Editor’s Corner:
Niche Markets May Be The Only Markets Left

We’ve fragmented and polarized ourselves to mass marketers’ discontent. The days of three TV stations and one long distance carrier are days of the past. Unless you are a megabucks conglomerate that spends enormous sums on marketing and promotion, you may only be able to stay alive today if you target a particular niche.

With so much competition in the long distance market, I’ve always wondered why a long distance company doesn’t cater to the Spanish speaking community with Spanish speaking operators, callling cards in Spanish, telephone bills in Spanish. It may be happening somewhere in the U.S. but I don’t see it here in New York.

Eighty per cent of all businesses in the U.S. are small businesses under $10 Million in annual revenues. Just by sheer economics, most businesses only have the marketing power to reach a small audience. Now the Internet can change all that. Improvements in international toll free numbers, Internet fax and telephony will allow small companies to reach out globally, at much lower cost, to find a niche they couldn’t have before.

As marketers acquire database marketing skills more niche markets and clusters will be defined, more one-on-one marketing tactics developed.

Even the development of the Web is a living example of "nichism." Look at all the thousands of sites, all the different interests and organizations that have launched sites. Developing traffic to a website is one of the biggest challenges and most certainly the downside of "nichism."

Variety comes at a price, I guess. We can keep splintering off into different interest areas, channels, sites, groups, what have you. And as we create more we also lose touch with ourselves. In fact there may not be an "ourselves" anymore. Just many selves in search a niche.