Print on Demand: Finding your Niche
A print on demand business can be extremely rewarding, in terms of both fulfilling your creative urges and generating lucrative revenue. One of the first things to consider is your product niche; what it is and how you will fill it. This edition of the Pivotal Prints blog will give you some useful tips and ideas.
The Oxford English dictionary defines the noun 'niche' in two ways: 'a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment' and 'a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service'. Both of these are relevant to business. When it comes to print on demand, a product niche refers to a specific collection of products that appeal to a particular base of customers.
A print on demand product niche can be determined in a variety of ways:
- Type of product: for example, phone cases or T-shirts
- Category of product: for example, leisure wear or party products
- Aesthetics of product: for example, casual or themed
- Purpose of the product: for example, travelling or gifting
- Combinations of the above: for example casual leisure wear or themed party products
What it comes down to is a need to find a place in the crowded internet retail market and set yourself apart from your many competitors. By defining your niche, you're showing that you can offer a unique product, something different from the rest.
While it's tempting to make your niche very broad, there are in fact many benefits to making it a little narrower and more specific, especially as the owner of a small business. The benefits of picking a specific niche include:
- Becoming an expert in your chosen niche, helping to improve recognition of your brand and enhance the trust that your customers have in you
- Reducing the amount of competitors you will be up against
- Leveraging SEO and targeted marketing strategies, which helps increase online visibility
- Becoming more familiar with your customer base and improving the effectiveness of your brand
- Offering a product portfolio that resonates with your customers and prevents any confusion about your brand and what it offers
It's a good idea to use other websites to help you research trends and identify demand. A good starting point is Google Trends, with which you can research your keywords and discover their popularity over a given period of time. It's free to use and this small investment of your time can reap big rewards. Major shopping sites like Amazon are also good places to try out your keywords. The results will give you an idea of who you're competing against, how popular similar items are and other indicators such as price.
Once you've identified and researched your niche, you'll have a good idea of what products you want to sell and how you want to sell them. That's where Pivotal Prints comes in. We offer a wide, exciting and ever-extending range of top-quality products for you to choose from, each of which can be printed with your chosen designs using our state-of-the-art printing processes and technology.
Using our services, you can integrate your store with major e-commerce platforms and streamline your operations to save you time and money. There's no need for you to buy and store inventory as every product is printed to order and we also provide a full drop-shipping service. In addition, our experienced and dedicated team is always available to give you all the help, advice and support you need.
Browse the Pivotal Prints website for more information about our products, services and integrations. For more useful articles like this, along with lots of other news and updates from Pivotal Prints, please subscribe to our regular newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and Pinterest.