10 Reasons to Niche Down for Crowdfunding Success

Creators go through the mistake of making their product appeal to everyone rather than to a certain niche. However, there’s no doubt about it, you want to find your niche. 

But first – what is a niche market? 

A niche market is a segment of a larger market with its own particular needs or preferences, which may be different from the larger market. For example, there’s a large market for water bottles, but the niche market here is for smart water bottles that remind you to take a drink every hour.

As an entrepreneur and future creator on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, you want to create a product that appeals to a small, specialized section of the entire market. As I mentioned above, you want to find your niche.

Here are the 10 advantages of launching your crowdfunding project to a niche group:

1. Less competition

When you have a highly specific product or service, there will be fewer projects out there with the exact same offering. Let’s look at a quick example from the real world. There are millions of companies out there that do landscaping. There are fewer companies that do landscaping for backyards, and yet fewer that only offer rose cultivation for backyards. The more specific your product or service, the less companies there will be to compete with you for customers. It’s the paradox of the niche market. 

2. Brand loyalty 

Niche marketing makes it possible for projects to build their brand loyalty. Finding your niche and playing to that strength lets you provide backers with products and services they need and desire. You end up having a leg up on any other campaign that might launch because items in a niche market are difficult to replicate.

3. Best for giving marketing insight 

When you market to a niche segment of the market, you get to know who your customers are and their pain points. Knowing your niche inside and out can help you create products and services that best serve your followers. You’ll be able to best tailor your landing page, your video, your rewards, your campaign page, your social content and more to your niche market. Beyond crowdfunding, once you begin to concentrate on your niche, you will learn about new products, innovations and ideas to better serve that market.

4. Save on your marketing dollars 

Once you focus on your niche, the path to getting more eyes to your project becomes incredibly clear. Rather than sending out ten thousand flyers or paying for Facebook ads to everyone in the world, you’ll be targeting promotions to those most likely to pre-order your product. These will be the people who meet the requirements for your niche. With this approach, you will be able to reach a larger percentage of people who are more likely to back your campaign.

5. Enhanced customer relationships

A small customer base has its benefits. When you are engaging with fewer people, you can focus on the quality of those engagements and on nurturing your relationships. Your emails can be more personalized, your follow ups more diligent, and your thank yous more frequent. You can also accommodate special requests when it comes to stretch goals, offer better add-ons and get to know your customers on a more individual level. Each of these practices will enable you to better serve your backers, further enhancing your relationship with them and solidifying their loyalty to you.

6. Increased visibility

This might sound counterintuitive but hear me out. Businesses that serve a niche market tends to be incredibly unique. There might be people who sell steak knives, but there are only a few people who sell steak knives with wooden handles and custom initialing on the handle. Businesses with a unique product or service tend to stand out. With crowdfunding especially, getting in front of the right people is more important than getting in front of a lot of people. 

7. Word of mouth growth

Word of mouth marketing is one of my favorites. People truly trust what their friends and family recommend and it’s an amazing tactic to use, especially with crowdfunding. People in a niche tend to be in frequent contact with others within that niche (that’s why Meetup exists!), which means more opportunities to get the word out about your business. The better you serve your niche, the more likely they are to recommend your product to others.

8. Honed expertise

Marketing to one niche means that you can become an expert or thought leader within that niche. For most crowdfunding backers, a well-made and hyper-targeted product is more important than size or brand name. When you are an expert at something, not only do you obtain more customer trust, you also gain more brand recognition. If you create a product that does everything, it’s going to be average at everything and blend in with the crowd. If you create a product that’s hyper-targeted, you will indubitably stand out. 

9. Less resources

Effective digital marketing requires a deep understanding of your audience. With a niche group, you are confined to a specific persona with a specific need, which makes it that much easier for you to dig into your data to understand their needs. Moreover, any successful marketing hits your audience in the right place at the right time with the right content. When you serve just one demographic, you have less work to do: you know who you serve and what message resonates with them.

10. More fun

This is probably the biggest bonus of serving a niche market. The benefit of niching down is that since your niche arises from your interests, passions, or special abilities, you are doing more of what you love. You’ll enjoy talking to your backers because they are passionate about the same thing as you are. You’ll enjoy responding to questions because those answers will come from the heart. You’ll enjoy updating your campaign page because it’s just you writing more about what you love.

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Here’s what you can do now as you gear up for your launch. Start by envisioning who will actually need your product. What pain point does your product serve? Why does this person need your specific product? 

If you’re having trouble with this, the best starting point is to look to yourself – why did you even create this? What problems were you trying to solve for yourself? 

By understanding the core problem and how your product truly solves that problem for your core audience, you’ll be able to talk about your pain points in a much better way than someone else can. Your audience will be able to relate to you and your idea better. You will be better at reiterating your idea within the video, the campaign page, the responses to any question and be on your way to a successful launch.

At the end of the day, I encourage everyone to niche down for their crowdfunding project. You want to find a small pond in which you can be a big fish. If you compete for everything, you’re going to win at nothing. However, if you pick one area to concentrate on, you can focus your efforts and stand out within the crowdfunding community.

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