You may wonder who is behind english-test.net — there are three founders of the company and you''ll learn how we met and decided to start this website on pages further in this book. Now, let''s return to the question in hand:
How to locate a market niche, how to find a starting point on which you can build your business plan and marketing strategy.
Finding a niche in the market
As we stated in the introduction to our book, we''ll present you only with factual information based on real businesses. If you want to be successful you need to analyze successful people and their companies in order to discover what those people and companies have in common. Next, list all the common denominators. You will be amazed by the results of this process: Patterns emerge which make up a success formula, a blueprint for you to follow with your own enterprise.
OK, are you ready for the next real success story?
September 1995 a man by the name of Fred Kelly takes a step that will change his entire life. He registers the domain www.quit-smoking.com Back then Fred was an assistant in a law firm and his job didn''t provide him with what he wanted out of life. So, he was constantly thinking of ways to achieve his goals and he started examining his colleagues, friends, family and acquaintances. He noticed that a growing number of people had one serious problem: They were addicted to smoking cigarettes and when smoking became prohibited in many public places in the US,these smokers were forced to quit the habit if they didn''t want to put their jobs and careers in jeopardy. Offices, businesses, banks, restaurants, literally any place where people work are public places after all. Most people dont analyze their environment and project in terms of the future — not even a few weeks ahead. Fred Kelly, however, sat down at his desk with a pencil in his hand and did some calculations. The result was astonishing: He found out that tobacco kills more than 430,000 U.S. citizens each year — more than alcohol, cocaine, heroin, homicide, suicide, car accidents, fire, and AIDS combined. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. You see, Fred didn''t take the risk of building his business, building his own future on assumptions, opinions and theories. He studied the facts and among his findings were these:
Research in Tobacco Control showed that smokers cost the US military over $130 million a year, almost 1 per cent of the total annual training budget, shows. Smoking was the single biggest predictor of premature discharge from duty.
The research team tracked around 29,000 recruits in the US Air Force over 12 months. This section of the military has the lowest prevalence of smoking among its ranks at 28.5 per cent, as opposed to the Marines where the prevalence is almost 45 per cent.
Fred studied and analyzed more statistics. He found out that the market for anti-smoking products in the US and Canada was worth billions of dollars and it was just at the growing phase in its life cycle. He learned that there were thousands of established companies in the US offering a wide range of products and services for people wanting to quit the habit. So, founding another anti-smoking company was not the answer but Fred realized that another enormous market that was in its infancy: the internet. He knew that very soon millions of smokers would be looking for information and ordering products on the internet. Working in a company he knew all too well that the bigger a company the slower the decision making process. These well established companies didn''t see the internet as a new distribution channel but just as another fancy new toy. Fred could see clearly a strategy to get his slice of the enormous anti-smoking pie: register the domains www.quitsmoking.com and www.quit-smoking.com and build a portal, a market place for the «quitsmoking» community.
You can download the e-book here:
Free Internet Marketing e-Book
If you have any English grammar or vocabulary questions,
please post them on this English Grammar Forum.Author: Torsten Daerr & Alan Townend
