Wikipedia defines niche marketing as "the process of finding and serving profitable market segments and designing custom-made products or services for them. "

So how could the principals of niche marketing be utilized to contribute to your overall web marketing strategies?

Market niches can be broken down as geographic areas, a specialty industry or service, a particular ethnic or age group or a combination of these. As you can see, niche marketing is everywhere.

As an example of how to recognize and utilize niche marketing let's use a dentist in Albuquerque as our guinea pig.

He's a fairly new dentist in town and has opened his office in the growing northwest section of Albuquerque. Let's list out some of his niche audiences:

People needing a dentist

People looking for a dentist in New Mexico

People looking for a dentist in Albuquerque

People looking for a dentist on the northwest side of town

People looking for a specialty service, like veneers, etc.

People looking for a dentist for their children

People looking for a dentist who does implants

He wants to create a website that will help him attract his niche audiences to his practice. He knows that in order for his website to be seen by his target audiences he's going to have to invest marketing dollars in search engine rank building strategies. He's going to want his website to appear on the first page of those words and phrases his target audiences are likely to search on.

Our dentist has done his homework and knows that an initial investment in a thorough keyword search and analysis will steer the web designers and marketers toward capturing the attention of his target audiences. How many people are searching each month on keywords related to his niche is data vital to creating content for his web pages and specific targets for his web marketing strategies.

The web designers will use these related keywords to create web pages that contain quality, search engine friendly content that will attract his target audiences to his site and steer them toward his office. A high search engine ranking coupled with pertinent, easy to read and understand information that addresses the concerns of his target audience will result in a profitable, expanding dental practice.

Knowledge of a specific target audience and the words and phrases they're likely to search on guides the web marketer in wise use of the dentists marketing dollars. Rather than blanketing the general web population with broad advertising, the marketer will concentrate on the specific audiences who are looking for the services offered by our Albuquerque dentist.

Currently, the most economical and effective route to gaining legitimate, one-way links to your website (resulting in increased position on the search engines) is through the use of web articles. Keyword rich, informational articles that reach and address the concerns of one's target audiences can produce phenomenal results.

As an example, let's assume that our dentist is an expert at correcting numerous types of dental problems through the use of veneers. So one of his niche audiences would be people wanting or needing veneers. Using that expertise, he could write informative articles about the uses and benefits of veneers. He could give these articles to his marketing company and they in turn would turn them over to an article submission service that would submit his articles to numerous high ranked, niche article directories.

Our dentist's practice is going to benefit in two ways from this effort. Each article submitted creates position building back links for his website and his articles are going to be read by his niche audiences.

It's this two pronged thrust that gives article submission such rapid rank building results.

Niche marketing can benefit almost every type of service or product. And the use of keyword research and article submission can help every businessman capture his niche and grow his business.

Rafferty Pendery

CEO of Studio98 and creator of Send Articles