In my line of work, I am fortunate to work with several niche businesses.  And several of these niche businesses have very cool products.  That’s the appeal of a niche – it’s unique, different, and generally there are only a few quality providers.  So I wondered, what is the key to  successful niche businesses?  Is it the product or the marketing?

Niche Businesses Defined

A niche business generally operates in the low volume, high margin realm. This is achieved because the product supply is low, as is the demand for a unique product or service.  Once the product becomes mainstream, more competition enters the market and the business model shifts away from what I consider a traditional niche based business.

My clients range from under $1 million in revenue to over $90 million in revenue annually.  I don’t see too many businesses that I would call truly niche earning over $20-$30 million in revenue.

What Drives Niche Business Success – the Product or the Marketing?

Consider some of these niche businesses:

• Tree Houses
• Residential Putting Greens
• Antique Hardwood Flooring
• Gorgeous, Furniture Quality Plantation Shutters

Depending on what appeals to you, these are very cool products.  I mean, who doesn’t like tree houses?  If you like golf, you’ve probably dreamed about having a putting green in your yard.  And the plantation shutters and the antique flooring appeal to those who like the finest things in their home – you should see these things – they are beautiful.  The products have great appeal – the companies are successful through niche business marketing.

Niche Business Products

In their own right, each of these niche businesses is quite successful – even during this economic downturn. And the product appeal and quality cannot be disputed.  So does a great niche product or service make a successful business?

It certainly helps – especially if the product can be established as the niche market leader.  A great product is a wonderful thing – but it’s not the only thing.

Niche Business Marketing

There is no denying a great, high quality product and a customer-centric focus does wonders for a niche business.  But the most successful niche businesses I have worked with approach their business as sophisticated marketers and business owners.  Meaning they do not personalize business matters and have a systematic approach to maintaining, improving and growing their niche business.

Great products help close the sale – but to get to that point, niche businesses need effective marketing.  And there is no medium out there that better supports niche business growth than the internet and search engines.  Go into your town and look for the custom, residential putting green installation store.  I’m guessing you don’t have one.

Of course, you (and everyone else) would likely have started with Google or another search engine if you were seriously considering a backyard putting green.  That’s why the most successful niche businesses:

• Have great products
• Run their business like a business – not a hobby
• Invest in internet marketing

Niche Business Success – Great Product or Great Marketing?

It starts with marketing.  I’ve seen far less exciting products fare extremely well when backed by hard work, discipline and an effective marketing process.

But if you have a remarkable product and great marketing, that’s the key to successful niche business ownership.

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Google Integrates Twitter – Real Time Search

The much discussed Google-Twitter integration appears to be underway.

CNet wrote about it here: Google Launches Real Time Search

At the time of writing this post – I can see the live stream if I search on “Tiger Woods”.

Seems like the beginning of a paradigm shift to me.  I have read how Google’s mission was to “organize the world’s information” and the addition of streaming news feeds and tweets strikes me as more aggregation than organization.

Whether this is another arrow in Google’s quiver to prove superiority over Bing or it’s the beginning of a fundamental change in search behavior remains to be seen.  But it certainly strikes me as a strategic change for the world’s largest search engine.  An attempt to provide information to people who want to know what’s happening “right now”.

Others will certainly present the counterpoint that with real time search, image results, news results, video results, book results, etc.  Real estate on the first page of Google is getting pretty  cluttered.

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Think of Successful Small Business Marketing as a Three Legged Stool

If you do these three things effectively, your small business internet marketing efforts will be successful.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Pay per Click Marketing (PPC, Google AdWords)
3. CRM Marketing

I have the privilege of working with many small business owners across several industries.  And rarely do I come across a company that is doing all three of these “legs” effectively.  More often, a small business does one or two of them, and provides explanations as to why they don’t do the others.

Granted, each of these items are entire industries, so all the details can’t possibly be captured in one article.  But the basic premise applies.

If you have a website for your business, and your website generates leads, then this is for you.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO

SEO gives your website visibility in search engines.  And search engines, Google in particular, are the yellow pages of 20 years ago.  It is where potential consumers start to find a product or service.

Do not spend $10,000 developing a great looking website without giving serious consideration to SEO – I’ve seen this too often.

Essentially, SEO is the process of increasing your rankings in search engines for targeted keywords.  Keywords you have strategically selected to generate qualified traffic and ultimately sales from your website.

The upside – SEO has momentum.  Once your website starts ranking and gaining authority, it is easier to rank for other terms, more people link to your site, and it continues.

The downside – SEO is not a quick process.  It is not a magic bullet or “get rich quick” scheme.  It is, frankly, a lot of work.  So don’t expect overnight results from SEO.  Consider it a long term strategy.

Google AdWords and Pay per Click Marketing – PPC

Pay per Click Marketing, commonly called PPC, however can produce results overnight.

Google AdWords is the most common platform for PPC marketing.  You can set up a Google AdWords account in a day and start generating clicks.  With Google AdWords, you can appear on the “first page” of Google in a day.  This can be a powerful tool.

The upside - PPC Marketing is quick and targeted.  The major search engines offer robust PPC marketing tools to help you better target your campaigns, improve response and save money.

The downside – The cost.  These placements do not come free.  You set a daily budget and your ads will be served as long as the daily budget allows.

CRM Marketing

CRM Marketing ties in your marketing efforts to your sales efforts – and your sales results.  So you can identify not only which advertising mediums are producing the most leads (and what that costs you) but you also see which leads are producing the most sales – now you can track ROI and truly optimize your marketing mix.

The upside – CRM systems can be incredibly powerful tools for your small business marketing efforts.  Not only do they integrate marketing and sales – but most integrate customer service and several can tie in to your ERP or financial software.  It all depends on your needs.

The downside – I suppose one could say the cost, but I believe CRM systems more than pay for themselves if used properly.  The biggest downside I’ve encountered is people.  More specifically, getting people to buy in to a new way of doing things and getting the most out of these incredibly powerful tools.

Successful Small Business Internet Marketing

The trick is finding the time and resources to make sure all legs of the “stool” are done well.  Otherwise the stool gets a bit wobbly, or worse, it falls down.

But having witnessed many companies and how their internal marketing operates – the businesses that effectively use seo, pay per click marketing and crm marketing have successful small business internet marketing programs.

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Essential Marketing Metrics for Your Small Business

Tracking marketing metrics is a key element of successfully managing your marketing process.

Of course tracking a bunch of numbers does nothing for your business (except consume resources – if you are not tracking the right marketing metrics.  Also, you need to act on your metrics – tracking data is pointless if it doesn’t lead to action.

Which Marketing Metrics are Right for Your Business

This of course depends on your business model, but let’s say your business relies on new leads (as well as existing ones) to generate sales.

The first thing I recommend you do is ask yourself – what a the three pieces of information to run my business (or marketing department).

I prefer to know what the quantity of new leads are, as well as the quality.  You can learn a lot by tracking those two things over time.

In marketing metric format, this could be represented as:

New Leads – the number of leads coming in per day (quantity of leads)

Cost per Lead – the specific cost associated with acquiring these leads (always track costs)

Conversion Rate – What percent of these leads translate into sales (quality of leads)

What Gets Measured Gets Managed

It’s true.  If you discipline yourself to track these metrics on a daily basis and evaluate the trends over time you will gain significant insight of your small business’ performance (month over month, year over year, etc.).

You can also place parameters around them once a baseline is established – for example if your marketing metrics vary +/- 5% over the previous month and take appropriate action.

This also allows you to better manage marketing expense and control cost as well as increase profitability.

Tracking essential marketing metrics can be done as simply as using a spread sheet or you can use a CRM system to help automate the process.  But keep the metric data visible!  You need to watch, review, analyze and take action upon what you are seeing.

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Small Business Marketing Success

Many small business owners are primarily concerned with two things – cash flow and growth.

Growth is difficult to achieve without cash flow.  Cash flow is critical to sustain operations, and depending on how your business is performing, there may not be much left over to invest in growth.

I’m not going to include things like “create a remarkable brand” or “develop a product people want to buy” – I am presuming you recognize the inherent importance of these things and are trying to do so. I won’t include those sort of soft tips in this list, rather try to provide practical marketing techniques to make your small business marketing succeed.

7 Small Business Marketing Tips

Tip #1 for Small Business Marketing – Leverage Your Network

Talk to everyone you know, who your spouse knows, your family, friends, professional network, etc about your small business and your value proposition.  When growing your small business, you can’t be shy.  But don’t be oppressive or obnoxious about it.

Tip #2 for Small Business Marketing – Develop Your Website

More and more people are online, and as the population ages it’s just going to increase.  This past week, during a recession “Cyber-Monday” posted record sales.  Developing your website includes the following:

Tip #3 for Small Business Marketing – Increase Your Website Traffic

Depending on your business model and the current popularity of your website you may choose a few different approaches.  Some of the more common being SEO, PPC Marketing, Social Media, etc.

Tip #4 for Small Business Marketing – Website Design and Navigation

Your small business’ website should be very intuitive and easy to use for your website’s visitors.  Once you generate traffic, you want to convert them into leads, inquiries, sales, etc – whatever your small business model needs.  Have someone outside of your organization review it, family, friends, customers, vendors, etc. Don’t take negative feedback personally or quickly explain why it’s set up a certain way – listen, think, reevaluate.  What makes sense to you doesn’t always make sense to other’s.

A well designed website can make your small business look like a major player.

Tip #5 for Small Business Marketing – SEO

However, well designed website is unfortunately meaningless without traffic.  And unless you are familiar with SEO – search engine optimization – investing in some professional SEO assistance may well provide your greatest long term marketing ROI.

The web has become the great equalizer – allowing small businesses to compete with large businesses on a scale never imagined 20 years ago.  A quality SEO who focuses on small business marketing can be a great asset.

If you go this route, talk to people first, and do your research.  There are a lot of companies and people who claim to be expert SEO’s.  And while some may provide short term lifts in your rankings, make sure it’s done within the guidelines of ethical SEO.  It can be much more difficult to undo a penalty than to generate rankings through “white hat” seo methods.

Tip #6 for Small Business Marketing – Track Your Marketing ROI

Track marketing ROI for all of your small business marketing efforts.  This is critical to your small business marketing success.  You can track marketing ROI in a number of ways – from labor intensive spreadsheets to (affordable) CRM solutions.  Marketing can be a very expensive endeavor for small businesses, and you must knows what works and what doesn’t/

Tip #7 for Small Business Marketing – Work Hard and Work Smart

Stay focused on your small business.  Understanding what is working and what is not working is critical.  You may need to change your strategy or target market – be open and flexible to this.  Stay focused on your core strengths, keep developing them and hire and retain people that are engaged in your business.  But – be open to new ideas!

Additional Small Business Marketing Resources

115 Marketing Strategies for Small Business

10 Small Business Marketing Strategies

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