Why Would You Market to LESS People?

Are you a fan of Amazing Race?  On the show, couples race around the world following clues that give them their next stop.  Each stop along the way has an associated task for the contestants to perform to get the next clue.

Occasionally the contestants are asked to sell something.  The racers get a set of products from a local vendor and they are required to sell a certain number of these products to get the next clue

Where do you think they would rather be?  In a crowded location with a lot of other vendors also calling out their wares or in a lightly populated alley where they are the only vendor? 

Each time, they wade into the crowd and try to make it work.  They have a lot of competition, so they have a hard time getting anybody’s attention.  They aren’t sure of their pitch, so they have trouble converting the scant attention into a sale. 

It would be better if they moved to the alley.  With less competition, they can get the attention of each passer-by and they get more chances to improve their pitch and raise their conversion rate.  They would make more money with fewer crowds.

This is the premise of niche marketing on the internet.  Rather than market to a huge crowd (e.g. the phrase ‘credit card’), it would be better to market to a smaller group that is laser focused on what you are offering (e.g. the phrase ‘credit card with low apr’).

These niche phrases are called ‘long tailed keywords’.   These longer phrases have a number of qualities:

• Less searches.  A lot less people type in that phrase as a search. 
• Higher conversions.  The folks that search these phrases are much closer to buying a product / service that matches that phrase.  These folks have already done the general searching and are looking for more specific information.
• Less competition.  Most of the big boys are focused on the big crowd.  Some of these long tailed keywords can end up with only 1 match – how hard is it to compete there?

The struggle, of course, is to find these profitable phrases.  A brute force method is as follows:

1. Use Google’s keyword tool (search for ‘keyword tool’ to find it!).  This tool will give you suggestions for phrases along with the volume of searches for each phrase.  You can also setup the columns to show you the average CPC for that phrase.
2. Do manual searches on Google for each interesting phrase.  Each search will give you the count of competing websites.  If the count is very high, then you will have a hard time competing.  Generally, if your site does not show up on the first four pages in a search, you are not likely to get any traffic from organic searching.

There are also tools that have been built to make this a lot simpler.  Click the link to see one of these tools and learn some great ways to find and profit from these niches.  This link will allow you to subscribe to a free 5 part video series.

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