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A micro niche is a business offering that’s highly specific. You may also encounter the term sub-niche to describe these laser-focused products or services. Micro niches drill down from niches, which are already segmented out from a larger market.
Here are a few quick examples to clarify the difference between a market, a niche, and a micro niche:

Market, outdoor gear; Niche, camping supplies; Micro Niche, high-end mountaineering tents

Market, tech; Niche, social media platforms; Micro Niche, social platforms targeted to specific interests, such as Ravelry for knitters

Market, beauty supplies; Niche, cosmetics; Micro Niche, organic vegan cosmetics

Micro niches generally have more adjectives attached (not just ‘food truck,’ but ‘artisan grilled cheese truck featuring locally sourced cheese and bread’) and have a highly specific audience in mind (people who love grilled cheese with fancy additions).
Would your business benefit from a micro niche?
Among the greatest benefits of micro niches is that they pre-qualify customers and clients early in the marketing funnel. People who are looking for outdoor gear may be looking for anything from hiking boots to fly-fishing rods to harnesses for mountain climbing. But people searching specifically for camping supplies can have very different ‘wants’ as well. They may prioritize:

Affordability
Ease of use
Eco-friendly production
Aesthetics
Better, best glamping quality
Mountain-ready ruggedness

Often there will be an overlap of preferred qualities. But if your niche is producing and selling high-quality mountaineering tents, you won’t have to worry about capturing the attention of frugal families or people who want a luxurious camping experience.
The other benefits of a micro niche branch off from there. They include:

A passionate customer community. People interested in high-quality tents are often interested in clear topic areas related to your offering. This makes it easier to create a content strategy for organic traffic; there’s less guessing what will appeal to your customers. People who want exceptional quality tents for hiking are knowledgeable already. They would likely be interested in a blog or podcast offering specific, expert, or off-the-beaten path advice and recommendations.

Less competition. In broad markets and even niches, gaining visibility and brand awareness can be a challenge. In a micro niche, it’s easier to earn attention and differentiate yourself because you have fewer competitors. You still have to specify your unique value in the space and clarify that among your discerning audience.

Brand loyalty. While this isn’t a given and requires meeting the demands of your audience, a sub-niche can foster long-term interest. That’s because micro niches are built on expertise, passion, and customization. It’s more challenging to bring a personal touch to broad markets

Companies can start up with a single micro niche. For example, Bite offers sustainable toothpaste tablets called ‘bits,’ mouthwash bits, floss, and toothbrushes through a subscription plan. Their focus is zero-waste, plastic-free, vegan, and cruelty-free production.
Drybar is another micro niche company that carved a customer base from the hair salon industry. The ‘want’ they leveraged was people interested in a ‘just-from-the-salon’ look between full haircuts and coloring.
Alternatively, companies can add a micro niche after establishing their brand in a larger niche market. The mattress company, Casper, added dog beds to their niche offering. Mattresses, for most of us, are large and infrequent purchases. Although dog beds have a far smaller price point, dog owners are likely to replace them more often. Offering dog beds is also a way to introduce a new audience to the overall Casper brand and the quality of its craftsmanship.
How to discover the best micro niche(s) for your business
1. Identify your strengths.
To discover a micro niche worth developing, start by looking at your strengths — either as an individual, a team, or a company. You’re more likely to find sustainable success in areas that excite you and your team.
Consider a business offering employee recruitment support to companies. Perhaps their team excels when recruiting executives or helping mid-career changers climb the ladder? This could spark a micro niche B2B offering, such as mid-level leadership development services or executive compensation consulting.
2. Focus on the problem.
What issues need solving in your industry or your life? Think about the times you’ve thought “If only we had _____ ” to help with a common problem in day-to-day life, at work, or with a recreational activity. Fill in that blank for a promising micro-niche business idea. Problems you face are likely issues for others as well. Brainstorm different problems and creative solutions, and see which one gets you and trusted peers the most excited.
3. Do your micro-niche market research.
You want to make sure your micro niche has a customer base. Here are some areas on which to focus your research:

Informal and formal market research. Talk with friends and family about consumer ideas, or reach out to industry peers about business services needs. If you have the budget, send out email or social media surveys about the topic to gauge interest.

Google Trends. This tool can help you discover micro niches within larger niches, and the overall interest in your micro niche. Search various terms related to your sub-niche and then explore the related topics and queries. You can also find out regional variations in interest.

Social media and industry organizations. Explore hashtags on social media related to your sub-niche or industry. Also check out associations, professional groups, and organizations within your target industry. What are they discussing or excited about? Do you notice an emerging area of expertise? Do you notice a missing link in the discussions that might be an opportunity?

For example, a search for ‘mountain tent’ reveals strong (and unsurprising) regional interest in Colorado and Idaho. It also shares that ‘hyperlite mountain gear’ is a related topic, which can guide your product development and future marketing content.
4. Check out the competition.
It’s possible you’ll have a eureka moment and land on an untapped idea. But, more often, you’ll find your skills and interests lead you to micro niches with existing businesses. Now, you’ll have to toggle back to research and brainstorming mode. Here’s what you’ll need to figure out:

Is the market big enough for the two, four, or 15 of you?
How can you differentiate yourself from the competition? With white-glove service? With a lower or higher price point?
Where are they falling short?
How can you do better?

5. Test the waters.
You don’t have to dive into the deep end immediately. It’s smart to test the waters first with a single product offering. The apparel company Bombas launched in 2013 with a single product: comfortable performance socks. It has expanded to other items of clothing, but socks remain at the center of the brand.
Another way to test your idea is with a landing page, which is a simple process with drag-and-drop tools like HubSpot’s Landing Page Builder. Once you have a personalized landing page, begin advertising your product or service with paid search and social media ads. Your proof-of-concept is in the pudding — if the pudding were steady traffic, completed email forms, inbound sales calls, and product pre-orders.
On the landing page, and in your ads, use keywords that clearly define your offering. This way you draw people with authentic interest or buying intent in your micro niche.
6. Trust your instincts.
If you dream up a product or service idea that hasn’t been done before, or hasn’t been done particularly well, in your opinion, consider trusting your gut.

The company Untuckit was built on the simple premise that men wanted button-front shirts that looked neat untucked, and they were hard to find.
The e-commerce store Lefty’s sells common kitchen, gardening, school, and work tools designed specifically for people who are left handed.

Olive & June is a nail polish company that sells kits that make home manicures easy and fun. Their kits come with a holder for your phone, so you can watch a video while your polish dries.

These micro-niche companies often have one thing in common: When they hit the market, people often wonder how the products or services weren’t available before. Find your micro niche, and follow these steps to bring your business to life.

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With the development of eCommerce, proliferation of marketing channels and vanishing customer loyalty to Brands, modern CMO gets under enormous pressure to take proper care of Customer Experience. But if taking care of the Brand image requires some marketing budget and proper cooperation with media houses and agencies, then a proper approach to Customer Experience requires switching CMO attention to create a proper relationship with its colleague from the same company – a CTO. Why? They have access to customer data. 

 

The roles of CTO and CMO have changed significantly in the recent years. It is required that every modern CMO not only oversees marketing initiatives, but also understands how marketing can be driven by data, analytics and modern machine learning algorithms. On the other hand CTO is no longer only a strictly technical role present in IT companies. Any company which is willing to survive in the modern world becomes an IT company now, an IT company which requires a CTO – CTO who not just understands technology, but understands how this technology can support business objectives.

 

What is the reason behind these changes and how needs of both of them can be fulfilled by new technologies?

 

$ 3 trillion in potential value creation from Customer Experience

 

According to recent study by McKinsey & Company there is a huge potential upside in value creation by means of personalising user experience with brands and businesses. Total of estimated uplift is between $1.7 trillion to $3 trillion – where the highest value can be created in retail ($800 million), insurance ($600 million), travel ($450 million) and banking ($500 million).

 

 

This potential added value can be created by fully understanding and using entire potential which personalization at scale has. Reaching for this award requires modern marketing to create best in class experience for customers across all communication channels and devices, along the entire customer journey.

 

In order to take part in the race and win your share of the cake it is crucial to implement and integrate the right technologies, work with right and rich data and use modern personalization techniques supported by AI & machine learning.

 

Technology stack supporting CX Value creation

 

McKinsey points out four main parts of the technology stack required to succeed in personalisation: Data, Decisioning, Design and Distribution (Execution).

 

 

The key issue coming out of this graph is the necessity of having all of these really well integrated. And if want to have all this really well integrated there are two options:

a perfect relationship between a CMO and CTO with perfectly working together teams behind them
or

a ready made platform which will make all of this work without too much hassle which is somehow CTO & CMO cooperation ready

 

Creating CMO & CTO cooperation readiness

 

Data required for best in class personalization is often hidden, trapped. This data needs to be enabled on one common platform, which is easy to integrate with multiple different data sources. This is the responsibility of the CTO to ensure this data is discovered and made available to a platform on which CMO can create unique marketing processes based on this data, use modern AI solutions and use them in communication with a customer on all possible channels.  

 

Very common problem is when a company uses multiple single solutions for communication with its audience – this causes that decisioning logic resides in individual, channel-based, black-box systems. CTO’s and CMO’s responsibility is to unify this logic and use an integrated decisioning engine that uses machine learning and AI models to take individualised and personalised marketing activities across all channels with consistent communication with a customer.

 

With a proper platform marketer can encode knowledge into processes, leverage instinct with AI and properly segment customers. That type of platform can integrate channels, enable data across those to coordinate communications and react to customer needs. 

 

Another problem to solve is that these days marketers are overwhelmed by the amount of content and the speed of change required by personalization. Platform of choice for CTO & CMO should enable content automation, mixing of small modules with CDP data and use them seamlessly in omnichannel communication. 

 

The common goal of CTO & CMO is to integrate all channels, enable data across those to coordinate communications and react to customer needs. That approach is a pillar of value creation with Customer Experience.

 

Low technology burden as basis for effective CMO & CTO cooperation

 

As we stated in one of the first paragraphs, the modern CTO must understand how technology can support business objectives and the ultimate goal of business is to bring revenue, on other hand he is aware how expensive integrations and data science are, where human cost is the highest factor. CMO is under pressure of delivering results with modern solutions. But obviously these strategic objectives would be not possible to realize if both CMO and CTO would be engaged in too simple things, that we are actually taking on us.

 

 

We have created a platform with minimal hassle for the CTO, where all website monitoring and personalisation requires just one code and this code needs to be added only once. Data integration can be done via P&P or simple API. AI models are immediately available to use without any additional configuration.

 

That is why we can offer our customers unattainable on the market 2 month onboarding time. This is perfectly aligned with our Proof of Concept which is the primary way our customers start the journey with SALESmanago. First month is about integration, second about the execution of marketing campaigns and processes which aim at addressing some specified business KPIs. 

 

And at the end of the day, thanks to our approach CMOs and CTOs at our customers companies simply have a very limited number of quarrels and disputes.

marketing automation

marketing automation

Last Updated on December 7, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta Big Idea or Enduring Question: Now (After Spring’21 Release), you can send rich-text Emails from Lightning Flow using – Send Email core action! You read that right; so, continue to read on! Salesforce … Continue reading →

Send anxiety is real and no matter how long you’ve been in email marketing or how experienced you are, send anxiety never really goes away. In fact, customers tell us that one of the biggest mistakes they fear when sending an email is to include a broken or missing link. 
Messed up links can cost you more than just time and embarrassment. If you’re in publishing, your newsletter is your product and any missing or broken URL hurts your brand reputation.
According to Verizon Media Australia Pty Ltd, “We usually triple check each link and then send tests to at least two people in the team to make sure it’s all correct—we work in publishing and it’s incredibly important for each story to link out to the correct URL.”
You’ve gone to all this effort to craft engaging copy that compels your reader and you’ve designed a call to action that’s bolding and enticing. But when your readers click, there’s nothing. Or they end up at the wrong place on your site. Now you’ve missed an opportunity to convert subscribers and you can’t be sure you’ll be able to recapture their attention.
We aim to make marketers feel confident in every send, regardless of their experience level. Because of the amount of time and anxiety that goes into checking, double-checking, and even triple-checking your links, we’re introducing a new tool so our customers can send emails with confidence and efficiency.
Frontier Touring says: “The Link Review tool has quickly become a natural part of my proofing process.”
Introducing the new Link Review tool
Now, Campaign Monitor has a Review links button in our email builder. Here, you will be notified of any missing or broken links in your current email. You’ll also get an alert if a link has not been updated if the email was copied from a previous campaign.

Lulu Press says: “[The Link Review tool] brought a lot of confidence in sending emails. It cut back the time I spent checking links which involved me sending test emails to myself and clicking through all of the links to double-check that they were working correctly.”
If your email includes a broken or missing link, you’ll be prompted to review and update the link while still in the email builder.
Send with confidence
Universal Magazines told us, “I think everyone who has ever sent a campaign email has had concerns about sending bad links. A bad link can cause a range of problems and, in the very worst cases, can negate the whole intention of sending a campaign email in the first place.”
We know how much time and effort you spend creating your emails, not to mention the time you spend double-checking to make sure everything in your email is pixel perfect. The copy, design, lists, and personalization all have to be confirmed before hitting send and it’s easy for something as innocuous as a misspelled URL to slip through your checks to disastrous results. 
At Campaign Monitor, we know that a missing or broken URL link in your email is a common mistake that can be a headache to fix. 
Not only is a broken link a pain for you, it harms your brand’s reputation, prevents your email from delivering the results you expect, and often means additional time and resources spent trying to remedy the error. 
After all the time you’ve spent crafting every detail into an effective email, don’t let a broken link steal your results.
Wrap up
Our Link Review tool means you can have confidence that a simple mistake won’t ruin your results. You have more important things to worry about, such as how you’re serving your customers and running your business. Now your pre-flight checklist has one less task on it.
The post Introducing the Link Review Tool appeared first on Campaign Monitor.