With all the competition online these days, you have might have considered pursuing a niche marketing strategy, which focuses on one unique target market.
However, niche marketing may leave you wondering whether your niche is too niche to give satisfying business results. You might be cautious and skeptical to take the first step—and with good reason.
Naturally, a niche marketing strategy restricts your reach, which may appear counterproductive. However, targeting one market specifically and strategically works to improve your lead quality rather than focusing solely on lead quantity.
As a reference for your niche marketing efforts, this article goes through a case study for a B2B content strategy that paid off in a niche market—and one that is continuing to pay off 2 years on.
Overview: Niche Marketing Strategy for Korea SEO + SEM
We targeted the Korean SEO and SEM niche market with focused content rich in keywords and in-demand information. Key campaign successes include:
- The creation of 4 blog articles on niche industry topics that account for 21% of all organic traffic over 20 months
- These articles contributed to 18% of all new organic users and 13% of all organic conversions.
And with that, let’s dive into the case study.
Case Study: Identifying the Niche Opportunity
We identified the niche (Korean SEO and SEM) in our industry (digital marketing), because we were completely immersed in it ourselves. We were gradually getting more clients who were interested in marketing for Korea, and we needed to stay on top of the latest trends, strategies, and tools.
But researching quickly became a source of frustration—there was little-to-no information in either English or Korean that was substantial. Content was thin, often duplicated, and not credible to cite as sources.
So an opportunity presented itself: why don’t we conduct our own tests and research, create the content we were seeking, and stand out from all the existing content that was not answering people’s questions about the niche.
Of course, we needed to look into this further by doing some keyword research.
Key takeaway: Know your industry and the search result pages inside out, and do it better than anyone else.
Case Study: Targeting the Niche with Low Search Volume Keywords
Search volumes can really add up with keyword variations.
For us, one of the articles we wrote on Naver PPC is a case-in-point. Here are the keywords we found and their search volumes:
| Keywords | Search Volume (as of Feb 2019) |
| naver ads | 170 |
| naver advertising | 90 |
| naver search ads | 30 |
| naver ppc | 20 |
| naver sem | 10 |
| how to start advertising on naver | 10 |
| Total | 330 |
Each of the keywords individually may seem to have unattractive search volumes—but add them up, and they reach over 300.
In fact, the article we wrote on this topic ended up bringing us an average of 160 sessions per month and 1.75 contact form completions per month over 20 months. Among all the blog articles, this is our top converting article to date—and all thanks to a set of niche keywords.
Key takeaway: Individual keywords in your niche may have low search volume, but all the different variations of keywords can add up to steady, high-converting traffic.
Case Study: Crafting Content that Answers People’s Questions
A key benefit of keyword research is to use it to infer what people are really looking for. You may not get longtail keywords or many keyword options when researching for a niche, so you need to dig a little deeper for insights that illuminate true search intent.
Through our keyword research, we were able to categorize some keywords by topic. One of the topics we found was on Naver advertising. We found that there were no other sites providing comprehensive information on the different types of Naver ads for someone who might be considering it. So, we decided to create it ourselves.
Key takeaway: Always ask yourself what people might be looking for and how you can help them more effectively than the other ranking sites.
Case Study: Crafting Content that Anticipates User Need
People searching for niche topics may be searching in broad terms because they don’t know enough about it. So, a way to keep people reading beyond what they searched for is to anticipate their next questions and answer them before they are even asked.
Our keyword research around the Korean search engine Naver revealed that people were looking for English versions of the search engine, even when there actually isn’t one.
So, the first section of our Naver SEO Guide was to clarify that Naver is not offered in English. But then we went ahead and answered the question that people might ask next: Is there a way they can use the search engine if they don’t know Korean? We answered that and other related questions on the same topic, becoming a more helpful and actionable source of information for people.
Key takeaway: Make your content comprehensive and useful by anticipating people’s questions and writing to answer them.
So, what are your thoughts?
Are you now seriously considering a niche marketing strategy? Or perhaps other digital marketing efforts to boost your traffic and conversions?
Reach out to us if you feel we can help!
