Online retail giants such as Lazada, Shopee, Mudah.my sell everything from books to diapers. Seeing their success, it's difficult to imagine how specializing in one category can make your online business more profitable.
Lazada and Shopee are successful because they have extensive resources and strong funding. Everything from staffing to warehousing, they have the bandwidth to efficiently manage a very large inventory.
Selling only one product helps you to save significantly on operational costs while allowing you to focus your resources on building a unique brand. Below, let's take a look at the benefits of finding a niche - with real-life examples to help you visualize how you can do the same for your ecommerce business too.
1. Extract more value from your marketing and advertising.
Targeting a specific audience usually results in a lower ad spend. This is because the smaller your audience the less you'll spend as a whole. A great example of this is when you create any Google Ads campaign. You can either choose more expensive, highly-searched keywords or more specific long-tail keywords. "Shoes" have approximately 1.1 million global monthly searches whereas, "women's shoes" have approximately 25,000 global monthly searches. Knowing your customer identifies great opportunities because if anyone who's searching for "shoes" could end-up with results they are not likely looking for.
Great long-tail keywords should be specific and answer key questions people are looking at (depending on where they are in their purchase journey). In our example, this would mean, "women's waterproof hiking boots" which have approximately 450 global searches.
2. There is less competition
Here's one way you can beat Lazada / Shopee at their game. Do this by focusing on a key niche, because there are generally fewer brands in your space. This means more people will focus on you instead of a general "have-it-all" competitor.
For example, in the hair accessory niche, products can be very specific and wooden hair forks are a great example of an extremely niche marketplace. These generally do well as there are little to no competition within this niche.
3. Your customers will be more loyal to you
You can inspire brand loyalty with little effort, because you're solving specifically for your customers' needs with your product, meaning they will automatically feel loyal to your brand. Rather than appealing to a mass audience, you're appealing to that specific buyer. And if your product is the only one of its kind, your buyers will continuously look to you as a supplier.
Consider large online retailers such as Lazada or Shopee. It's common to switch from one to the other depending on what's most convenient. There's very little loyalty, but this wouldn't be the case if you find a niche for your online business because your value proposition is unique to your brand and product, customers are likely to come back to you, not to your competitor.
4. You can charge more for your products
Being in a niche usually means you have a unique product that solves a specific problem. This means you can charge more for it - especially if it's produced in small batches, by hand, or in a sustainable manner.
5. You can operate on a lean budget
Most tasks can be automated or run with limited staff. With a smaller inventory you'll be saving in storage and operational costs.
Conclusion
Choose the right ecommerce niche and with the new normal it's essential for retailers to be flexible, adaptable and prepared to pivot as and when necessary to ensure their current and future success. Whatever niche you ultimately choose, take your time to study the market and understand your target audience before you dive in.
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