TIPS FOR SELECTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS NICHE IN 2022

1. TIPS FOR SELECTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS NICHE IN 2022 TIPS FOR SELECTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS The e-commerce market has registered a growth of USD 500 trillion and continues to grow. With the pandemic, the shift from physical shops to online platforms has accelerated, leading to the remarkable popularity of e-commerce platforms among businesspersons. One click, and it is done, and the order is placed! From necessity to luxury, e-commerce is delivering it globally to everyone every day. This effortless delivery is surely creating a wider pool of products for the consumer to choose from but finally creates a dilemma for the consumer of which product to buy. This may overwhelm the consumer, making them buy even that ‘not so needed’ item.

2. In the vast ocean of online business platforms that technology has made us available, it is perplexing and time-consuming to instantly find the product or service that the consumer is googling. For example, if the house air conditioner has broken down, one would require a specialist to fix it. So rather than looking for a general electrician, one would be happy to get directly connected with an expert through one particular online platform. And this is where the concept of an appropriate business niche becomes important for consumers, and selecting the right business niche becomes important for the suppliers. An appropriate business niche attracts the desired audience based on how well the niche has catered to the target audience. Choosing the perfect niche could be tiring, especially in the presence of online market misinformation and asymmetry. To help one sail smoothly in selecting ones’ desired niche, a little guide would seem like a cool breeze on a hot summer day! Here, through this blog, we bring a guide on selecting an appropriate business niche, especially in 2022, that will help cultivate one’s online business. Follow this blog to discover the elements needed to select a suitable niche for you. EXAMINING ONESELF Congratulations! For taking that huge leap forward by thinking of starting an online business. But in the ideating phase, one might doubt oneself and ask questions like is this is what I want to do? Have I identified my driving force in starting this business? And many more similar questions could be posed. This deep questioning could make one re-evaluate the decision of starting one’s business, especially for beginners in the industry. Therefore, a thorough examination of why one

3. wants to enter this sector is a must. This might sound challenging to many who have no clue on how to arrive at an answer to these open-ended questions. Well, not a problem. We have got a few sample questions that can help one introspect and make an informed choice. Few of these questions are as follows: ● Is this niche based on my passion, and will it help me grow if it is? ● Can it accommodate further innovations and industrial upgrades? ● Is it sustainable in the long term? ● How will it impact me individually and society collectively? These questions will help one evaluate their present and future aspirations of the business niche to be selected. After this introspection, one would get an answer to why one would want to select a particular niche. Proceeding further, the important step is to know if it suits the market needs. To know this, let us head straight into the next segment of this blog. Creating space in the market While one would know the intricacies of a physical market well, online business market asymmetries could create the ‘lemon problem’ due to a lack of direct exposure. To avoid this, market research must be stressed to begin with, to select the desired online business niche.

4. Research is important to get familiar with the market one would be targeting. For building a niche, one can start with knowing the market that they are going to enter soon. This can get tough as there is no one-to-one interaction with the audience. So, to help one do their research efficiently, here are a few methods that can prove useful: Let us see how. One can conduct their research in the following ways: ● ANALYSE THAT REPORT: Use market reports of various brands related to one’s niche and identify the kind of products that are similar to one’s selected niche and have the maximum number of sales. This will help one identify the nature of the customer demand and if it matches with the ideas for the product one desires to create the market for. ● SURVEY THE WAY: conduct online customer surveys through various social media platforms that will brief one about diverse consumer tastes and preferences. ● QUESTION THEIR NEEDS: Create a product-specific questionnaire and circulate it online to see if the product one is going to deliver is necessary or not. The right set of questions invokes deeper introspection among the customers about their needs which helps them to answer IF THEY REALLY NEED THIS NEW PRODUCT. The number of positive responses will help one know if their niche selection is appropriate. ● KNOW THE TREND: Analysing previous trends of ones engaged with the niche closest to the one desired will give one an idea of the current industrial competition. It will help one in the right product positioning and bring forth the sections of the market that were ignored by them. This can help one build their niche to target that segment. Hopefully, this would give one the direction to extract information about the online market. After research, the next and crucial pointer is about locating and selecting the right customer base that would help the niche grow.

5. CUSTOMER IS THE KING The customer base is important for product consumption as well as publicising it. To select the right customer base, one can take the help of the following pointers: ● Consider demographics – for example, coloured plain notebooks would be sold well among college students, and hence making the content that caters to this section would be a wise decision that is trying to accommodate everyone. ● Analyse their ability and willingness to pay will help one create a niche that delivers quality with affordable pricing. ● Know if the customer is ready to accept the new product by highlighting the specified purpose of the product. These few pointers would help identify one’s customer base. By analysing trends and patterns of their choices and preference, one can bring in product customisation in one’s niche that would attract the crowd further. That Is for Me! The feeling of a product that exactly satisfies customers’ needs is important for selecting as well as further building that niche. Selecting an online business niche needs one to bring out the nuances of the product to the consumer so that it builds customer connection. While one can reflect it through basic product description after due consideration of the customer base, it can be enhanced by personal customisation of the product, creating consumerism. But how do we know how to customise the product?

6. The blog will guide you through a few pointers that can be used while customising the product to build one’s online niche in 2022. ● Unique for the unique: a unique product would instantly create a market base. This can be made unique by innovative packaging, unique design or making it eco-friendly, creating a customer-product bond. ● Make it accessible and affordable ● Taking the help of technology to create innovative designs. Other than these primary steps to select one’s business niche, these extra points could help further. PIGGY BANK SUPPORT For any business to take off, finances are important. Well, we all have our piggy bank savings, but it is also essential to estimate costs prior. As many would be perplexed on how to manage it efficiently, the pointer below would help one estimate one’s financial resources and help allocate them wisely. ● One’s ability and resources to produce it ● Consider one’s financial capability to run the business in the long run. ● Take into consideration the technological aspects, the costs of the business setup, logistics required, manpower required, and ecosystem needed. TAKING THE INTERNET ADVANTAGE Rightly branding one’s product is a crucial step to establishing brand loyalty. While selecting a niche, ensure you have the right resources to set the products’ place in the market as a trusted brand. Strategies like effective and innovative meta description, use of

7. authentic data, the inclusion of sales data, use of words that emotionally connect to the crowd, and intelligent use of search engine optimisation. TEST IT To make ones’ niche selection effective, it is important to test if the product is going to make an impact or not. One can create samples for the same and either sell it as a freebie in the physical market that helps attract attention towards one’s online niche or assign a testing period of one’s product to know consumer response. AND YOU ARE READY TO GO! And voila! Now, one is more than prepared to select the right online business niche in 2022. Post pandemic, everyone has jumped on the bandwagon of online businesses, so selecting a niche to grow one’s business has become a difficult task. It includes an emotional, physical, and mental strain that translates into lesser productivity for that big project. Selecting an online business niche in 2022 can surely be made easy by following the pointers mentioned above. To further that blue sky thinking, one is free to add more pointers to select that online business niche accurately that would aid one not just earn profits out of it but also give one the pleasure of doing it daily. After all, product appreciation and customer satisfaction, along with self-gratification, will run one’s business successfully.