Mass vs Niche Video Marketing

Mass Versus Niche Video Marketing – Which One is For You?

Everyone wants to make the next viral video campaign these days. Why wouldn’t you want to reach millions of viewers from a single clever video? Seems simple enough. But while you are after these millions of viewers, so are your competitors.

What is a niche market?

Your niche is what distinguishes you from all the other companies out there. While you may have a general target audience, your niche is the unique services you provide, or the specific interests you cater to.

The Pros of Niche

It’s less money. On the one hand, if you are able to fund a mass marketing campaign, you will reach many more people, and most likely get way more customers than you would with niche marketing. On the other hand, niche marketing allows you to reach your core customer base for less money, and allows you to communicate with those who really care about what you’re saying.

Rebecca Black’s Friday got huge amounts of viewers on YouTube simply because they were able to dish out the cash. I doubt many became life-long Rebecca Black fans after her debut, despite the attention it got her for that short period of time.

Audiences of One. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, Netflix and YouTube turned most our video viewing into a solo act. While we once congregated in theatres, ate family dinners in front of the television, almost everyone now has a device to access media. And because of this, everyone is able to choose exactly what they want to watch. So maybe instead of trying to reach everyone, it is more effective to appeal to the individual. It’s easy to generalize populations and mass trends, but in order to garner a loyal audience who really cares about your content, it may be more impactful to appeal to specific interests.

What’s your niche appeal?

If you want to market to a niche audience, you need to know what makes you different from all the other companies out there that, perhaps, on the surface provide the exact same service. Maybe you are a tech company that creates apps–but what you specialize in is apps that provide educational aid for those with learning disabilities. Your niche is your edge that defines you and sets you apart from the competition.

Niche gives you focus

Once you know your niche, you have a very clear target audience, and understand potential customer’s wants and needs much better than a company looking for a mass audience.

Double-edged sword

What’s interesting to your niche market could be downright boring to everyone else.

The Niche Explosion

If you play your cards right niche content can turn your brand into a mass powerhouse. i.e. Serial. True, this is a podcast, not a video, but still an example of how something marketed towards a niche audience can become a mass phenomenon. Who would think a murder case from 1999 would become a mass phenomenon fifteen years later? While starting as a niche project, targeted towards those who were interested in a) podcasts, and b) crime reporting, the perfect combination of loyal listeners, word-of-mouth, and great storytelling allowed Serial to become a hit, and boost podcast listenership to an astonishing level.

To a business, your niche builds a foundation strong enough to grow from. In terms of video marketing, if you have a solid story to tell, your niche may just be the starting point.

Going for the long haul. Creating a viral video is a great way to get a lot of attention to your brand in a very quick span of time. But there’s a new viral video every day, and our attention spans are being fragmented and stretched in a thousand different directions with all the content out there. Mass marketing can bring a lot of viewers, but you then risk most of these viewers then forgetting about your brand just as quickly when the next fad comes along.

While there have been plenty of businesses that use mass marketing effectively over a long period of time, perhaps niche marketing, and garnering a loyal following who are more likely to remember your brand long-term is more effective.

Old Spice commercial – The Man You Could Smell Like Time and again, Old Spice has made viral videos to establish its brand and keep mass audiences captivated.

You may want to appeal to the greater, more general audiences to garner the most attention and return on investment. Or, perhaps you try to attract those that could be directly helped and affected. There’s no right or wrong answer–both mass and niche video marketing campaigns have been known to be successful. If you understand your brand identity and the type of audience you need to attract, understanding whether you’re more niche or mass should become clear.