David Emery Online

Gameshows and Niches

27 April 2007

Every market is a niche market, but some niches are smaller then others.

Take, for example, someone like McDonalds. At first glance you’d probably think “don’t be silly, McDonalds are flipping huge – they aren’t in a niche, natch” (read with a strong Brooklyn accent). They are, though: they’re not trying to compete with – for example – Pizza Express (a slightly more upmarket pizza restaurant chain in the UK); they don’t do waiter service, serve alcohol or pride themselves in serving the best food.

All those things are outside of their niche.

The next step is to remember that their are an unlimited amount of niches, if you make your niche small enough. For our second example, lets look at game show software. Firstly, I bet you didn’t even think that there was specific software for game shows, but there is. From what I can tell, there seem to be 2 companies that make it.

Two.

Game show software is a very small niche.

And yet, there it is; while it is a small niche there is still demand for game show software, and that’s not going to go away until we get sick of inane entertainment on TV (which is probably never). The demand – however small – is enough to support two companies. I would also guess – I have nothing to back this up though – that neither of the two set out originally to make game show software, but have fallen into it by circumstance.

Hopefully, no one would be foolish enough to target a niche so small, with so few possibilities to grow and expand.

Except, and this leads to the final thought, if they never even realised what niche they were in. It way well seem obvious from the outside, but they could well be simply going along saying “we make software”, blinkered to the fact that they’ve got themselves into a tiny market.

Do you know what niche you are in?