Finding a Niche for Your Small Business

A Home Business Article Contributed by Sarah White

Finding a Niche for Your Small Business

There are literally thousands of potentially marketable small business ideas, so it can be difficult to find the one that is perfect for you. But asking yourself a few basic questions and narrowing down the answers can help you focus on a niche that will bring you a successful small business that you will be happy with.

What Kind of Small Business Would I Like?

The most basic question you have to ask yourself is what do you want to do for your small business? Do you want to sell a product, provide a service or some combination? Do you want to work out of your home or have a storefront? Do you want to work directly with customers or would you prefer to work on your own? Also ask yourself about your interests and education, what you have done for work in the past and what you liked about that work.

The answers to these questions will lead you to a general area of small business that you might be interested in. For example if you have worked in health care and enjoy working with people, want to provide a service and have education in nutrition, you might see yourself in a consulting/personal trainer business that had something to do with health or fitness.

Narrowing down Your Small Business Idea

Of course the idea of working as a consultant or trainer in the health field is still a pretty broad topic. So look again at your answers to these questions, and allow yourself to do a little bit of daydreaming. What would your ideal day running your small business be like? What kind of customers would you be dealing with? What would their problems be and how would you help them? Where are you working and what kind of tools are you using?

These questions will get you closer to your niche as well as allowing you to foresee some of the expenses you might have regarding that space and equipment your small business will require. To take the personal training example again, perhaps after thinking further you decide you would like to help people with health problems such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, tailoring diet and exercise programs to clients to help them get off prescription drugs.

This is a very specific niche in the world of personal training and it gives you ideas about where and how you might need to set up your business (as part of a doctor's office or health clinic, for example).

Digging for Small Business Competition

Once you have given a lot of thought to your niche, you will want to explore your potential competition. Do searches in your local yellow pages and on the Internet to see if there are any businesses similar to yours in operation where you will be competing with each other. Your competition could be a small business or a large business, it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that you find out as much information about your competition as you can and either close in further on your niche, change focus or simply find a way to present your product or service in a different way that will separate you from existing businesses.