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"...he says, adding: "In the post-Ain't-It-Cool-News era, I thought it was clear that small sites can either have a large readership or just the right readership."
What PR companies need to learn, Clark says, "is that the Internet is not a mass medium. It's all about niches, so if you have a mainstream product or service and you need to market it intelligently, then you should court these niche sources."..."
"...Swerling of Annenberg says that these niches are one of the Internet's primary strengths. "You can segment your audiences and really target your groups, and communicate with narrow groups a lot more effectively."..."
We’ve been talking about themes, and I’ve found the discussion enlightening. We can take that to another level and discuss niche marketing and optimization. In my research and curiosity about niches I’m looking at
1.What constitutes a niche? To what level do you take an idea to legitimately consider it a niche?
2.Where are the best portals for niche marketing? Where are the niches that promote niches?
3.Tools. For me I’ve discovered hubs/vortals/portals are my best tool. I’d love to hear about others.
4.If you have a well-defined niche, how do you tie it in with other niches?
5.How do you get the big guys, including PR companies to stand up and take notice of your niche? Converting your niche to dollars.
What I see here, in an odd way through this article is that these niches we are creating, pure of theme, are a very marketable product. The article encourages the brick and mortar PR industry to consider niches in their marketing possibilities and efforts.
I think people in SEO have a strong leg up on other promotion efforts when it comes to identifying potential niche markets. We get to see the keyword data and all that is related. That fact alone gives us deep insight into our users as well as their search habits. I rather have just one months referral logs to a successful site, than an expensive professional demographic survey. The logs will tell you more about the users than any survey.
People often harp about cookies and tracking by large advertising firms - that data is completely secondary to referral logs. The fact that the DoubleClicks and Bursts have amassed enourmous databases of referral logs is not very well known. They use that data for targeted marketing more then they use surveys. They keep that fact as quiet as possible. Flycast and Burst generally delete any discussion about referral logs.
By using logs to see how users are finding your site and what info they are looking for, you can custom tailor sites to fit your users niche. It is a case of the niche finding the site, vs trying to build a niche site to find users.
How to tie it altogether is another story in itself. They range from building subsites of content to target that user, to building separate sites. I prefer the subsite method because I believe strongly in branding. There are occasions where a site out grows it's parent (you are on one), and needs it's own day in the sun.
The thing I love about niche marketing, is that it is somewhat under the radar. I promote somethings that are hugely successful, yet they never get any press or have a fuss made about them - they just produce. You can do some "stealth marketing" with niche topics that keeps you off the competitions radar screen.
