Many novice entrepreneurs believe that you have to be everything to everybody. That is that you have to offer many people many choices. Well I say “not so”.

I believe we don’t need to target everyone. And why would you want to?

Let’s face it. We are faced with two key limitations in business:

1) Money
2) Time

Having limited time and money forces us to think “optimization”. That is getting the most result out of something.

If we start to think optimization, we will see that going after a general market may work against us. We maybe spreading ourselves too thin. And of course, customers get confused as well in terms of the product offering to them and as well as company positioning.

There is a better way of thinking though to help generate more sales. And that is thinking about a more focused, specialized marketing approach that will help us to generate more sales. Specifically, thinking about targeting niche markets.

Niche markets are more specialized and focused markets of people that purchase our products and services for various reasons. Here, the strategy is to think “depth” as opposed to “width” of the market.

Niches offer a “depth” of customers that have similar needs and wants and allows us to optimize both our time and money by specifically targeting these niches.

When considering going after a general market and trying to be everything to everyone, it is useful to think about the riches in niches that exist when you speak to a particular focused niche.

For example, your business might want to focus on a particular niche with its specific needs. And your positioning strategy and customer benefit statement becomes more focused and easier to communcate because of the clarity of that specific niche’s needs and problems.

How can you define a specific niche? Here are some examples of niches:

1.  Positivesdating.com – This site provides dating services for people with HIV/AIDS.
2.  Luckybreakwishbone.com – This site sells wishbones for people wanting to break more than just one wishbone that normally comes in a turkey.
3.  Antennaballs.com – This site sells a wide variety of just antenna balls.

The above are just some examples of entrepreneurs focusing on a specific niche. If we take the time to determine our niches, I’m confident you will experience more riches which will result in more time.

To your success,
Chris

Copyright 2009 Chris Castillo
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Chris Castillo is an entrepreneur, speaker and consultant. Chris Castillo is Founder and CEO of Master Entrepreneur International Inc., a business coaching & education company. To learn more about Master Entrepreneur products & services, visit www.masterentrepreneur.com  “Master Entrepreneur” is a registered trademark.