EBUYSOURCING
03/17/2022
Ecommerce businesses have skyrocketed since the outbreak of COVID. According to a new study, the value of global ecommerce is expected to increase by 55% from 2021 to 2026. As you can imagine, millions of traditional retailers all over the world have changed their strategies and switched to online business, which leads to intense competition and saturated markets.
If you are a beginner aiming to be successful in ecommerce but aren’t sure how to start your own business, or maybe you have been running an ecommerce store for several years but are still struggling to increase your profit margins. Finding a niche product is the key to avoiding most of the competition, but it is not an easy task and requires some techniques. In this guide, I will cover every step to identifying a niche for your online business.
Let’s get started!
Find What You Are Passionate About
It is crucial to find out what you are passionate about. With a lot of time and money invested, you have become an expert more or less in this market. You know exactly what customers care about most, which is a good chance to draw inspiration from your experience and develop your own product.
Besides, it won’t be easy to start your own ecommerce business. Frustration, tiredness, and confusion are all unavoidable components of the whole process. You need to be passionate about what you are striving for and gain strength from it to overcome all these difficulties.
With passion, you are able to deliver an emotional story to the target audience and build brand awareness, which contributes to making your product stand out from competitors.
Conduct Niche Research
Once you have made up your mind to dive into a niche, you should conduct niche research.
To help you with that, I provide several methods that have been widely used by marketers, including:
1. Use analytic tools
There are numerous useful tools like Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Trend Watching, etc. For instance, we can use Google Trends to check the search volume of different products you are interested to sell.
By comparing the data, it is effortless to identify, let’s say, the 5 most popular products. Then conduct a competition analysis covering how many competitors there are, what their pricing is, what services they offer, and what their products’ pros and cons are. Simply using Google Search can do most of the work.
By taking all these factors into consideration, you will have a clear idea of which product is most suitable for you to earn a spot in the niche market.
2. Use social media platforms
Don’t forget these major social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and so on. If you think these platforms are only for people to show off or make funny videos, they are more than that.
Actually, people are love to create and share life hacks and product recommendation posts. You may get some genius niche ideas from some viral posts on these platforms.
You can even post your own niche idea to see the reaction of your followers. A great opportunity awaits you if this idea is actively shared and liked. It has great potential and is worth giving it a try.
3. Browse forums or other websites for niche ideas
For marketers looking for product trends, forums like Reddit and Quora are excellent resources. Because of the countless product categories and specialized topics out there.
You can also ask thousands of users for advice, some of them may even be experts. You can openly discuss with them and incorporate various brilliant ideas into your own.
In addition, be sure to check out the largest crowdfunding website Kickstarter.
4. Study the customer reviews
It is easy to find a lot of customer reviews from major ecommerce platforms like Amazon and eBay. Focus on negative reviews of your competitors’ products, learn from them and try to avoid their drawbacks as much as possible.
Besides, customers might sometimes suggest a few features in their reviews. By studying customers’ reviews and demands, you can draw new inspiration for your own product. There is a great chance that your product will become popular because it was developed specifically to meet customers’ demands.
Provide A Solution for Your Target Audience
Now that you have done your research, I believe you already have a full understanding of what your target audience wants. There is no way you can be successful if you just provide people with random products one after one. You need to figure out how your customers can solve their problems by using your products. To be honest, I think this is the best way to create a successful product.
Instead of inventing a new one, you can make improvements to one of your competitors’ existing products or your own and then announce it as your new product.
Please feel free to contact us for any question you might have, we will be happy to assist you shortly.