Strategies such as user-generated content, influencer partnerships, social media engagement, and marketing on specific platforms have proven effective for a variety of businesses with niche audiences.
Letâs look at five digital marketing strategies for niche-specific businesses.
1. Marketing on Sustainable Mediums
The term âniche-specificâ already suggests a limited budget that canât be allocated to widespread marketing on paid mediums.
This is where sustainable mediums such as video and social media come in. Sure, they have options for paid boosts, but if the content is good, both mediums provide plenty of chances for organic growth.
Social media marketing is one channel that offers healthy digital growth for niche businesses, regardless of their type, size, and scope. Itâs easy to recognize and target audiences there. Plus, you can directly engage with your potential customers on a neutral platform.
Additionally, keeping an eye on social media trends is easier than keeping up with, for instance, Google Search Central (formerly Google Webmasters) and their ranking advice. That makes for an easier medium to manage.
2. User-Generated Content
This is a clever marketing strategy that doesnât require you to create your own visual marketing assets. Instead, it turns things that users upload into assets for you.
In a way, itâs similar to word-of-mouth marketing, in that the customer is spreading the word for you. The benefit in this scenario is that you get to use their content for free (or at minimal cost). You also get to create a relationship with your audience thatâs more than transactional.
For example, marketing a mobile mechanic business can be considered transactional. However, using a satisfied clientâs post about the repair job on your socials may engage that, and other clients, on a deeper level.
Seeing proof of customer satisfaction may help gain some repeat business.
3. Mobile-First PPC Campaigns
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is often referred to as the lifeblood of niche businesses. This is because itâs a highly effective way of directly reaching your customer, short of writing them a personalized email or social media message.
The most effective paid campaigns for niche marketing involve long-tail queries and keywords with higher commercial intent. However, all of this should be from a mobile-first perspective.
In this case, mobile-first means that the ad should have either a single, highly targeted query, or smaller phrases that are primed for clicks. The âshort and sweetâ nature of such paid advertising is what makes it effective on a more compact visual medium such as mobile.
Ads like these can make it easier to reach the right audience. If someone already wants what youâre selling, chances are that theyâll buy from you if your ad pops up on search or a social media page, before theyâve even typed in the query to find the product.
4. Reactive Marketing
The concept of reactive marketing is not a new one and brands have been using this tactic for decades.
However, itâs still a very effective strategy if you use audience demands, needs, and feedback to drive your marketing, instead of the typical practice of using current event-driven marketing.
The key here is to listen to your current and potential customers on social media, Q&A forums, and message boards, and via direct feedback. Youâll discover what they really want out of a product, how they want the solution delivered, and even how they want it marketed to them.
Reactive marketing works really well as part of a larger social media marketing plan.
You can track demand by creating a social media analytics framework and by tracking key phrases across several relevant platforms.
This will let you know what people are talking about in regard to your service, and you can use that information to create marketing material around those conversations.
5. Incentive-Based Marketing
Perhaps the most important marketing strategy for niche-specific businesses is to offer something extra in return for the customerâs investment.
For example, a company thatâs selling financial products can offer promising stocks as an incentive. This would not only benefit the customer financially, but it may also help pre-convert the customer if the firm wants to sell them stock-related products in the future.
That said, it may be tough at first to determine what kind of incentive works best for the immediate campaign. Discounts are always a safe bet in this regard. However, you can also give out advice related to a customerâs problem.
For example, if youâre in the repair business, you could make an animated explainer short (video) about a specific repair job. Although this seems counter-productive, because if they know how to fix the problem themselves they may be less likely to contact you, but youâd be surprised how much customer confidence you inspire just by being informative.
Final Thoughts
Digital marketing today doesnât rely on set rules from even a couple years ago (algorithm updates see to that). Niche-specific businesses can definitely get big marketing results from a more targeted approach.
The key is always to know how the audience consumes content, where they consume content, and how to reach them with the right solutions for their needs.
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