Trendwatching is geared toward marketers, CEOs, researchers, or anyone interested in the future of business and consumerism, in dreaming up new
goods, services and experiences for and with their customers. Springwise, directed more toward the budding entrepreneur, head of a start-up, management consultant, marketing manager, consumer insights expert, trend watcher, journalist, private investor, business development director, venture
capitalist, etc., presents the world's most promising new business ideas, new business concepts, and young ventures.
Whatever your focus, you'll find something of interest in these briefings, based on information gathered by 8,000+ spotters in more than 100 countries.
In a frequently reprinted article entitled Target Marketing Strategy – Find Your Own Niche Market, Bob Leduc tells us that
[a] niche market is a narrowly defined group that includes all of the following:
- Individuals in the group have the same specialized interests and needs.
- They have a strong desire for what you offer.
- You have (or you can create) a compelling reason for prospects in the group to do business with you instead of with someone else.
- You can easily reach individual prospects within the group.
- The group is large enough to produce the volume of business you need.
- The group is small enough that your competition is likely to overlook it.
Niche ideas are everywhere. Finding them involves thinking in a different way — e.g., thinking about making products and
services relevant by incorporating "attributes" and features that cater to distinct consumer lifestyles and situations (see Nichetributes).
Visit or tune-in to...
Think about a service you can provide, something you can create to complement a particular product or service already provided, something that enhances user experience.
If you've got a passion for something, build upon that... |
Niche Ideas?
O'Reilly Media, Inc. publishes MAKE: technology on your time, a quarterly "mook" (a hybrid magazine/book) that is available by subscription ($8.95/issue)
[@ Amazon ,
Makezine.com, Craftzine.com], or
as individual paperbacks.
Single issues may be purchased on newsstands, from participating retailers, and from O'Reilly. MAKE is full of stimulating ideas and exciting projects that celebrate your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your
own will.
Make: television (beginning in January 2009)
is the DIY series for inventors, artists, geeks and just plain everyday folks who mix new and old technology to create new-fangled
marvels. The series encourages everyone to invent, revent, recycle, upcycle, and act up. Each half-hour episode inspires millions
to think, create, and make.
O'Reilly also publishes CRAFT, the first project-based magazine dedicated to the
renaissance that is occurring within the world of crafts. CRAFT aims to unite, inspire, inform and entertain a growing community
of highly imaginative and resourceful people who are transforming traditional art and crafts with unconventional, unexpected and
even renegade techniques, materials and tools; people who undertake amazing crafting projects in their homes and communities.
In Riches in Niches: How to Make It BIG in a Small Market (2007),
Friedmann explores the multiple factors that separate the "experts" from the service professionals who may have identical — if
not better — skills, but whom no one has ever heard of.
You will learn:
- Why positioning yourself as an Expert in a Niche is the most surefire route to success any service professional could want.
- The GEL Formula: Friedmann's proven technique that shows service professionals how to find the professional niche that makes
the best use of their skills while yielding maximum profit.
- The Seven Secrets nichepreneurs need to know to create, claim, and benefit from their Expert Identity.
- Creative ways to create secondary, even tertiary, income streams capitalizing on the benefits of "Being the Expert."
In Niche and Grow Rich: Practical Ways of Turning Your Ideas Into a Business (2003), small-business experts Jennifer and Peter Sander persuaded successful niche business owners to
share their secrets of long-term success. They outline the whole process from start to finish — from the first glimmer
of the business idea to the day the new company opens its doors, and beyond. This book is filled with practical
applications — brainstorming techniques for developing business ideas, analytical tools for assessing the size of a
target niche, and marketing techniques for reaching customers quickly.
Jennifer and Peter Sander own Big City Books Group, a niche publishing, consulting and book development firm. Jennifer has owned and operated several niche
businesses, from gourmet coffee roasting to mail-order travel books, from a successful dot-com to a unique crafts business.
Peter has an MBA and spent 20 years as a high-tech marketing specialist before turning his talents toward helping entrepreneurs
develop new marketing approaches. |
