Emails existed before the internet and have always been an effective way of marketing. An email campaign takes the form of newsletters sent out to various contacts to inform them of a new product or service. The first newsletters were sent on May 3 1978 by a man named Gary Thuerk who was a marketer with Digital Equipment Corp. Thuerk sent out an advertisement to 400 email users on ARPANET and converted enough to generate about 13 million USD in sales.

Although the names, E-mail, newsletters marketing, and Spam messages had not been coined at the time, Gary Thuerk is still recognized as the first person to successfully use Emails for advertising and marketing. Unfortunately, his action is also recognized as the first case of Email spamming.

Today, newsletters are well known and used by both individuals and businesses as a tool for marketing, promotion, or outreach. Whatever your reason for starting a newsletter, we have prepared a series of articles on the topic to guide you. This article will walk you through on how to identify your niche when starting a newsletter business.

Identifying your Niche

What is a Niche? In business, a niche refers to your target customer or audience. This is the specific group of people your business will serve. Having a niche may sometimes feel as if you are limiting yourself, but the pros far outweigh the cons. Here are key reasons why having a niche is important;

- It makes it easy to satisfy your target audience

- It makes converting easier

- It reduces burnout

- It helps you decide on the most important skills to hone, &

- It is easier to stand out as an authority in a specific niche.

Now you know what a niche is and why it is important to find your niche. Here are four acronyms to help you identify your niche - PNMT. This stands for Passion, Needs, Market and Test.

Passion

The first key to identifying your niche is passion. Why do you need passion? Because running a business can be challenging and without passion, it could be really tempting to quit when the chips are down. Passion fuels the drive when you feel less and less motivated. Also, you are less likely to run out of what to talk about when it is something you are passionate about. Hence the saying; Follow your passion. If you want to start a newsletter business, writing down some of the things you are passionate about is a good place to start. However, this alone is neither enough nor a guarantee that your business will be successful. Which is where the next step comes in.

Needs

As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Applied in this case, it means that your passion could be a solution that someone is searching for. When passion meets needs, then you are in business. So take a look at your list of passions or interests and cross out any one that does not solve any real-life problem. For instance; If you have a passion for being organized and highly productive, you could start a newsletter to share tips and guides on how to stay productive.  

If you have a flair for words and are good at inspiring people, your newsletter could be focused on motivating others. And if you happen to be good at business whether a specific niche or general knowledge of the business world, you could start a newsletter to share your knowledge. When trying to figure out which passions meet the criteria to become a potential niche for your newsletter, Google Trends can be a great resource. I will cover how to use Google Trends in our next article, understanding your audience.

Market

The market here refers to your target market. These are the people who are most likely to buy your product or services. In the case of a newsletter, the target market is the people who are most likely to subscribe to your newsletter because it meets their needs. After you’ve identified your passion and then figured out if or not it satisfies any need. Then it’s time to identify who might be interested in the solution you will be providing. Let’s take the three examples I used in the previous section.

In those three instances, the problems or needs of your target market would be;

- Staying productive and organized

- Staying motivated to achieve their goals

- Starting a business or running a business

Remember, it is at the intersection of passion and problems that you find your market. If all three conditions Passion, Needs, and Market are met, then you’re in business. The next thing is to test your market.

Testing the Market

The reason you need to test your target market is to dial in on what exactly your target audience is looking for. Let’s say you have decided your newsletter will be about productivity and staying organized. Now, what exactly is your audience looking for in productivity? Is it -

- Overcoming laziness,

- Keeping to time or being more efficient with their time

- Organizing their schedule so they can get more things done

- Staying focused, etc.

There are different ways to test your market but the most common approach is the A/B or Split Test. What is the A/B test? To put it simply, this involves sending two different versions of your newsletter to your target market to see which version gets the most views or response. So if you want to know if your audience is more interested in managing their time or dealing with distractions that affect their productivity, then you can create two separate newsletters and see which one performs better. There are other ways of testing your target market that could be less time consuming compared to creating two separate newsletters. These are;

1. Creating a poll and asking your target audience what they would like to see more of
2. Asking for feedback at the end of a newsletter. Some creators use a thumbs up and thumbs down button to get feedback while others ask what the reader thinks or what they would like to read about next.

Either way, you get to know what your audience wants by looking at their response. One thing to keep in mind is that the testing phase is iterative, meaning you will have to do it constantly to ensure the needs of your audience are met.

So Far,

I have discussed how to discover a niche for your newsletter using the acronym PNMT. Here is a quick overview of the different steps involved;

1. Write down your passions
2. Figure out which ones are potential niche topics and cross off the rest
3. Determine the size of the market for each chosen niche and
4. Run a test to narrow down on what exactly your audience wants.

At this point, you should have a good idea of what your niche is. A huge part of identifying your niche is knowing your readers and I hope to cover every aspect of it in our next article.

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