Summary: In this first episode of the Clickable Marketing podcast, I look at the most important decision you’ll make regarding marketing your small business online… your niche (target market). It will ultimately determine how successful your Internet marketing is.<br> Podcast Transcription:<br> PICKING AN ONLINE NICHE FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS<br> You’re listening to the Clickable Marketing Podcast where we help fired-up small business owners turn clicks into clients. Join us to discover how you can make more money online in less time. Now here’s your host, Mr. Web-Marketing, Brad Hauck.<br> Welcome to the Clickable Marketing Podcast. I’m Brad Hauck, and this is Episode 1. Today we are going to have a look at picking your niche. Some people say niche, and some people say niche. It really doesn’t matter. What we’re trying to do is pick the place on the web that you’d best fit so you that can reach your target audience.<br> Since 1996, when I first started working on the web, I’ve seen people struggle with this aspect of the business. They really want to reach the widest audience possible, and yet, at the same time, they want to get known for the one thing that they’re really good at. The fact of the matter is that you can’t be everything to everybody. It would be great. It would be a lot of fun, and I’m sure it would bring a lot more business. But on the web, if you try to be everything to everybody, and you try to target too wide an audience, quite frankly, you won’t reach anyone at all. Those you do reach will not be the people that you’re actually trying to target.<br> When I started about marketing online in about 1996, it was very simple to rank a website. All you needed to do was put a few keywords in, feed it into the search engines, and hey presto! You are getting traffic. It was really quite simple in those days. That’s changed a lot over the last few years. Obviously, there are now millions and millions of websites all trying to reach a particular audience, all trying to sell a product, or service, or information to somebody. In your case, you’re not the only one who is working in your niche, and that’s super important to understand.<br> NICHES WITHIN NICHES – TARGETING YOUR AUDIENCE<br> Within niches, there smaller niches, of course. It’s never as simple as just saying, “Well, I’m going to talk to people who are interested in training their dog.” Or, “I’m going to talk to people who are interested in learning to play soccer better.” You need to come even smaller than that. That was fine 10 years ago, but now, with so many people competing for the same audience that you’re trying to reach, you really have to dig in and find something specific that you can target. Once you’ve found that target audience and you’ve started to build an audience then you can expand out a bit.<br> But my advice to you, based on my experience is, try and keep it really tight. I’ve work on websites for audiences of all sizes and for markets of all sizes, but the one thing I do know is that you can break it down and find where your audience is. If you’re a local business, my advice to you is to actually focus in on the local area. The biggest mistake you can do is try and reach an international audience.<br> If you can only deliver your service or product within a defined area, then that’s where you should be marketing. The great thing about this is there are less people in that area. There’s not that many people competing for that market, so therefore your chances of showing up are actually much, much higher. You’re getting known for what it is that you do much more quickly.<br> If you’re in a city, then you should target the city itself, but also think about your suburb. Is your suburb big enough to actually support you? Is there more clients within 5 minutes of your home base than there is that you can handle in a year? If so, then stop trying to target the whole city. It’s just too many businesses.<br>
