01 Aug 18 12:56 pm
2 Tips to help you find your niche
You want to start a business, but the thing that's holding you back is the market niche you know you need to choose. And, honestly, this can be tricky: You could list all of your interests and passions and still come away feeling as if you haven't hit upon the singular thing you were meant to do.
Yet putting that kind of pressure on yourself to choose the exact right niche may cause paralysis.
Certainly, you want to do your due diligence in selecting a viable niche business, but it's better to get up and running than to wait around. That way, you can test out ideas, enter the market sooner and learn from your successes and failures. That way, too, if your first business doesn't take off, you can always take what you've learned from previous attempts and move forward with new ideas.
If you're struggling to decide, or you need more data to work with, use the following five steps to find your niche.
1. Identify your interests and passions.This may be something you've already done. But, if you haven't, make a list of 10 topical interests and passion areas, immediately.
Business isn't easy, and at some point it will test you. If you are working in an area that you don't care about, your odds of quitting will greatly increase -- especially as a first-time business owner.
This doesn't mean that you need to find a perfect fit. If you are passionate about some aspect of running the business, you will stick with it. If you don’t care about the topic, you may not be able to find the drive within to persevere.
Here are a few prompts to help you determine what your interests and passions are:
How do you like to spend your free time? What do you look forward to doing when you aren't doing it?
What magazines do you subscribe to? What topics do you like to learn about most?
What clubs or organizations do you belong to?
2. Identify problems you can solve.With your list of 10 topics in hand, you're ready to start narrowing down your options. To create a profitable business, you first need to find problems your target customers are experiencing, then determine whether you can actually solve them. Here are several things you can do to identify problems in specific niches:
Have one-on-one conversations or idea-extraction sessions with your target market. Make sure to find or create a framework for asking questions that helps you uncover pain points.
Peruse forums. Search Quora, or find forums related to your niche, then take a look at the discussions that are taking place. What questions are people asking? What problems do they have?
Research keywords. Explore different keyword combinations on Google Trends and Google AdWords’ keyword planner. This can help you uncover popular search terms related to pain points.