Catch the Niche Wave

Recently, I was working for the art & apparel brand aHbe Racer. It’s niche is the Cafe Racer and Motorcycle scene. During my time with the company, I started to see a rise in the popularity of Cafe Racers as they made their way from a niche market to a more general market. There were two tell tale signs of the transition which made me realize the change was coming. The first sign was a Lowe’s commercial which featured a Cafe Racer in it as the hobby of a gear head. The second was a commercial for Glade duo-scents, using a cafe racer and its rider as a contrasting point to a soft and feminine character. For two major companies like Glade and Lowes to be featuring Cafe Racers meant the market scene was about to change. It was about to be a  late 90s khaki and swing dancing craze all over again.

I was discussing the change I saw coming with my brother, Remy. He works as a web-strategist and gave me two prong strategy for trying to catch the wave first. I thought I would pass it along to you so that if you find your niche in the main market, you can be the first there.

• Keywords: Market Research – How do people search for you product/niche if they don’t know what it is?

1. Choose 5 – 20 friends.
2. Send a personal email requesting a favor: “Watch this national commercial (or other indicator), use Google or Bing to learn about the product/niche. Send us back your three best searches and what you learned.
3. Offer a t-shirt or coupon code for first five responses as incentive / thank you for participating.

• Content

1. Educational posts – Easy to draw from Wikipedia or cite books and re-tell on your site through your company’s more accessible voice and style.
   1. History of your product/niche
   2. Profile / Interview with prominent individual / influencer
2. Write a brief post about the  commercial (or other market change indicator): Yay! Our thing is becoming a big deal!
3. Seed blog copy and headings with keywords from market research.

If you are interested in more ways to maximize on your web presence, you should check out Remy’s company, Root and Flow.

Continuing the adventure,

Jessica