There’s nothing we like better than a good contradiction and we think this one is pretty interesting. There are lots of good reasons for brands to niche down to increase their appeal with a smaller, perhaps more committed group of people. What’s paradoxical is that sometimes that niching down ladders right back up again to create unique value for larger audiences.
Niching Down To Appeal To The Masses
In this #tellthetruths video Rebeca shares some examples of this phenomenon. Check it out and then let us know what you think!
This video originally appeared in LinkedIn
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey guys, it’s Rebeca with BrandTrue and I want to talk about this idea of niching down. Niches, niches? I don’t know. And specifically, we tend to talk about this in business in terms of “the riches are in the niches.”
We say that the more specific you get about who you’re targeting or what you’re selling, the more you niche down, the better you can connect and it can be very profitable. Okay, great. That’s like level one. Level two is that I keep seeing, as you take a proposition and niche it down, like in goods, it can give you a really strong point of view that’s actually relevant more broadly. That’s confusing.
Here’s what I mean. There’s a brand that you see in your housewares store, OXO. O-X-O. They make, you know all kinds of little handheld kitchen implements. Potato peelers and things like that. And that brand was actually originally made for people with mobility issues. The handles are fat so they’re easier to hold if you have arthritis, that kind of thing. But the design is so attractive to look at and the function of say a potato peeler that with a better grip doesn’t give you a cramp, it just, while having that specific niche it was designed for, it ended up with broader appeal. That’s really kind of wonderful.
And I’ve seen this in a lot of things lately. Even something like gluten-free food. It started being more and more common because of people with celiac disease and digestive problems. But then as the quality of those foods went up, lots of people are saying, oh, I feel better when I eat gluten-free. No, I’m not sick with celiac but I buy all these gluten-free things.
And just in general with BrandTrue in our practice, we’ve been doing some trends work and some ideating where we niche way, way, way down. And when we do to start to have this really particular point of view, we come up with ideas that ladder right back up again, that have broader appeal.
So it’s just something that I wanted to share with you guys that consider that thinking really specifically can actually be very, very powerful for ideating and for creating some differentiation and creating some value. That’s what I think. Let me know what you think. Thanks!
