that is we pick the best or the number 1 from each category and don’t bother about the rest. This is why attaining category leadership is essential.

Now quickly, tell me who the first woman prime minister of India is. I hope you said Indira Gandhi because you would be right then.

How could you remember her name even though she is the 6th prime minister and you couldn’t even remember the second prime minister of India? 

That’s because, when you are the category leader, you not only acquire market share but also mind share, which will make your marketing easier.

And the easiest way to become a category leader? Create a new category. 

category leadership

You remembered Indira Gandhi because she is the category “leader” (number 1) in the woman prime minister category. She created a new category for herself and guess what? No competition, so it was natural for her to be a category leader and for you to remember it easily.

And that’s why it is so vital to go niche. 

When you go niche, you create a category for yourself, and you can be number 1 in that.

So if I become a digital marketing trainer for everyone, I will be competing with plenty of institutes, online courses etc. 

But if I position myself as a digital marketing trainer for engineering students who are 21-22, from Bangalore and is looking to get a digital marketing job, I have a higher chance of success because I have a higher chance of being a category leader there.

Once I have saturated this market, I can always leverage the experience and positioning to move into other niches. For example, once I saturate the final year student market, I would also start digital marketing training for first-year students so that they can start learning early. 

And then I move on to another niche and another and so on.

Even from a digital marketing perspective, or SEO perspective to be specific, going niche provides similar benefits. When you go niche, you don’t compete with the big guys, which increases your chances of ranking in the search engines.

This is why even affiliate marketers suggest that a “micro-niche” is the best niche to target in affiliate marketing. A “micro-niche” in affiliate marketing is a niche which is extremely specific which just a handful of keywords to target.

Also, when you go niche, your communication becomes more specific.

Going with the same example of above, if I had to create a content piece for digital marketing job aspirants, instead of writing an article which says “How to get a digital marketing job”, I would instead create a content piece which says “Final year Engineering? Here’s how you can land a digital marketing job in Bangalore.”

When my communication becomes specific, it attracts a specific set of audience, which I will be able to convince better because I understand his/her specific needs and problems.

Mind you, the meat of the content for both articles might be the same (getting a job is the same process for everyone). But how you position it and how you write it and who you write it to will help you achieve that mindshare. 

I am pretty sure you are convinced to go niche, but how do you go about it?

How to find a niche market?

Step 0: Make sure you don’t hate it

How to find your niche market online

It was tempting to say to find the right niche, follow your passion, but I thought I would leave it to the other guys when it comes to such hollow crappy advice. 

You obviously should be choosing your niche based on something that you are at least mildly interested in, if not passionate.

Listen, I understand that not everyone is passionate, and if they are, they are not entirely sure what it is.

So let’s work backwards. 

Just ensure that you don’t detest or hate the market, which might make things easier for you. For example, don’t try to start something in fitness when you hate going to the gym. That’s an easy filter to have. Or don’t try to get into something that you don’t truly understand, e.g., I might never get into cryptocurrency because I don’t truly understand it (who does anyway?).

Step 1: Choose and define a market

Niche market definition

Once you have filtered out all the things you despise and don’t understand, list down a few things that you are moderately interested in.

And no, you don’t have to be an expert in that niche or market . If you have a basic understanding of the niche, that’s good enough.

I can hear your conscience screaming “But that doesn’t sound right Sanjay”. Honestly, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. 

But that doesn’t mean you scam your way through the market. You still HAVE to care about your audience and understand their problems and provide solutions.

Unless you are building a personal brand, it’s ok NOT to be an expert and learn things along the way. In fact, by just taking the leap you will learn a lot of things. Take those learnings and convert them into useful content. 

If you are building a personal brand, you can just document your journey. Tell people what you learnt, how you applied your learnings and what kind of results you got and again, what you learnt from it. People will LOVE it. Trust me; people love authenticity more than expertise because it’s more relatable. 

And to illustrate my point, i’ll work with you.

Let’s say I pick the health market. But “health” is a broad term, which need should I be trying to satisfy? I think I will go after fitness because people have a strong need and desire to stay fit (and thereby healthy).

Also, I don’t hate it, I understand it enough, and I am definitely not an expert in it but know enough to get started.

Step 2: Carve out a submarket.

how to find a niche business idea

Let’s get a little more specific with the market. We know we are targeting the fitness market, but fitness is so vast in itself. Is it going to be strength training? Bodyweight workouts? High-intensity interval training? Yoga? Aerobic? Sports? Callisthenics?

I am just scratching the surface here, and I can keep going with the fitness market but let’s pick one, say bodyweight workouts.

Now that would be my submarket. 

This is one way to come up with a submarket, or you can also mix two markets to come up with a new submarket. For e.g., strength training for sportspersons.

 

how to find your niche in business

You see not everyone who is into strength training wants to be a sportsperson and vice versa. But there is a section of them, where both markets overlap, who want both. This automatically becomes a submarket you can go after. But for the sake of this example, I am going to continue with my earlier choice, which is bodyweight workouts.

But think about it; everybody who has an able body can perform bodyweight workouts. The submarket is still a big market (this can happen to you even when you mix two different markets). I need to get even more specific than that. How do I do that? 

Step 3: Add a layer of demographic data to this.

popular niches for affiliate marketing

Who are you targeting? Let’s define the audience a little bit.

Are they men or women or both? What age group do they fall under? Are they working professionals, have a job or run their own business? Are they married? Do they have kids? 

For my bodyweight workout example, I am going to choose men who are aged between 29-32 who have a day job and commute to work and are planning to get married soon.

Now that I know this information, I can draw a lot of insights from this. For starters, I know that they have a certain amount of disposable income coming in every month. And because they are not married yet, this means that their priorities are themselves and their needs. 

I can also infer since they have a day job and are commuting to work, they don’t have a lot of time. 

You might notice that planning to get married is actually a completely different core biological need (relationships) and is a strong one. I can capitalize on this and use this in my communication and to craft my program accordingly.

I will go a step further and try to write down my audience’s dreams and hopes(what they want to achieve at any cost), pains & fears (what they want to avoid at all costs) and barriers & uncertainties (all the things stopping them from achieving what they want)

So for my example: 

Dreams & Hopes: To lose belly fat and have a fit body ready for marriage

Pains & Fears: They hate going to the gym because it’s very intimidating to see all the machines and of course, the gym bros.

Barriers & uncertainties: They have no idea about where to start, what kind of exercises they have to do, what type of food to eat, what kind of supplements to have and most importantly they are not consistent enough.

And just like that, without you noticing, I found my niche.

I can use all of these insights to not only craft a solution but also to craft my communication.

So a part of the solution, I have to come up with a bodyweight program, that they can do at home (they don’t have time) without equipment (they hate the gym) with the right kind of exercises and diet (they have no knowledge) and they want it fast because they want to get married soon.

As you can imagine, I can do the same to come up with content ideas.

Isn’t it pretty simple if you go step by step? You can do the same to come up with your own niche too. But wait, there is one more important thing left to do.

Step 4: Assess the demand for that niche

top 10 niche markets

What’s the point if you came up with a great niche and there is not enough demand? Of course, you can say that I will generate demand (using Facebook ads etc), but I would always suggest picking a niche where there is some demand, a hungry niche market, that you can validate and then proceed to the demand generation part.

To do this, the most simple thing you can do is some basic keyword research. Head Over to your favourite keyword research tool (eg: Ubersuggest) and pop in your submarket and check the search volume, which signifies the demand in the market. I used SEMrush, and this is what I found: 

keyword research for health niche

You have to understand that sometimes you might not find that your niche or submarket does not have enough search volume. This might be because you are too narrow, or people use different terms in your location. See, when I changed the term “bodyweight workout” to “bodyweight exercise”, there was more than 2X increase in the demand. 

Affiliate marketing for health niche

Here, when I went a little broader and changed the term to “home workout”, there was an 8X increase in demand. 

home workout niche

Let me remind you that you are ONLY trying to validate your market here. Don’t dig too deep into the metrics at this point; you can do that while performing keyword research for your content.

I think this search volume more than validates that there definitely is a market to go after.

You can go a step further, and check on Amazon to see if any products are being sold, which can be an indicator of the profitability of your niche. If other players (competitors) are operating in your niche, it’s a great sign because they have validated the market for you. 

best niche for amazon affiliate marketing in India

As you can see, many many products are being sold for my niche, which signifies that the market is ripe and ready to be captured.

Again, you are just trying to do a quick assessment of the niche here and not going to deep. In this case, having 2000 products is a great sign that there is enough demand in this niche. And since it has so many products, it’s also a great niche to target for amazon affiliate marketing.

And that’s it! Now not only do you have a niche but a niche with enough demand you can go after.

Conclusion

Honestly, I have tried to simplify the process as much as possible because people get stuck in this phase very often. Having said that, these are not rules; these are just guidelines. 

Feel free to break them and come up with your own way to arrive at a niche. Skip a couple of steps if you feel like, add a couple more if you want to, it’s entirely left to you.

As long as your niche satisfies a core need or desire, is specific enough, has enough demand and is profitable, you are good to go. And besides, if you make a mistake, don’t worry too much about it, you can always go back to fixing your niche, it’s not like it’s set in stone is it. 

Now it’s your turn, tell me what your niche is (if you wish to) and how did you get to it? Or is there any problem you are facing in finding a niche for yourself. Share your journey with all of us.

P.S : While I was researching, I happened to come across some of the best niches you can go after online or even offline for that matter. I am planning to create a PDF of the same. Let me know in the comments below if you would be interested to receive it.

104 thoughts on “What Is a Niche and How to Find Your Niche?”

    1. Interested to know about different niches. This was very helpful though still don’t know what my niche is. Love gardening, cooking, fitness and family relationships. Can’t figure out how to start.

  1. will it be good, If my niche have more competition? The competitors are well known and established in the market. In this case, shall I look for another niche or continue with my own interest? Please let me know about this concern. Thank you.

      1. Hi sanjay..
        It would be of great help if u can share your content writing course through mail..
        Thank you..
        Regards
        Divya

  2. Gulshan Kumar

    Hi Sanjay
    Nice to hear from you on this very Important subject sply for the new ones like me to enter in this world
    Still required your help in this era.

  3. I Am interested in the pdf. Can yiu suggest if content about nursery school education is a good niche.

      1. Komal Gaikwad

        Hi sanjay the content you shared is quite informative.it would be a great help if you can share something about loans and finance sector as i want to grow in that sector.
        I would also like to receive your pdf

        1. yes i want pdf of niche.Can you suggest whether personal finance and career guidance are good options?

  4. It was great learning while going through the article. I too got stuck on what niche to select but I am learning now. And yes will love to receive the PDF with niche listed.

  5. That’s very informative and I have noted down the points. Would love to explore more on the PDF as well.

    1. I found your article very interesting and looking forward to get to know more about niche through your pdf mentioned above.

  6. Rajendra Dave

    Yes, Interested to have more to be more specific… Niche.. to learn own mind… “”A niche is a submarket of a submarket of a market.” Yes after reading more n more understanding. Greatful..🙏

    1. Gurleen Kaur Brar

      Hi Sanjay,
      Thank you for sharing these guidelines. I find them very useful. Also, please share the PDF with me. 😊

  7. Hi Sanjay,
    I am following since your content marketing mastery course, i would love to take suggestion from you , your deep analysis of any topic would give us best output.
    I have doubt on my niche, i have 9 years experience in real estate industry (residential ) in sales and marketing, past 3 years i have experience in digital marketing as well,and even i am learning.
    I love to teach and take training people , But i dont know what to choose as my niche, i want to do some business and i want to brand myself , so what would be your suggestion to choose as my niche.

  8. Your Seminar is fine, but we are freshers to digital Marketing., kindly explain where to start eighter from basic digital market or niche directly

    N. Vishwanth

  9. Thanks Sanjay for sharing such a helpful article.

    This morning I saw this post on Facebook and I realised the importance of having a minimum number of niches (preferably one but not more than two) for my blog.

    Previously, I was targeting four niches but now I am focusing only on two niches.

    You too can achieve this by merging your categories in WordPress.
    To merge the categories, please follow the below steps-
    1. Merge the multiple categories in your blog into a single category.
    2. You can achieve this by deleting least important categories on your blog (deleting categories won’t delete blog posts).
    3. And finally, redirect (apply 301 redirect) those deleted categories to the related categories on your blog. Do this, if your categories are indexed on Google.

    Yes, when you niche down, you attain results faster and this motivates you to keep going.

    Attaining results in the online world takes time, so instead of targeting multiple niches and delaying the results, select a specific niche and get results as fast as possible.

    This will both motivate you and help you sustain financially.

    By reading this article, I understood that even if you are in a position to target the whole niche with a hope of receiving the maximum organic traffic, you should not do that.

    Because in reality, it will take a very long time to get decent rankings in a broad niche.
    So, you should select a sub-niche or sub-sub-niche.

    Hi Sanjay, initially, I targeted four niches namely- motivation, entrepreneurship, technology and biographies of famous personalities.
    Now, I am targeting only two niches- motivation and entrepreneurship (I have merged the biographies category with motivation).

    Can you please tell me what should I do with the articles related to technology? There are around 16 articles on technology, should I delete those articles?
    As of now, I am not targeting technology niche and I have left these tech articles under technology category in my blog.

    Yes, please share the PDF.

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  11. Thank You, Sanjay Shenoy, for writing this for us.
    I must say this is the best blog out of all that I have read and I was in search of this blog for niche selection.
    This blog is incredible.
    Awaiting for the pdf.

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  13. Hi Sanjay Sir,
    I already attend the class SEO as an intern of Deepak Sir , it was amzing. I want to more suggestion from you. My niche is to teach Modern computer application class XI and XII west bengal. I found only 52 to 60 keyword only answerthepublic.com and ubbersuggest , can I rank in google? How can I reach to the students?

  14. Reema Tarafdar

    Dear Sanjay,
    Now I know the how’s and why of finding a niche not to mention what niche actually is . But my problem is, I stumble in my thought about, being a teacher with a Science background and venturing to write?

  15. Hi Sanjay,

    Thanks for the insightful article, it was very useful and informative.

    I look forward to seeing your PDF Niche Report.

    Thanks,
    Nick

  16. Metrología Sariki ha colaborado ya con diversas empresas de diferentes sectores (fundición, mecanizado, decoletaje,?) en la implantación “llave en mano” de sistemas de medición en línea basados en la integración de una Máquina de Medición de coordenadas.

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  18. Thanks Sanjay… You explained it perfectly. Still am not decided on a niche…. But this definitely gives an great insight..

  19. Hello Sanjay
    What an awesome read. But I am having more doubts coming up than what got solved.

    I am involved in money field in thich market would be online business. I narrowed it down to eCommerce business store set up.

    I am unable to do demographics research.

    It would be awesome if you can guide me through it.

  20. Hi Sanjay,

    Superb article, very well explained how to identify and pick your micro-niche in a step by step approach.

    The category leadership was a great example, really looking forward to your Niche PDF report.

    Thanks

  21. superb writing backed by great knowledge Mr.Sanjay, your write so gripping that we read your long articles till the end grippingly. And yes sir, very much interested in your PDF

  22. Hi, Sanjay
    One of the most important aspects to decide micro niche and it seems great value. With this guidance now I will have to get micro niche.

    I am also expecting pdf for that and I need

  23. This is a brilliant piece of article so far I’ve read. Gave some insights & knowledge on how to be specific about the niche. Thanks Sanjay for writing such a good content. This will help all people who are in chaos..

  24. Brilliant article Sanjay. I am a big advocate of simplifying marketing strategy and your article will really help me be able to simply explain how to identify a target market. Yes also interested in your pdf please. Thnx for such a well written article. Br Darran Dubai Chartered Institute of Marketing & Institute of Sales Management

  25. Article is wonderful. One can truly find right niche.
    one doubt. Target audience cannot finalized by niche, it’s change from every Article to Article. right?

  26. Yessss would love to have your pdf….and I have been reading all of your content and articles I would like to ask u is there any way I can talk to you for guidance in this market cause I’m new here but I wanna be a part of it …so can I plzz🙂😊???

  27. Hey Sanjay

    Awesome read

    But knowing these facts gets me confused.

    I would request you to please guide if someone’s field is social media marketing and specifically to Facebook marketing, do you suggest to narrow it more down seeing to the competition or there is a space to make it with them.

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  32. Sir really I want niche pdf. And thanks for sharing your valuable and knowledgeable content for blogging

  33. Thank so much Sanjay you made the niche identify process too easy readers just have to pay attention to their interest, desires moreover they just have to scratch their own head which is great idea that’s the only way will put out you from competition as well as to become a brand and more authentic. I would also love to receive the pdf guide to understand niche market on a more deeper level.

    Thanks
    Abhishek Gupta

  34. Yessss would love to have your pdf….and I have been reading all of your content and articles I would like to ask u is there any way I can talk to you for guidance in this market cause I’m new here but I wanna be a part of it …so can I plzz🙂😊???

  35. Very deeply explained about niche and its important . It’s Very helpful article to me. Lot’s of knowledge I got from it. Thanks Sanjay Sir to provide such a valuable information.

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  39. The article was interesting, i could visually connect with what I read through. PDF format will be helpful for future reference. I feel grateful if you provide it.
    Thank you.

  40. Hi Mr. Sanjay.
    Was exploring ways how to be a successful content writer, got over the article which I have just started reading today. Your pdf shall help us understand better. Thanks.

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