Niche marketing has become a common buzzword in Internet marketing. However, what is niche marketing exactly? What is the best way to go about it? How do you find niches?

In a nutshell, niche marketing is targeting your messages to a narrow audience, ideally one with an unmet need. With the proliferation of the Internet, niche marketing has become much more viable than before. Niche marketing has its pros and cons and may not make sense for all businesses. However a small to medium sized businesses with a limited budget, can benefit from niche marketing. A small retail store that competes against a large retailer can create a loyal following by providing services and information that address the needs of niche markets. I know what you are saying, that’s great but how do you find niche markets?

One technique for finding niche markets is through keyword research.

Think about it, when looking for information on the Internet, the majority of people start at a search engine. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tap into those searches and find what people are looking for? Then based those results create content and services. Well you can, and there are several ways to do it.

There are a variety of tools that allow you to search for keyword phrases to find out how many times it is searched for. In addition, most tools will show you similar search terms. Using the free tools can help you get an idea for what is in demand.

Free keyword research tools:

• Overture Keyword Tool
• Google Keyword Tool

However in order to identify niches with unmet needs, you will need to get an idea of the competition. The free tools do not provide an easy way to do this. If you use the free tools you will need to identify the terms and then do a search on the search engines to see how many pages come up for that term. This can be tedious and take all day to find a few niche markets with unmet needs.

Using premium tools you can identify niche markets with unmet needs much more quickly. The premium tools show you how many competing web pages there are for each term, and some even show you who the competitors are and what they are doing.

Subscription Based Premium Keyword Research Tools

Wordtracker – As far a I know Wordtracker was the first premium tool, and is considered to the best and most dependable. Wordtracker has a free Research Guide    about an imaginary dog food company that provides great examples of how to you can use Wordtracker.

Keyword Density from Trellian Software  - This is the new comer to keyword research. Keyword Denisty offers pretty much the same features as Wordtracker, however it also offers the ability to see trend lines for each keyword search. This is a nice feature, as it allows you to see if there are monthly or seasonal trends.

Desktop Premium Keyword Research Tools

WebCEO - WebCEO  is the best kept secret of SEO experts. This software program runs the full gamut of Internet marketing features. From extensive keyword research (include competitor’s meta tags) to web siteour rankings in the search engines. If you have a limited budget, this piece of software is what you should buy. Not only will it give you the power of keyword research, but it also offers tools that any Internet marketer needs. WebCEO offers a free version of the tool (note this is not a trial version, it is actually free to use, it just has some limited features). Download it today and take it for a spin. However, be warned, this tool is quick, nimble, never crashes and you will get addicted. My bet is that once you get a taste of the free version, you will likely want the full power of the premium version. Enjoy!

Remember niche marketing has its pros and cons and may not make sense for all businesses. Be sure to understand the investment versus return before pursing niche them. As if you target to narrow of a niche, you may just end up wasting your time and effort.