Expanding Reach for Niche Brands Through Strategic Planning
ByJulian Gette
Workast publisher
Workast publisher
Reach is one of the most important metrics in digital marketing. Amplifying your reach spreads your brand name and helps you connect with more potential customers. Increasing your viewership can help you tap into new markets, too, which is crucial if you’re a niche brand looking to expand your operations.
However, you’ll need a strategic plan to expand your reach if you want to find success when marketing your product or service. A strategic plan will help you learn more about your prospective audience and how to find them.
Strategic planning will also streamline your marketing efforts and improve the ROI of your advertising. Proper planning ensures that you are able to hyperfocus on channels that are most likely to resonate with your audience. This is key when marketing a niche brand, where generalized marketing will not be effective as most folks will not be interested in your product or service.
Marketing for a niche brand can feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle. You may struggle to find clients and customers in your area and can quickly find that your market becomes saturated. However, making the effort to expand your reach can help you discover more consumers — even across international borders.
If your SEO efforts have been largely fruitless in recent weeks or months, consider refocusing on targeted SEO for international audiences. By revising your marketing plan to refocus on international markets, you immediately expand your potential audience and can quickly garner interest from previously untapped markets. This can energize your marketing efforts if you’re failing to find new customers in existing markets.
For example, if you work in a niche industry like logistics, you can enhance your lead-generation strategies by using targeted SEO tactics like:
Research targeted keywords based on the interests of your audience
Create high-quality content on your blog to direct more qualified traffic to your site
Reach out to similar blogs and brands to begin link-building efforts that promote your digital presence
SEO optimizing your site for international audiences is an effective way to connect with new clients and will enhance your site’s performance. This can improve your ability to plan for future digital marketing campaigns, as a greater volume of user data may help you identify trends that may have been overlooked previously.
As your brand grows, invest more funds into researching your audience via data collection. For example, if you want to expand into a foreign market, consider using feedback forms on your website to collect data related to geographical location, age, gender, and occupation. This will boost the efficiency of your SEO efforts, increase your reach, and help you re-engage folks who have already been on your site.
It’s easy to overlook the importance of physical marketing in the digital era. After all, if you’re a marketer, you’ll know how much easier it is to measure the efficacy of PPC campaigns compared to physical campaigns like banners and posters. However, that doesn’t mean you should overlook physical lead generation when revising your marketing strategy.
Instead, expand your reach amongst a niche audience by tapping into pipelines like conferences, lectures, and trade shows. This will expose your brand to highly qualified leads and will ensure that you’re always pitching to folks who are actually interested in your product/service.
When planning for physical events, be sure to conduct attendee research ahead of time to find out which potential clients and customers are likely to attend. This will ensure that you are pitching to qualified leads and will improve your ability to connect with folks who are authentically interested in your product or service.
You should also follow up on physical events by preparing business cards and QR codes that folks to your social page or website. This is crucial, as many clients or customers want to do their own research before spending their hard-earned cash. By providing items like business cards that include your social handles, you can expand your reach and make it that much easier to follow up with folks who show interest in your wares.
Connecting with folks in new markets can be tough. Consumers may be distrusting of new brands and are less likely to opt for an international company over a homegrown business. When planning your move into a new market, consider identifying a few potential partnerships with trusted brands to improve your brand awareness and convince folks that you offer a quality product or service.
For example, if you work in a firm that sells vegan shoes, and plan to expand into a neighboring nation, consider partnering with a similar business in the region that sells vegan food items. These types of partnerships give you instant access to qualified leads and help raise your profile quickly when expanding your niche brand. They may be willing to combine forces and feature some of your content in their email marketing campaigns.
If you do find a relevant business partner that you enjoy working with, consider pitching a co-branded partnership campaign. This is an approach that is already championed by brands who will often merge forces to expand their reach. Great examples of brand partnerships include:
Nike and Apple’s co-branded Apple watch campaign
Burger King and McDonald’s “Day Without a Whopper” campaign
GoPro and Red Bull’s “Stratos” campaign
Before you commit to a partnership, be sure to share your strategic goals with your proposed partner. This will ensure that your values are aligned and that you’re able to create a marketing plan that resonates with your target audience. You don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune creating a co-branded campaign, either. Sometimes, simply sharing each other’s social posts can give your firm a much-needed visibility boost. As your reputation grows, look out for other growing, niche brands in unusual industries that will target the same demographics as you.
Expanding your reach as a niche brand can be tricky. However, a little forethought and planning can help you find the right blend of SEO, physical marketing, and partnerships so you can connect with more consumers and grow your presence in the market. These strategies will lead to long-term growth, too, as they will improve your data collection efforts and help you re-engage folks in the future.