Niches Suck And Other Heresies

Many copy­writ­ers often talk about tar­get­ing a niche… get­ting to know them so you talk their lan­guage and describe your solu­tion for them as though you were one of them.

I’d like to take a con­trar­ian view.

I think it’s silly to worry about tar­get­ing a “niche.”

I pro­pose that all peo­ple are the same at their core and if you are actu­ally work­ing a true mar­ket… tar­get­ing is as silly as pre­tend­ing that some peo­ple don’t eat or sleep or have sex or breathe.

I’m writ­ing this from Costa Rica where my fam­ily and I are spend­ing a cou­ple of months. Some would say that Costa Rica and Costa Ricans are about as dif­fer­ent as you can get from Amer­ica and Americans.

Are they?

Cer­tainly it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine being able to sell them some­thing with­out speak­ing Span­ish. Cer­tainly it would be dif­fi­cult to get them to pur­chase drought insur­ance (it rains daily this time of year).

But, as I was eat­ing din­ner tonight deep within a Tico (i.e., a Costa Rican) neigh­bor­hood at a soda (small restau­rant) that had no other for­eign­ers in atten­dance other than my fam­ily, I watched my two year old play­ing with the other children.

He had no idea that they didn’t speak Eng­lish. They had no idea that he didn’t speak Span­ish. They com­mu­ni­cated just fine… mostly with screams and gig­gles and smiles… with the occa­sional shove and pointing.

Us par­ents also com­mu­ni­cated just fine with smiles and talk­ing to our own chil­dren when they got a lit­tle too aggres­sive. All of us were hav­ing a great time.

Every­one in the restau­rant was enjoy­ing the food… some the beer… most the social­iza­tion… most the music.

Was there any dif­fer­ence between this scene and sim­i­lar scenes across Europe, Asia, Africa or sci­ence sta­tions near the south pole? Of course there were, but the root dri­vers of human activ­ity are all the same.

I’ve long been a hater of the word “niche” and how many in the indus­try teach folks to try out tiny lit­tle niche markets.

I think that’s hogwash.

First of all, those teach­ers are hyp­ocrites. Are they work­ing a tiny lit­tle “niche” or are they work­ing the huge “make more money” market?

Sec­ondly, any­one can take a look at the 10 rich­est peo­ple in the world and see that they worked in huge mar­kets that apply to nearly every human on earth… not tiny lit­tle niches.

Bill Gates works the soft­ware mar­ket… the more generic and widely applic­a­ble, the bet­ter. His most prof­itable prod­ucts are Win­dows and Microsoft Office which apply to a vast num­ber of poten­tial cus­tomers around earth.

War­ren Buf­fet works the huge “invest­ment” or “make money with money” mar­ket. Who doesn’t want to make more money? It’s hardly a niche.

The Wal­ton fam­ily (i.e., Wal­mart) works in the “every­thing” mar­ket and promises lower prices. Who doesn’t want lower prices?

The list goes on. Niches are for those who want to replace a job with their own busi­ness that becomes a job. The rich and the free work in huge markets.

Huge mar­kets need very lit­tle or no tar­get­ing. They apply to every­one or at least a large per­cent­age of the population.

Almost every­one wants to live longer. Almost every­one wants to make more money, be more beau­ti­ful, have a closer rela­tion­ship with their spouse, have lov­ing, won­der­ful chil­dren, be stronger, more attrac­tive, etc.

On the Inter­net, the world is your play place.

You can choose to fol­low the liars and hyp­ocrites and try to make the four peo­ple who are into zebra hockey in New Orleans on Tues­day nights happy… or you can try to make the bil­lions of earth inhab­i­tants who want to live longer happy.

Have you ever tried to play darts?

If your tar­get is that tiny lit­tle dot in the cen­ter, then you will only hit it some­times. But if all four walls, the ceil­ing and the floor are all your tar­get, then you actu­ally have a fairly tough time not hit­ting your target.

Dou­glas Adams once wrote that it’s easy to fly. Just jump off any­thing and miss the ground. That’s why niches suck… and I’m a con­firmed heretic.

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