I can’t really talk about experts and specialists without mentioning niche marketing. This concept has been gaining popularity over the past few years, with marketers trying to find the right term to cover marketing to narrow, specific segments of clients. This is what niche marketing really is, and by large it uses the same strategies and tools as “normal” marketing, but the target market is much more narrow. I’ve been reading a lot about this topic and working on my own niche marketing strategy for Polish English online communication, so I’m sharing my thoughts on it and some resources below!
This is exactly why niche marketing is something every expert translator should pay attention to. Niche marketing, first of all, enables us to make the most of resources (time and money) that we invest in marketing because it’s better targeted, therefore has higher chances of bringing good results. Second, niche marketing aims at building long-term relationships with customers within our best market, allowing us to concentrate on serving our best clients. Third, niche marketing requires us to narrow down the scope of our work, allowing us to get to know our clients even better.
How to develop a niche marketing strategy then?
Select a segment of the market that has a specific problem you can fix. It’s hard to speak about niche marketing if there is no niche (see my previous article). Finding out about a specific need or problem that a group of customers has leads to identifying a niche. For example, right now I’m working on a new niche for my business: Polish technology start-ups. I know that this niche has a special need, which is communicating with potential clients abroad, and a specific problem: they don’t have the time to write content for their websites, blogs, or other online communication.
Carry out market research. After you’ve identified the segment with a specific need or problem, it’s time to test whether your offer is feasible and whether there is enough interest for it. I suggest contacting 10 industry leaders within this niche to talk to them, as well as looking for 20 potential partners, and finally sending your new offer to 50 prospects. What are your results? For now, I contacted 3 industry leaders and asked them questions (lucky me, two of them are my old high school friends). I managed to confirm the market need with them and got an idea about feasibility. Of course, this is still very little so I’m embarking on a longer research process.
Prepare a promotional plan. If your idea and niche prove feasible, sit down to write a promotional plan aimed at targeting this specific group. Take into account different channels and tools that you can use to reach this niche best. This still lies ahead of me and is planned until the end of January. What I’m currently working on is looking for the most appropriate channels to reach my niche.
Implement the plan. Of course, the next step is to start promoting your offer to the niche identified, as well as to continuously monitor results. This is definitely planned throughout the year and I’m still working on putting dates against tasks.
There are three very important, in my opinion, elements when comes to niche marketing for translators. Careful targeting and learning as much as possible about the selected niche is absolutely the most important part of this strategy. Then, it’s also essential to meet unique needs (taking your USP a step further). Finally, niche marketing has a very narrow scope, so careful and continuous testing is key.
While preparing to write this article, I came across several interesting decks on Slideshare. Take a look!
- Select a segment of the market that has a special need.
- Carry out market research…
- Prepare a promotional plan.
- Implement the plan and test.
… or is it all just buzzwords? What do you think?
Marta Stelmaszak
Marta Stelmaszak is a translator between Polish and English, combining language skills with a thorough understanding of economics and business to help SMEs make as big an international impact as possible, providing translation and interpreting services for the legal, business and marketing sectors. Read Marta's book on business.
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