A Brand is a Niche

Hi ,Most brands start small, and so should you. Most brands start with either one target audience, one main product, or both. Today I want to talk about what a brand is, the fact that it’s really just going after a small niche, and then expanding it by launching more products to the same people, or more people.

Nike started as a shoe running brand for athletes.

Ford started with a black car only.

Amazon started as an online bookstore.

This also happens with personal brands, Gary Vee started by promoting wine for wine lovers for his dad’s business. He expanded it to other ventures and now targeting a much wider audience.

Roger Federer, the tennis champion who recently retired, is an athlete loved by tennis players and fans around the world. Federer is also loved and admired by many athletes from different sports, which happens to other athletes when they get to a certain level - Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Leo Messi, and the list goes on. Roger Federer was also promoting the shaving brand Gillete for many years, which shows that you can target a much wider audience as your brand authority grows.

When we sell on Amazon, A good idea is to start small. There are really only two types of products I would recommend selling:

1. Low competition & high demand → Go for a product where competitors have high revenue, but a low number of reviews. That means there’s room to get into the niche but it’s not saturated yet. It’s also better if the product has some barrier to entry so it won’t get flooded with competitors by the time you launch it.

2. Small niche → Go for a product that’s saturated but targeting a specific niche. This can either be by targeting one use of the product or targeting one audience. I gave many examples of this in my training as well as my book: Yoga ball for pregnant women, bluetooth headphones to sleep with, first aid kit for toddlers, etc. By doing this, you start small and then can grow your brand further.

When we think about a brand, we need to start with that niche. Once we have that niche, that’s our target audience. If we launched a yoga ball for pregnant women, we can’t continue by launching “yoga ball for men” and then a “yoga ball for kids”. That’s not a brand, we become more of a factory for yoga balls when we do that. Instead, we should launch other products to our audience - Pregnant women. This can be by building a fitness brand around pregnant women by launching more sporting equipment for them, or other products entirely such as supplements for pregnant women. What we are trying to do, is sell more products to the same customer. I call this “going wide”, which means introducing other products to the same customer. In Amazon, many of these products will show as FBT (Frequently Bought Together).

At the same time, we want to “go deep”, which means launching more of the same thing over and over again, to support different tastes and uses. Let’s look at Apple;

Apple has MacBook, AirPods, iPhone, and Apple Watch - All of those are going wide - Launching more products to the same target audience.

At the same time, Apple is going deep by launching more of the same product, to support different tastes and needs - MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacBooks at different sizes, and iPhones at different sizes/strengths. They also launch accessories to their own products - MacBook cases, AirPods cases, iPhone cases/protectors, and the list goes on.

What many 7-figure sellers miss, is that they can actually go after much bigger fish. They keep launching the same $10k-$20k a month products, instead of aiming higher. You can start launching products to a wider audience or have more uses for them. Looking at the “yoga ball for pregnant women” example, you could launch products for women after they give birth or products for early pregnancy. You could then expand the brand to moms with young kids, or first-time moms. Then, you could start targeting women of any age, start a small line for men, etc.

Ask yourselves these questions right now:

1. What products does my customer need before/after using my current products?

2. What else is my customer buying while using my product?

3. Most importantly - What can I launch next that will target my audience, but at the same time will target a broader audience?

Also, stay up to date on your competitors on Amazon - What new products are they launching, and which variations of theirs are doing well?

I’ve consulted over 1,000 sellers in 1:1 sessions to this day, and I’ve seen these mistakes over and over again. The truth is, you have to keep launching new products in order to scale. A business that doesn’t launch new products will start losing market share over time and eventually die. If you look at any brand, including the ones I’ve mentioned in this email - They all keep launching new products, and so should you.

My team and I can find these gaps for you in your niche, as as well do much more. Fill out our intro form and let’s see if we can help you scale further, or just get you to start thinking different ;)

Tomer