Page 139 - 597 Business Ideas You can Start from Home - doing what you LOVE! (Beginner Internet Marketing Series)

Step 7. Learn Marketing 1 01 1 31

aways are a very effective marketing tool, especially for food. People
needed to taste the granola to realize it was worth it to pay a higher
price for the premium-quality organic ingredients.

Jones Soda: Soda in Personalized Bottles

Initially, Jones was a distributor and then decided to make its
own line of drinks. The soda bottles have labels that feature photos

of actual customers who sent the images to the company. (Visit www
.jonessoda.com to see them.) Fun and unique, their marketing strat­

egy began with what the company called "alternative distribution
strategy." They sold their sodas in unlikely places like tattoo parlors
and skateboard stores. Then with their popularity growing, they
were able to move into mainstream mass marketers like Starbucks
and Target, even though it is still technically a niche product.

Communicating to Your " Nich e" M arket

Once you've determined your intended market, you can strategize
how to reach it by showing that your product serves a purpose that
no other currently fulfills.

If the market for your product is truly untapped, it is a perfect

opportunity for you to become the industry leader of the niche
market or market segment that will be interested in your product.
Obviously, it's easier for a small entrepreneur to gain a large market
share of a niche and become the "original," than try to compete
with big-name conglomerates that dominate the mass market right
off the bat.

A great example of niche marketing is Samuel Adams beer. They
market to an upscale beer-loving market, a segment of the market­
place that cares about the "handcrafted" quality of beer, rather than
the mass appeal of Budweiser. According to their website, Samuel
Adams is the largest craft brewer, brewing more than 1 million bar­
rels of Boston Beer products, yet it still accounts for less than 1 per­
cent of the total U.S. beer market. Samuel Adams is now a publicly