competition in today's online market

So on page 16 Greg Hartnett speaks of the differences of starting up a web business today compared to the early days of the Internet, and initially brings up how the online market has gotten dramatically more competitive over the years, which, no offense to Hartnett, is kind of obviously logical. Back in the early days of the Internet nobody really knew what to make of it. The future of the Internet was extremely clouded, and I can imagine there were many that thought it was just a fad that wouldn’t last. Of course with few players entering the market, it didn’t leave much competition and I can imagine that many of the pioneers did fairly well, which probably lifted the whole “it’s just a fad” thought and triggered the boom. And with the whole boom and bursting of the bubble, I think the online business roam reached that stage of stability that any technology or market eventually reaches. Everything kind of swings into place. There are now the few strong players, which any new enterer has to compete with. And I don’t think competing with branding, whether it be in the brick- and mortar roam or WWW branding, is ever easy, ergo the market has become a lot more competitive.

Hartnett’s advice to be more specific makes a lot of sense in a market where I believe most general grounds have been covered since long ago. Because I think competing with the big guys, which consumers of course always will prefer, is closer to impossible than to hard. One of the fundamentals of marketing is offering something that your competitors don’t have, and the big guys most likely have a whole lot more than a new enterer could ever offer. But since the big players mostly cover a very broad consumer base, niching makes a lot of sense in a strategically marketing approach. I think the number of niches out there is endless. I think there’ll always be a market seeking those very specific products, no matter how niched. So instead of thinking big and instead strategically targeting these smaller chunks of the market is the best way to success, as it is in any competitive environment. And there’s nothing that would stop you from expanding to other niches once you’ve conquered a market, and on this way slowly taking down the big guys.

What I found rather interesting is what Hartnett brings up about search engine marketing. He sees niching as the way to go because of the growing value of search engines, and I just realized the logic in this marketing approach. Any new online business that targets a too general market has no chance of competing with the big players in a search engine query. If a potential consumer types in a query that’s too general, of course the results will be more than covered by the existing businesses. However, if the newbie targets a specific niche, I believe they have more than a fair chance to catch those potential consumers searching for that specific niche. Since most Internet users go through search engines in their online browsing, niching is most likely the best way to compete in today’s online market.