There are thousands of businesses out there investing more and more resources into digital marketing, and as a result, the online market has grown saturated like never before. It has never been as challenging to stand out, grab the attention of visitors, attract more leads, and inspire more conversions.

Yet the market has also never before been this diverse. We were never as good at digital marketing as we are now – and by “we,” we mean everyone engaging in online marketing, from the blogger with the three-person audience to the huge international brand. And there were never as many avenues to pursue it.

Let’s look at one of these avenues – a slightly less obvious one perhaps, but one that can be incredibly rewarding, lucrative, and successful.

Niching down.

What is niching down?

Let’s first briefly explain the term “niching down” and what we mean by it in this particular instance.

In short, to niche down means to select a smaller market segment to market to, with a more tailored and specific offer, as opposed to a general offer and a more general marketing campaign that aims to target a large audience segment.

For example, an agency that offers couples backpacking holidays in Asia would be a niched down version of a travel agency. And one more example. A bike-only website would be a niche version of a sports goods website. Yes, they will offer a variety of bikes and light bikes for skinny people, and sturdy bikes for heavy riders, but it will still be a niche version of a sports goods site.

Even if you are a brand that offers different kinds of products or services targeting larger audiences, you can still choose to niche down in your digital marketing efforts. This can be achieved by running niche-specific campaigns that promote a certain segment or a certain offer that is targeted, personalized, customized, and very niche-specific.

Let’s see what the benefits are:

Your audience is smaller and easier to target

When you try marketing a product to a large audience, you will naturally be including, well, a lot of people in this group. Yet the more people you include, the more likely it becomes that some of them will simply not respond to your message, or even be interested in the product or service you are marketing.

While the benefit of larger audiences is clearly their sheer size, the beauty of smaller ones is that you can pick and choose who you want to target.

Let’s say you sell workout equipment and gear. Your natural target audience includes gym-goers, those who are working out at home, those who are planning to start working out, and so on.

But if you were to create a specific campaign for yoga mats in a specific local area, your audience would be easier to spot and easier to sell to, instantly.

You can start by mimicking the audiences of popular yoga studios’ social media pages, target people who search for yoga videos on YouTube, run PPC ads for people looking for a yoga mat. This is done really well by Lululemon, whose mats have become a fan favorite.

Your target audience knows what it wants

When you niche down to a specific, small target audience, you’re instantly eliminating any uncertainties from the equation. When you market widely, you’re somewhat throwing darts at a wall in the dark while wearing a blindfold. Even though you know there are people your offer will appeal to in your selected group, you can’t be sure you will actually hit them and not someone else.

When you niche down, your audience already knows they are interested in what you’re selling, and you know it too.

Let’s go back to our example with the yoga mats. If you market your product to people interested in fitness, you may or may not come across someone who is doing yoga. What if everyone who sees your content is into weightlifting?

When you choose your niche carefully, this will simply not happen – if you do your research right, you will already know your audience wants what you can offer. It will just come down to convincing them to convert.

You can inspire loyalty and trust more easily

Speaking to a smaller audience instantly means you will be speaking their language better, your message will be more personalized, and you will be encompassing an online community of like-minded individuals.

This will naturally make it easier to trust you. These kinds of communities (where the people you speak to share the same interests) are more comfortable for most, as opposed to the general communities where anyone and everyone can say anything and everything.

When you manage to access these kinds of communities (or when you create one), you will be perceived as an equal member, and your message will resonate better.

Here is the example of Elemental Labs, who sell an electrolyte drink and target people who have adopted the keto or the low-carb lifestyle. Since both of these communities share the same passions and engage in the same kind of diet, it’s much easier to inspire trust and loyalty with a product tailored to their needs than with a product that appeals to everyone but is also suitable for keto dieters.

Your competition may be easier to beat

Competitor research is always a very important part of digital marketing. And when you choose to niche down, there are two main ways you can outsmart your rivals.

First, you can do what we all think of when we say “competitor research” – examine the keywords, backlinks, and landing pages of your competitors, and use the best of their work to improve yours. And of course, build some of the same backlinks.

Secondly, you may look at the way they are choosing to market to their niche audience and try to outfox them. This can mean taking the best of their campaigns and adding an extra touch to them, or simply learning from their mistakes and choosing a different route.

Of course, bear in mind that you need to take on both your more “general” competitors (all those who are a niche wider or above you) and your smaller and more niched down competitors.

You will get to know the people you are marketing to

As you begin to build your niche community around your smaller audience, you’ll start to realize you’re getting to know these people a lot more than you ever thought possible, especially on social media.

Since your audience is smaller, and as you aim for a very specific kind of shopper, you’ll notice you are remembering names, engaging with people on a more personal level, and becoming a part of their lives in a new way.

Translate this benefit into the language of marketing, and you get access to customers you can’t get through any other means – you will learn about their shopping habits, the times of day they like to engage with you on socials, the items they often purchase together, and so on. All of this data you gather can then be used to tailor your future campaigns and reach even more people in the niche.

A brand that does community-building exceptionally well is Gymshark – although their niche is slightly wider than what we are discussing, the community they have built around their brand is exceptional, and should serve as an example of what you’re looking to achieve.

You can choose more specific keywords

When you niche down, as we’ve already discussed, your competition will be easier to beat, provided that you’ve chosen your niche wisely. You might even find yourself targeting a market segment that has practically zero competition, and where all you have to do is create some valuable content and build very few links to it to get noticed by search engines.

This also means that you have the luxury of targeting specific keywords or sets of keywords (since you are limiting the number of them) with much more gusto. After all, a smaller niche leaves fewer keywords at your disposal.

A word of warning here – if you are choosing to niche down organically (i.e., you have several products or services to offer, but want to run with a niche campaign for some of them), make sure you explore what the competition is like for each specific keyword cluster. You don’t want to find out someone has beaten you to the punch too late.

Here is the example of LFA Capsule Fillers – since their niche is already rather specific and small, they have the luxury of creating content and campaigns that truly speak to their audience and answer real-life questions, which is precisely what they do on their blog. These pages target specific keywords their audience is looking to get answered, and the quality of their answers naturally means they will rank well.

You can craft more targeted pages

Speaking of content, let’s touch upon that obvious benefit of niching down – targeted page creation.

When you go the niche way, your pages instantly take on an entirely new life. You are now at liberty to create dedicated landing pages that will speak to a particular audience in their language, with a voice and point of view they can truly relate to. You no longer have to try to avoid a certain jargon or encompass all kinds of levels of knowledge. If you’ve selected your niche well, you can speak to them so they understand you perfectly.

The benefits of these kinds of pages are clear to see – they make conversions much more likely, and they are an excellent way to please search engines as well, because the pages will naturally be well-written and full of valuable information.

Square does this really well with their different landing pages aimed at solving various problems and showcasing the functionalities of their product.

You can write targeted content

Niche content needs no introduction – as content marketing is currently considered one of the most effective digital marketing tactics, niche content marketing can only be thought of as the next rung of that ladder of success.

Just as with targeted landing pages, your blog content can be much more appealing to your audience, simply given the fact that it is just that – targeted.

If content marketing is to be successful, it needs to offer value and provide real-world solutions to the people who are reading it. With niche content, this is much easier to achieve, considering all the points we’ve just covered above.

Since you’re already very familiar with your audience and your competitors, you can find the ideal way to answer the questions they are typing into their search bars. And you can choose keywords you can then easily rank for well with your content efforts, improving your overall rankings, gaining you more visitors, all allowing you to reach a wider part of your desired audience segment.

Content promotion becomes more straightforward

Niche content is also easier to promote – and the promotion has a much better ROI.

When we usually think of content promotion, it’s all about sharing to social, sending out the newsletter, posting on forums and in relevant communities, and getting some guest posts in too.

With this kind of specialized content, your playing field for promotion is narrower, that’s certainly true, but this narrowness makes it more effective.

You won’t need to build dozens of links to a page, as only a few might suffice.

The bloggers you work with will be more inclined to share your content or publish your work – after all, they are interested in the subject too.

You won’t randomly be crashing communities and groups. Instead, you will be providing actual answers to people who are interested in them.

All of this translates into a content promotion cycle that’s more stress-free and easier to achieve.

Your social media campaigns are less scattered

Finally, let’s briefly mention that niching down also allows your social media campaigns to be more focused and more targeted. No more trying to cater to everyone and cover every angle. You are able to speak to a small community (and a small but engaged and interested community always beats a large but mute following), and you don’t need to keep coming up with new things to promote.

All you have to do is work on reaching them on a more personal level, growing the relationship they have established with you as a brand, and be who they are and who you are in that niche.

You can create custom hashtags, keep a uniformed feed, and overall enjoy your social media marketing efforts more.

Final thoughts

Niching down is an incredible way to reach more people – even if it sounds counterintuitive when your goal is to reach the widest audience possible.

In fact, the more niche you get, the likelier it is that your audience will want to listen to you. But remember, you do need to choose your niche wisely, and select one where you feel at home and where you can relate to your audience.