Use Your Hobbies and Interests to Find a Niche

According to HubSpot, a niche market is a focused set of people or businesses who are in the market to purchase a product or service. In this article we will help you understand and how to find a niche that will help you grow your business. 

The first step in finding a niche, believe it or not is to figure out what you're good at. Placing the focus on you is important, because you want to start a business that you will get a lot of personal satisfaction from. You don't want to start a business you aren't enthusiastic about.

So the question becomes, what do you enjoy and what have you been interested in? What skills have you developed over the course of your career? The video below can help you get started by answering 5 questions. 

As consumers, we're all part of several niches. Individuals in a niche have specific interests, needs and challenges that can be met by a targeted product or service that addresses their issues. 

The Best Way to Sell More

Selling to a niche market is actually the best way to sell more. Now that you know what a niche is; consider, when trying to find your niche, that it's impossible for you to solve all the problems of the world. 

If you get nothing else from this article, take away the fact that everyone is not your ideal customer. And when you try to sell to everyone, in the grand scheme of things, you end up selling to no one.  If can be frustrating trying to sell everything to everyone. 

You've probably heard the term niching down. It means you have chosen a niche and a product (or products) that will help your ideal customers. You create sales and marketing content that attracts your ideal customers.

By putting your content in the places where your ideal customers hang out online and focusing on providing solutions, you can build an audience of loyal followers and potential customers. 

Niching down helps you to stand out from competitors. Choosing a niche helps you commit to a specific set of people (the who), a set of products (the what) that will help to make their lives better. Once you're aware of who and what you're promoting, the when, where and why will be easier to determine.

By focusing on one niche and helping people in that niche solve their challenges, your business will be seen as an authority in your industry. You'll become the "go-to" person that your audience will count on for solutions. This will help you attract more customers to your business.

Video: How Your Hobbies Can Help You Select a Niche

Use the button below the video to download the Hobby and Skills Inventory worksheet that you'll go over in the video. You'll answer five questions that will help you select a niche for your business. 

Think About How Major Brands Operate

Consider the major brands you have bought products from. Think of a brand like Allstate, the insurance company. They sell insurance and they are known for that. Their marketing indicates that they sell insurance as well. 

Many people, about 16 million to be exact, have their insurance through Allstate. And because they are known nationwide, anyone who is looking for insurance, (home and auto owners for example) knows they can choose Allstate. 

Allstate is not trying to sell everything to everyone, they are niched down to the insurance market. They're not selling coffee, or clothing or housewares. They sell insurance and their agents are known as authorities in the insurance industry. 

Think about other companies you buy from, are they known for a specific niche or are they selling everything to everyone? There are a few companies like Amazon and Walmart that sell lots of different kinds of items to lots of different people. 

In the case of Amazon, they started out selling books and then branched out to other products over time. Their Amazon affiliates program helped them launch into other kinds of products and become the eCommerce mega giant they are today. But they started out in a specific niche... books. 

Walmart started as a one man operation selling to the boating industry, dedicated to giving customers unparalleled bargains on a wide variety of products. The focus was on bargains from the start and while they branched out to many different types of products, and even today the focus remains on helping customers save money.  

Niching Down to Sell More

How to Select a Niche That Fits

Start by thinking of the things you enjoy and watch the video above to get started. Make a list of the 3 topics you like and enjoy. Think of your hobbies, skills and interests, and things you have enjoyed over the years. 

You have many skills that you may have acquired on a job and during volunteer activities. Your hobbies may have helped you develop certain skills over the years, so don't forget to capture skills that you can earn from.

Finally, when trying to find your niche,  don't overlook the things you've been interested in that you haven't tried yet. Maybe this is a perfect time to build a business around an interest that you've always wanted to pursue. 

When to Perform Market Research

Because things are constantly changing, it's important to do market research when starting your business and throughout your business journey.

Maybe place a task on your calendar for market research once per quarter, or when you learn about changes or updates in your industry.

There are a number of ways to perform market research. One way is to do a quick search of Google Trends. Simply type in keywords, the name of the product or service you're interested in, and see what comes up.

Google trends will tell you how many times that term has been searched and you can even compare terms to see which term is most popular. 

Another option is to check out sites like Quora, where users ask questions about topics related to your niche and industry.

We have a video that shows you how to perform market research. It will show you how to use the internet to drill down on your hobbies and interests (that you found from the video above) to find your ideal niche.