A few people but a comfortable niche. Choosing a niche for a business from scratch is a memo to a novice businessman. It could be

Sooner or later, a person faces the question: continue to work "for an uncle" or try his hand at own business. Independent business- this is personal and financial independence, the realization of ambitions, status. But at the same time, these are increased risks and full responsibility for the final result. The success of future entrepreneurship is largely determined by the correct choice of a business niche, which we will discuss in this article.

1. Decide on a business direction

Choosing a direction for future activity is the most important step for a novice businessman. No need to rush headlong into the first (albeit popular) idea that comes across. It is necessary to soberly assess not only the prospects of the direction, but also your own opportunities for entering the chosen sphere and developing in it. It is desirable that the niche meets at least one (and ideally all) criteria:

The chosen direction should be pleasant. A business that you do with pleasure is more pleasant and easier to develop. Many businessmen called themselves happy just because they turned a hobby into a business. As a result, you receive both moral and material rewards.
You need to have competence in the chosen direction. Even if the niche in your profile is quite competitive, good professional knowledge and skills should help to take their share of the market.
The offered services and goods must be in demand. The well-known formula from classical economics “demand creates supply” is relevant at all times. Of course, there are high-risk areas in which venture companies bring fundamentally new products to the market: in fact, the reverse formula works - the manufacturer creates demand with the help of a completely new product or service. But this option is more suitable as an additional option in the presence of a valid efficient business. At the initial stage, the risks must be justified.

2. We evaluate the prospects

It's good when you have a clear idea of what you want to do and how to go about it. But most often, when choosing a niche for a business, throwing between different options begins. Therefore, it is better to make a short list of ideas that, in your opinion, will “shoot” in your execution. With this list in place, you can begin to evaluate each idea more carefully in terms of opportunities and threats.

First of all, you need to understand two things:

Who is your consumer in each potential niche.
What are the prospects for each direction.

You need to clearly understand what customer needs your business will cover. Potential consumers are money, and they need to be evaluated using various mechanisms: surveys of acquaintances, thematic forums, groups in in social networks, expert opinions. It is necessary to draw up portraits of consumers for each chosen niche.

The chosen area should have development prospects. It makes no sense to invest in a direction that, although it is in demand now, has a tendency to "collapse" in the near future.

3. Weigh our options

The entry threshold is different everywhere, and this is influenced by various objective and subjective factors. When evaluating each promising niche, these factors should be taken into account, even those that at first glance may seem insignificant:

Competition. You need to understand who your competitors are and what advantages you will give to potential customers. If the offer in the niche is excessive, and you are not ready to offer competitive advantages, then even knowledge and desire will not help to win any significant positions in the market.
your potential. It is about internal and external potential. Evaluate not only your personal capabilities, but also the capabilities of your environment. A childhood friend can become the first supplier of components, a wife's girlfriend can become a target audience and at the same time word of mouth advertising, an influential acquaintance can become a lobbyist of interests in the chosen market.
Start-up capital. It is important to understand the source of funding for starting a business. And if for the service sector this will not be the most significant amount, then for the manufacturing sector it is quite decent. Good if enough own funds, but will you be willing to sacrifice other people's or borrowed money?

Careful study of all factors for each chosen niche will help to gradate and compile your personal rating of business ideas. And then it remains only not to be afraid to take the first step.

4. We count correctly

Drawing up a preliminary business plan for each idea is quite laborious, but necessary step. It is important to understand that "the game is worth the candle", because final goal Any business is about making a profit. Doing business for the sake of the process itself is wrong and will eventually lead to financial ruin.

It is the insufficient depth of immersion and excessive optimism in the calculations at the initial stage that is the main reason for the unprofitability and bankruptcy of most novice businessmen. When calculating, you need to focus on a pessimistic forecast. Even a seemingly promising direction with many unmet customer needs is far from a guarantee of a flow of consumers in the early stages of business development. The path from a potential client to a real one is quite long, and you need to be ready to go through it “in the red”.

When drawing up a preliminary business plan, you need to calculate:

One-time expenses at the very beginning. It could be a purchase. necessary equipment and tools, the cost of registering an individual entrepreneur or legal entity, buying a franchise, licensing, etc. These costs are one-time and make up the bulk of the start-up costs.
Current or monthly expenses. This includes the rent of premises, salaries employees, utility bills, bank maintenance, tax deductions, purchase of components and other costs. You need to look at what you can save on at the beginning, and certain types of work (accounting, website maintenance) can be outsourced. At the same time, you need to have a “margin of safety” for at least three months, and preferably for six months, i.e. be prepared to finance current costs out of your own pocket.
Income plan or revenue. This is exactly the calculation for which optimism is the main enemy. Estimate revenue prospects based on the lower bound to be ready for reality.
Supply plan. Is not actual problem for the service sector, but important for production. Manufacturing process must be provided with materials and components evenly and constantly.

A preliminary business plan is different from a full-fledged one, but it is quite enough to assess the possibility of entering the chosen business niche.

5. Making the final choice

After going through the previous 4 steps, you will see a more or less clear picture for each business idea. You have preliminary calculations, an assessment of each direction and an understanding of what needs to be done. After weighing the prospects of each idea according to the proposed methodology, at the end you will get a very real niche for your own business.

Be prepared for difficulties in the early stages and be patient: the return on investment is not a matter of one month. But the prospects that open up are worth it to start your own business.

A niche is a small but profitable segment of the market that arises in response to the unmet needs of a particular audience, not yet covered by competitors.

Profitable niches for business is a topic that is relevant for both existing companies and startups at the planning stage. The first seek to rebuild from competitors, the second to find trends that will affect their choice of business.

The bad news is that niches are unstable. And you need to keep abreast of trends in your field to create a truly unique selling proposition. Pay attention to the giants. They constantly “insure” by offering a variety of sets in assortment matrices.

The simplest example: good old Hewlett-Packard once sold equipment that simultaneously printed, scanned, and faxed. At the same time, the company offered devices that performed all these functions separately. On the other hand, it is also not worth it to “split up” and disperse over many niches or create them artificially.

The good news is that we have unprecedented control over targeting. Provided that we know the characteristics of a representative of the target niche, it is easy to find him on the network, attract and lead him through all stages of his digital funnel.

Niche Selection: 5 Stage Process for an Existing Business

Your managers can be as experienced and trained as they want, follow all the techniques, have scripts, but this will not help if the target audience is chosen incorrectly. As a result of this systemic error, further segmentation of the audience and the choice of niches within it loses all meaning.

In general, the business process of choosing a niche, the so-called nicheting, goes through several stages.

Analysis of the portrait of the target audience,
Selection of several niches within the target audience,
Marketing strategy development,
Analysis of the dynamics and cost of attracting potential customers in the selected niche.

Niche selection: signs of work not by your target audience

Niche Selection: Determining Your Target Audience

Niche Selection: Target Audience Segmentation

The main step to segmenting your target audience and choosing specific niches within it is the ABCXYZ analysis of the client base.

It allows you to first analyze client base by two parameters: the volume of purchases of each counterparty (group ABC) and the frequency of its purchases (group XYZ). The point of the analysis is to place the buyer in one of the volume categories (ABC) and in one of the frequency categories (XYZ).

ABC group:

A - buys in bulk
B - buys in average volumes
C - buys in small volumes

Group XYZ:

X - buys regularly
Y - buys irregularly
Z - bought once

First, this study will answer important questions:

Who is your ideal customer
Who pays you more and more
Where should the sales force focus on?
Which clients should you refuse to work with at all,
And in general, do target customers enter your funnel.

Secondly, at the intersection of ABC and XYZ in certain areas, you will see exactly your customers.

Let's not idealize and talk about ideas that suddenly came in a dream: and now you woke up like this and ran to realize what you saw. It happens. But these are rather exceptions to the rule. Business starts with your personal choice. You decide to open your own business and clearly understand what you want to get in the end. Next is the matter of technology and knowledge. But the very first step is that choice. What exactly do I want to do?

If we take the sphere of Internet sales, then the very first question that you should ask yourself is - what do I want to sell? The niche of the future business is your foundation, the basis for all subsequent actions. And if you lay a weak and dilapidated basis, most likely, after a while you will be disappointed and suffer losses.

I have seen many examples of successful niche selection, for example, the Taxovichkof company, which began offering babysitters with child seats in every car, or Airbnb, which created a site for safe rental housing, and vice versa, when people were in a hurry, rushed into the pool, invested millions and ended up with nothing. So McDonalds tried several times to launch healthy food lines and even created a service for VIPs, however, they failed miserably: customers love the restaurant precisely for its democracy and accessibility.

A sober analysis of what you want to do in the future is the first thing you should worry about, not a beautiful website or booklets. So, before you start to realize yourself in new niche rate how your choice meets the following criteria:

1. You need to solve people's problems with your product.

What are people paying for? For the pleasures and the opportunity to solve their pain. If you can't see well, you're looking for glasses. If you're hot, you're looking for a water or ice cream stall. Etc.

Look around and think about what problems you have that are still not so easy to deal with.

In my practice I have interesting story: once I was in a traffic jam in the summer, outside the window it was +30 degrees, the heat was terrible. Young guys knock on my window and offer magazines. What can I say, at that moment I would have given everything for a bottle of water and Snickers, so my body was exhausted. And I looked around and saw the same unfortunate faces in the neighboring cars.

What we did: hired guys who, in a daily traffic jam, offered drivers not magazines of dubious content, but water and snacks. The cost is minimal, we recouped the costs for the first few days of work.

What is the success of this event? That we didn't try to sell people what we thought they needed. We have offered what they need most now. And this example can be transferred to any niche. Look around, think about what worries people today, what they would like to change and improve.

Of the well-known novelties of last year, one can single out - an application that beat the figure of 10 million downloads in the first week alone. And all why? People are tired of the standard photo processing filters in . They were given an application that allows them to edit their pictures in the style of a famous artist. As simple as possible and to the point. The creators felt the pain and created a product for it. This is the secret of any startup.

2. Your product must provide value

Do not try to suck the significance and importance of what you are doing out of your finger. Assess the situation realistically.

Is your buyer willing to pay the amount for what you offer him. If they offer me water in a cork, I am ready to buy it for an acceptable 50-100 rubles, but if the same product is offered to me for 500 rubles, I will endure until the nearest gas station.

The same with branded clothing - if you are trying to sell branded items in a small town, but at the prices of a Moscow department store - do not be surprised that your customers will refuse such an expensive purchase and go to the same aliexpress, where you can buy a copy ten times cheaper. The quality will be lower, yes, but it is for this audience that the price is a decisive factor.

Be sure to analyze whether your customer is willing to pay for your product, no matter how good it is.

Here I cannot but give an example at the beginning of the path:

Attempts to build a multi-thousand-dollar family computer failed miserably and cost Jobs his job. Only years later, the entrepreneur was able to return to the company and still complete his project, significantly reducing the cost of the final product.

If you want to create a consumer product, consider how much your customer is willing to pay for it. Precisely ready, but not supposed to. Don't build sand castles that people will sweep your product off store shelves. In an age of very tough competition, your chance is one in a million.

3. Fast trade cycle: profit immediately

Now we are talking about small business and opportunities for beginners and not only entrepreneurs to start their own business here and now. Therefore, the strategy should be as short-term as possible.

If you see that your product is being bought quickly, you can lower your markup to increase conversions. If you need promotion and, accordingly, financial and time costs, the price should increase. However, do not try to get rich, act honestly and openly.

For example, a successful startup once did not spend money on a car fleet and hiring employees. In principle, the company consisted of several people. They created an application where everyone could earn on taxi services. You sign up, you take an order, you get money. Everything is as simple and fast as possible. Today Uber is a global giant and an example of the most successful taxi company in the world. last years. And all thanks to the successful combination - low price and convenient service.

The consumer always reacts very sharply to two things: an artificially high price (“they want to make money on me”) and too low a price (“poor quality product”).

4. Sell not a product, but emotions

Remember that people want bread and circuses. Don't try to be too rational about your product, especially when it comes to entertainment. For example, Party-bus, popular in the last few years.

People were offered a replacement for big clubs, the opportunity to relax with friends in close company, but at the same time with all the club surroundings, and even ride around the city. In total, a complex interactive for any occasion: wedding, birthday, bachelorette party. And when we think about these buses, the brightest images appear in our head: a holiday, fun, smiles and other pleasant things.

Let's summarize. How to choose your business niche:

Think creatively and start with yourself: what excites you, what would you like to improve in the world around you?
Next - look around, are there many people around who are facing the same problem?
Are they willing to pay?
And then - try to evoke emotions and give the consumer not only a physical product, but also a memory.

This article is devoted to the question of the correct positioning of a business in a competitive environment. Why choose a niche. how to do it, what advantages this approach gives, you will learn from the article. We offer you a practical case on choosing your own niche.

What is a niche in business and why is it needed

Surely you have repeatedly seen this picture: there are two almost equivalent companies operating on the market, both well-known, successful, strong. But with all the similarities, they coexist peacefully, and there is practically no competition between them. Why? The answer lies in choosing the right niche for each organization. Here are some examples for clarity:

on the Russian market coexist peacefully trade marks Rastishka (Danone) and Tema (Unimilk): the former has chosen the niche of healthy fermented milk nutrition with vitamin supplements, the latter is positioned as a product for everyday use in the children's diet;
world-famous clothing brands of Inditex - Zara and Bershka do not compete with each other, as they are focused on different audiences: Zara is designed for a more static image and age from 25 years old, Bershka - a purely youth brand, where almost all things are avant-garde, bright. Naturally, both brands have clothing lines for adjacent segments.

When does it open new business, first of all, the entrepreneur carefully evaluates the market, it, and the composition of the market (conjuncture) - who, what, how and for how much sells.

For example, a jeweler opens his workshop for the repair of products. There are many such workshops in the city, and all of them are of a wide profile (that is, they take any product into work). Then the entrepreneur decides to strengthen his ability to compete by choosing a narrow niche (in marketing this is called positioning) and designate his services as "Jewellery for the repair and maintenance of diamond products."

What does this give the entrepreneur? Firstly, a clear position and designation of specialization, and secondly, a solvent audience. The owners of diamond jewelry are not poor people and they are more willing to entrust their jewelry to someone who clearly specializes in such work. This means that a jeweler can keep the price bar high enough for his services and work with a narrow but profitable segment.

So, a niche is an unoccupied or not fully occupied place in the market, which allows an entrepreneur to show his advantages over competitors. attract more customers and do your job as well as possible.

Step 1. Analyze free and occupied niches

In order to determine what is already on the market and what is not, check out our article "Analysis of competitors in 10 steps: a practical guide." When analyzing existing offers, pay attention to how competitors position themselves, what advertising messages they choose:

Step 2. Analyze your own skills and preferences

In the niche process, it is important to understand what you are good at, what you are more interested in working with, how you are ready to build your business. If an athlete-bodybuilder opens his own gym, where he trains those who wish, this will be logical and more in demand among clients than the same service from a clerk.

The scheme for determining its capabilities is as follows:

It is not only about your personal abilities, but also, in general, about the real situation, the availability of suppliers, capital, and potential. For example, you like the restaurant business, you know a lot about organizing such a business, but you don’t have the money to open your own restaurant, but you have the contact of an excellent manufacturer of high-quality restaurant utensils. Occupy the niche of a company that equips expensive restaurants with high-quality dishes. All your knowledge and skills will come in handy here, as well as access to a manufacturer of dishes - this is how you make your personal interests profitable.

Step 3. Find your niche

When you have information about what is on the market and understand what exactly you can do well yourself, it's time to decide on niches. The most common types of simple niches in busy segments are:

specialization in legal or individuals(for example, Internet providers "Business IT" and "Home Telecom");
gender division of the product ("Maxim" - a magazine for men, "LQ" - the first matte magazine for women);
price division (deli "Economy" and deli "Gourmet delicacy");
age ranking (vitamins "KinderBioVital" and "SilverVit").

There is also a complex niche when there are 2-4 elements, for example, by gender, age and price (status division can also be added): BGN is high fashion for self-confident young women.

When choosing a niche, one must clearly be aware of who it is aimed at and how it differs from those offers that are already on the market.

Returning to the example of opening a jewelry workshop, we can suggest the following types of narrow positioning:

economy workshop for the repair of precious items - a niche focused on people who do not have much income and value their jewelry very much. In this case, there will be a lot of work and for the profitability of the business, orders must be a constant stream. The requirement for the entrepreneur is the speed of work;
the already announced workshop for the repair and prevention of diamond jewelry is aimed at an audience with a high income. In this concept, there will not be many customers, but each order will be quite highly paid. Requirements - ultimate quality and responsibility;
urgent jewelry repair and engraving - such a niche will attract those who buy jewelry as a gift and those who want to quickly fix a broken item. Here the cost of work may be higher than the average market (margin for urgency). The requirement is care and quality;
workshop-studio offering the modification of old products and their alteration - orientation to creative people who want to get original jewelry at a low price. The cost of work is medium and high. Requirements - creativity. creativity, courage of ideas, experience.

At this stage, you can choose 2-3 niches close to you.

Step 4. Checking viability and relevance

Now we check. to what extent your choice and your idea of your niche is confirmed by the consumer mass. This can be done using consumer opinion monitoring (forums, surveys, direct interviews on social networks or among acquaintances).

You must understand:

Is your offer interesting for the segment you are targeting;
What will be the main reason for contacting you (why customers will choose you);
What flaws in your idea people point out.

You can also analyze key queries on http://wordstat.yandex.ru and calculate how many people actually turn to search engines with highly specialized queries. In the same place, in the block “What else people searched for “your request” were looking for”, you can find a hint for yourself:

Step 5. We develop an advertising message and a clear visualization

Once you have decided on a niche, you need to figure out how to communicate your unique selling proposition to consumers and identify the position. This is done through advertising. To get familiar with the topic. how global brands position themselves, you can visit the database of slogans and use examples to evaluate the principle: tell the client why you are better than others.

Clearly visualizing niches for our jewelry workshop, let's call it, you can use advertising messages in the following bundles:

Economy workshop N - the second life of your jewelry;
Jewelry workshop N - we work only with diamonds;
Repair and engraving in 15 minutes - .Jewellery N;
Everything new is well modified old. Creative workshop N.

your task in such a short address is to tell the client what makes you different from others, to be remembered and stand out.

Mistakes when choosing a niche

The most common mistakes in the niche selection process are overconfidence and lack of expertise. It is impossible to correctly form your offer in a niche for business clients if you do not know the elementary laws of workflow in large companies. It is impossible to trade restaurant utensils if you have no idea about the rules of table setting, serving and presentation of dishes, selection of stylized utensils, etc.

The arrogance of many entrepreneurs is often expressed in the fact that they choose a niche based only on their own opinion and understanding of the market. If you do not conduct, then you are completely not protected from risks. As a result, the niche is unclaimed. For example, if you didn’t bother to pre-survey customers and decided to do home delivery of groceries. And as a result, it turned out that such a service is in demand among a very small percentage of the population, mostly elderly people with low solvency, since for the most part, people tend to choose products for their table themselves and get some pleasure from it.

Another mistake is insufficiently clear visualization and advertising message, from which the client does not understand what you are doing. For example, here is one local Internet provider who decided to provide security services, would tell an ordinary resident of the city rather that it was about IT data security, rather than that the company provides services of a security agency. For a person who does not know this brand and is poorly versed in the world of Internet services, such advertising will not say anything at all.

This article discusses the issues of competent business positioning in a highly competitive environment. The first question that any entrepreneur asks himself always concerns the choice of a niche for his future business, the search for a promising direction for work. Let's analyze the strategy of this choice on practical examples.

Choosing a business niche from scratch

A novice businessman is in approximately the same situation as yesterday's teenager, who is looking for a profession and a life's work: both are forced to decide for themselves what to do in order for the activity to bring satisfaction and high incomes. Of course, there are no universal answers to such answers. Like choosing a profession, choosing a niche for a business is always a deeply personal matter. In addition, it is necessary to take into account a lot of environmental factors, which are constantly changing.

We live in a rather prosperous world and have access to almost any goods and services, and it is difficult to find such a niche, especially in Internet commerce, that has not yet been occupied, and such a need that competitors have not yet satisfied. It seems that there is literally everything on the market, and supply greatly outstrips demand.

Choosing a direction, niche and specialization for your own business in an environment where thousands of other entrepreneurs compete with you is a non-trivial task that requires a creative approach and a sober analysis of the current situation, relying on the experience of other businessmen. Any business (regardless of the niche it occupies) is a living organism that functions according to its own rules and actively responds to changes around.

In many market niches, a seemingly paradoxical situation has developed: the peaceful coexistence of two industrial giants at the same time, approximately equal in income, business scale, products and target audiences. How did it happen that both companies prosper and do not interfere with each other?

If you take a closer look, it becomes clear that, despite all the similarities, the business niches of these enterprises are still not identical, and the competent choice of the target audience, assortment, and marketing policy made it possible for them not only to avoid competition, but also to gain a foothold in the market. . For example:

The Rastishka brands of the Danone company and the Tema brands of the Unimilk company quite peacefully and calmly coexist on the Russian market of dairy products. "Rastishka" specializes in children's fermented milk nutrition with vitamins and other healthy supplements, and "Tema" positions itself as a manufacturer of food products for children's daily diet.

The world famous clothing manufacturer Inditex has two brands - Bershka and Zara. In theory, they should compete with each other for a buyer, since their goods are sold in the same shopping malls. But Zara focuses on adult women (aged 25 and older) who lead a measured life and prefer strict and high-quality clothes, while Bershka dresses teenagers and young girls who are prone to experiments, bright colors, and the pursuit of fashion.

This division of audiences and the correct choice of business niches allowed both brands to generate their revenues, and having each of them have clothing lines that cover adjacent segments does not make much difference.

When organizing a new business and choosing a niche for it, it is first necessary to assess the market environment: its capacity, the presence of competitors and their characteristics, and the market situation. That is, to answer questions about what, by whom and at what price is sold.

Let's turn to examples from life. Suppose a craftsman decides to open a jewelry workshop specializing in jewelry repair. The city already has several firms providing such services. In order to become competitive and win over a part of customers, the owner of the future business should position it more clearly, limiting itself only to repair and diagnostic services for products containing diamonds. Thus, it will occupy a narrower niche (compared to other workshops that repair any product).

The choice of one specific specialization pursues two goals at once: it clearly indicates the range of tasks solved by this workshop (and positions the jeweler as a professional who knows his own worth, and not an apprentice who grabs any orders), and attracts only solvent consumers, cutting off all the rest. Diamond jewelry is usually owned by respectable and wealthy people, who are anxious about the choice of specialists who are ready to take on the repair of their jewelry. Therefore, it is desirable for the master to maintain a high price bar.

A niche is a market space that is completely or partially free for entrepreneurial activity. A competent choice of a niche gives a business the opportunity to most clearly demonstrate its strengths(quality of work, professionalism of employees and managers, customer focus) and stand out from competitors.

Choosing a niche for your own business consists of several steps:

Analyze which of the market niches are already occupied and which are free and can accommodate new participants.

Assess the level of your professionalism, resources and skills (to determine how you compare favorably with the rest), take into account personal preferences and goals.

Find among the niches the one that best suits your goals and capabilities and is not very busy.

To evaluate your business opportunities, use the following algorithm:

Define your abilities: write down everything that you are good at.

Answer the question which of these things you could do for a long time.

Think about which of these activities is so attractive to you that you could even do it for free.

This scheme applies not only to the personal ability of an individual, but also to his business potential. Suppose if you are well versed in the restaurant business and dream of opening own enterprise catering, but do not have start-up capital. But you have access to a company that produces high-quality and elite restaurant tableware.

The optimal choice of a business niche in this case is the creation of a company that provides expensive restaurants with high-class utensils and equipment. This way you use all your knowledge and skills regarding the restaurant business and useful contacts, and also turn your hobby into a source of income.

If you have already studied the market conditions and determined what useful services you can (and want) to provide, it's time to proceed directly to choosing a niche for your future business. In highly loaded market segments with active competition, there are several niche solutions:

Specialize only in individuals or exclusively in organizations (this is often done by Internet providers - "Home Telecom" and "Business IT").

Segment the audience by gender (for example, Elle magazine is aimed at women, and Men's Health is aimed at men).

Rank products by age groups (for example, cosmetics lines for young girls under 20 and for adult ladies).

Focus on price (for example, the Azbuka Vkusa grocery store chain for gourmets who are willing to pay big money, and Pyaterochka for those who care about savings).

In addition to the simple niche method, there is also a complex one, when the choice of a niche for a business is made on the basis of two or more parameters: by gender and age, by price and age (a vivid example is the BGN brand, which positions its products as clothes for young confident women).

The main thing is to clearly understand which consumer group you are targeting when choosing a niche for your business, and what are your advantageous differences from other players in the market.

For the jewelry workshop that was mentioned earlier, several options for market positioning are possible (and, as a result, several different niches):

The already proposed option of targeting wealthy customers. In order to comply with this concept, the jeweler must provide high quality work, responsibility and punctuality.

Economy class repair shop - for people with modest incomes who take care of their jewelry. The main advantage of a jeweler should be high speed work, because for the payback of such a business will need a constant stream of new orders.

Workshop for urgent jewelry repair with the possibility of engraving. The main consumers are people who bought jewelry as a gift, or those who need prompt repair of a broken item. In this case, the jeweler requires fast, high-quality work and attention to nuances. By the way, extra charges can be made for urgency, which puts this workshop in the high price segment.

A jewelry studio that provides services for the repair, alteration and modification of products. His services will be necessary for people with creative abilities and high requirements for design, so the jeweler must have not only professionalism and experience, but also courage, creativity, and his own ideas.

At this stage of selection, you can choose two or three business niches that match your capabilities and advantages.

The main business task is to find that niche that is currently not yet occupied and where there are unsatisfied needs of people, to study them. You need to look for it, of course, before compiling detailed business plan and start commercial activities. This niche must meet the following requirements:

To be interesting for the entrepreneur and consumers, to meet both the needs of customers and the preferences of the businessman.

To be in demand - the income of a business depends entirely on it.

If one of the requirements is not met, then the business may be unprofitable. For example, you offer consumers a unique and flawless product, in your opinion, but there is no demand for it, because people do not share your point of view - they simply do not care about this product. Such situations must be avoided.

The main criteria for choosing a niche for business

The choice of a market niche is the beginning of any business and a factor that largely determines its fate. The price of a mistake can be very high: having spent a lot of money, time and effort on the promotion and advertising of an enterprise, businessmen do not get any result due to the fact that the niche was defined incorrectly. In other words, if customers do not currently need your product or service, they cannot be forced to buy it - not with active sales, nor a flashy advertisement or an informative website.

A correctly chosen business niche is always characterized by three main criteria:

1. Benefit.

The market is overflowing with various products - both tangible goods and services. The buyer has a lot of opportunities to choose what he needs and save. But the first aspect becomes more and more important, and the price fades into the background. Therefore, dumping is not a recipe for business success (whatever niche it may occupy), nor is it an aggressive sales technique, for which every unit sold is an end in itself. A business should strive to satisfy the needs of customers in the most complete and qualitative way, somewhere even anticipate them. In other words, the benefit is more important than the price.

2. Demand.

Everyone knows that the human brain has two hemispheres, one of which is responsible for rational thinking, and the second - for experiencing emotions. Accordingly, there are two ways to motivate a consumer to buy. different ways: either by forming the necessary emotions and impressions in him, or by convincing him logically (using USP, demonstrating the advantages of the product, expert assessments and user reviews, comparisons with similar products).

The second method seems to be more correct and effective, but it does not always work in sales and marketing: much more often, “demand pumping”, the creation of a fashion trend occur exclusively in the field of emotions (and are poorly understood by buyers who are sure that they made a purchase for no reason, because for a random impulse, because suddenly I really wanted to).

People whose left hemisphere (emotional) is currently activated think much less about the price of a product and purchase it not because of its usefulness, but for completely different reasons. A fashionable or prestigious thing is in demand not only for its functional characteristics, but also because it gives vivid emotions and increases self-esteem.

3. Professionalism.

Employees who are directly involved in the sales process and communicate with customers must be well versed in the assortment and be ready not only to answer tricky questions from consumers, but also to convince them of the superiority of their product. The incompetence of sellers makes a very repulsive impression, which is transferred to the product itself.

And this applies to ordinary sellers and managers, and the requirements for a business owner or manager are even higher! He must know literally everything about his product or service, and it is desirable to have the same deep knowledge of competitors' products, market conditions, the needs of potential customers and various regulations (from federal laws to GOSTs for a specific product).

The dilettantism of a business leader is even more noticeable than the incompetence of an employee. Therefore, a person who decides to create his own enterprise needs to be a specialist at least in the area that relates to his business (and to solve problems for which he is not prepared - for example, bookkeeping, legal support, product design - hire qualified workers). Therefore, ask yourself the question: “What am I best at and am a professional in?” is one of the first steps in choosing a niche for your future business.

How to check the viability of the chosen niche

The market niche of any business is characterized by the presence of its own target audience - the group of people who are interested in and need the proposed product. The search for this audience (and, consequently, a niche focused on its needs) consists of choosing:

market segment.

market niche.

Let's analyze this classification on a specific example - cosmetics.

The segment is the most general concept. For the cosmetics segment, the categories will be all of its types: decorative cosmetics; care products for the face, body, hair; medical cosmetics, etc. Accordingly, decorative cosmetics combines many subcategories - lipstick, mascara, hair dyes, foundations, shadows, and more. The subcategory of lipsticks includes at least two niches: hygienic and regular lipsticks. In turn, in the niche of ordinary lipsticks there are several sub-niches (depending on the properties and purpose of the cosmetic product).

Having passed this chain from the most abstract first level to the specifics, we make a choice of a niche and a sub-niche for business. It is important to consider all relevant options. The main selection rule is a harmonious combination of three main criteria, namely:

The target audience, defined as detailed and accurate as possible. This is the part of society that will become your permanent clientele. It must be carefully studied, paying close attention to its values, tastes (which, by the way, can change, and the range of these changes must also be taken into account), needs.

Unsatisfied demand - the need for a product that is not currently widely available (or does not exist at all). The product in this case is interpreted broadly: it can be the main or related product(for example, a smartphone and a headset for it), a service.

Potential buyers. Many other companies will apply for them besides you, so you need to develop in advance such an offer for customers that will pull them to your side. This can be both the product itself and the service, or price conditions - discounts, bonuses.

The target audience of the product is divided into two main classes:

B2B(business to business) selling the product to other companies;

B2C(Business to Consumer) that delivers a product to end consumers.

On the way from the manufacturer to a specific buyer, a product passes through a chain of intermediary firms - first B2B, then B2C.

Thus, an automobile plant can sell its products directly to the end buyer through car dealerships (and this will be a B2C option), or it can resell to wholesale companies that are already selling these cars through showrooms (this is B2B).

Let's go back to the makeup example. The target audience for these products is limited by gender - only women purchase such goods. Depending on their age, cosmetics and lines are divided into children's, youth (13-18 years), cosmetics for adult ladies and special products for mature skin. Each of these groups of goods is made taking into account age characteristics and needs.

As you can see, there are quite a lot of areas where the increased demand of consumers is concentrated, and a novice entrepreneur can only decide on the choice of a niche for his business.

Once a niche has been identified, it needs to be tested. This is done in the following way:

First find their target audience.

Develop an attractive USP for her.

Present their product.

Analyze consumer reaction to it.

As a result of the last step, you can decide to enter a wide market: if the product has aroused interest and a favorable reaction, it’s time to open a business, and if not, then it would be wise to choose another niche, continue to look for and try something new.

The introduction of a product to the market is also a kind of testing, but already deeper and more serious. Collecting and analyzing feedback from buyers, clients, the interested public is not only a good form, demonstrating the company's attention to its consumers, but also a valuable tool for assessing the state of the business, its prospects and the correctness of the chosen niche.

Periodically, opinions should be monitored through social networks, a corporate website, through interviews with focus groups or in other ways. Monitoring is needed to obtain the following information:

Whether your USP is in demand in the selected market segment.

What will encourage customers to buy from you, and not from competitors.

What do consumers dislike about your product, service, conditions.

Mistakes when choosing a niche in business

1. self-confidence.

Some business start-ups are so confident in their understanding of the market that they neglect serious market analysis. In this case, there is no protection against risks: in the chosen niche, there may be no demand for your goods or services at all.

For example, opening a home delivery company without preliminary surveys among customers is fraught with failure: a very limited number of people need this service (mostly elderly citizens and people with disabilities who find it difficult to move around), and everyone else prefers to choose and purchase on their own food for your table.

2. Unjustified spending.

Immediately invest in a startup big financial resources without first testing the product or service on consumers is very risky. Yes, you can be sure that you offer something very valuable and are simply doomed to success, but consumers may not agree with you.

Carry out a simple check: place an advertisement for the sale of your product on Avito and look at the reaction (if there are at least 20 prepaid orders, you can buy a wholesale batch of goods and expand a wide trade), or at least ask your friends and relatives if they would buy and at what price.

Fast food, for example, was born almost by accident. The McDonald brothers, working for hire, decided to save time at lunch and began to take food with them, namely, a cutlet with a bun, which can be eaten right at the workplace, without looking up from the phone. As a result, their work results improved markedly, the brothers received an award and aroused the interest of colleagues. The idea of "fast food" became very popular, and a short time later its authors opened their first restaurant, which was an explosive success.

Therefore, business ideas should not be invented, but taken from life. Then the choice of a niche will not be a problem.

3. Commodity binding.

Ethics of communication with customers plays a very significant role in business. By aggressively imposing your product and chasing the consumer, you will not force him to buy more, but, on the contrary, will push him away and cause irritation.

Take a more progressive approach: sell not the product itself, but the idea, style, philosophy of life. It is actively practiced, in particular, by Apple, whose products have become an integral attribute of a certain lifestyle. Apple gives its customers not just smartphones and computers, but much more: ease, convenience, speed of communication, impeccable style and perfect functionality, belonging to an advanced and wealthy community.

4. The pursuit of fashion.

Fashion is a very transient and contradictory phenomenon. With the current speed of life and information exchange, fashion trends follow each other with kaleidoscopic speed, flashing brightly and fading forever in just a couple of months. But some "salespeople" manage to make huge profits on them.

For example, environmental friendliness, a return to nature and everything natural is now very fashionable and relevant. The prefixes "eco" and "bio" are put on any goods; advertising often mentions that the products are not tested on animals, do not contain artificial additives, and the packaging is made from self-degradable materials that are safe for the environment. Organic cosmetics and vegetarian dishes are very popular.

Another trend is local marketing: local dishes, ethnic elements in design, demand for goods handmade. Handmade has never been so popular!

Of course, these trends will someday bore consumers and be replaced by something new. But now they can earn money. Show your imagination, take into account seasonality and carefully monitor the reaction of buyers.

5. Lack of analytics.

Preliminary analytical work is necessary. When opening their own company, many entrepreneurs limit themselves to viewing the frequency of queries in Yandex-Direct, but this is not the best way when it comes to choosing a market niche for a business. A search query does not equal a purchase!

People may be interested in goods, services, famous personalities for various reasons: it is fashionable, they heard about it on TV or saw an advertisement, or they simply choose the right product for themselves, slowly comparing prices and characteristics. Few of them are really ready to buy. A little more reliability is given by statistics on coupon sites, but you should not rely solely on it.

It is advisable to approach the choice of a niche for business with a cool head and a sober calculation, and not on emotions, in a hurry and excitement. You can sell anything, even air, if you choose the right moment, target audience and marketing policy (that is, provided that consumers already have some demand and interest in it). A trial batch of goods purchased from suppliers should not be large: in this case, you will not incur serious losses, even if the product “does not work”.

Choosing a niche for a business requires studying a large amount of information about the market, which the enterprise often does not have. Therefore, it is worth turning to professionals. The information and analytical company VVS is one of those that stood at the origins of the business of processing and adapting market statistics collected by federal agencies. The company has 19 years of experience in providing commodity market statistics as information for strategic decisions, identifying market demand. Main client categories: exporters, importers, manufacturers, participants in commodity markets and B2B business services.

By ordering a market analysis in our company, you will receive the most accurate data on the market situation for today and ready marketing plan for the implementation of the project, which will definitely interest your investors and help you get their consent and count on state support.

commercial transport and special equipment;

glass industry;

chemical and petrochemical industry;

Construction Materials;

medical equipment;

food industry;

production of animal feed;