Article by Amy Activ

Like most cities, Derby has been impacted by the recession in one way or another. Usually a city with a high level of employment, Derby’s working population has decreased significantly over the past year or so as a result of the economic downturn. Figures for the end of march show that the number of people out of work has risen 82% year on year in Derby to 7,235 and for Derbyshire as a whole it is a similar story with 17,403 people claiming unemployment benefit compared to 8,253 the same time last year.

Traditionally, manufacturing has been the integral part of the city’s economy, particularly in the areas of aerospace, chinaware production and train building, with some of Derby’s most notable firms being Roll Royce, Toyota, Delta Rail and Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Co Ltd. This sector has been one of the hardest hit with Rolls Royce having shed 140 jobs and Toyota, it is rumoured, could be making as many as 800 redundancies across its sites in Wales and Derby. The situation has been even worse for some companies such as the iconic Wedgewood who have folded completely as a result of the crunch.

It’s not all doom and gloom though – in recent years the industry trend has shifted a lot towards the service sector which now is responsible for over 60% of all employment in Derbyshire. Much of this can be attributed to the tourist industry and the attraction of the Peak district, which although has always been there, has been much more heavily publicised by various organisations including the tourist board. This in turn has seen the emergence and increased popularity of hotels, restaurants, and campsites in the region.

The service sector, and in particular the tourist industry has seen less of a negative effect from the recession than the manufacturing sector in Derby. Much of this is due to the fact that since the economic downturn many Britons are electing to stay at home and holiday in this country instead of flying off abroad. In fact one particular holiday company based in Derby – Don Arnott Parks – reported an increase of nearly 50% in its Easter trade over last year with all five of it’s caravan and camping parks full.

Irrespective of whether or not a company is seeing adverse effects from the credit-crunch, one thing that they must continue to do is advertise their business, product or service. A common mistake made by companies who are feeling the pinch is to cut their advertising spend when in fact they should be increasing or at least maintaining it to help ensure their survival in tougher times.

There are many media that can be used to advertise a business but one of those that sometimes gets overlooked is online advertising. Whether it is a lack of knowledge or a fear of technology, many companies have tended to stick to more traditional media such as newspapers, TV and radio. However recent studies into online advertising show that it is actually a very powerful tool in reaching a company’s target audience and since it is still relatively cheap, also a very cost effective one. Websites such as www.activderby.com will list your business in it’s directory for free and, for a minimal outlay will give you featured listings and homepage exposure for your product or service. S

ince it is part of a much larger network of local websites, the exposure that a company can receive is increased greatly. Compare this to the cost and circulation of, for example, an advert in a local newspaper and it soon becomes clear why internet advertising is becoming so important. In fact a recent study into the effectiveness of online advertising concluded that it is at least important as offline advertising always has been.

The bottom line is that if companies want to give themselves every chance of survival in this difficult economic climate, they can’t afford to ignore the internet as an integral part of their marketing strategy.

Niche marketing research has often been a difficult task. How do you research? What do you research? What should your results entail are questions that often come to mind. How important is niche marketing research? It is very important and could be the deciding factor between failure and success.

1. Your reader/customers – What does your reader and customer want? Find out and give it to them. The first thing you want to consider is your public relations strategy. Readers that come to the internet are looking for products or a niche that will provide to them a solution to their issues. The solution can basically be anything from weight lose, dog grooming help to saving a marriage. What you have to remember is in every niche there is a problem and a solution. Focusing on just those two key areas will find you well ahead of the pack. Your public is your life’s blood for your business. This is the foundation and reason why I like to call it “public relations strategy”. If you forget your business strategy, you lose your traffic which translates into your readers and buyers.

For example let us take dog grooming as our niche, we can put a public relations strategy into play. After doing some niche marketing research on dog grooming, our results showed that dog grooming can be dangerous to the health of some dogs. We now have a problem or issue to wrap our research around. The result from the research tells us it can be dangerous to the health of a dog if the dog is groomed inproperly. Now that we found the problem we now need to do some more niche marketing research to find the solution. A more deeper look into the issue helps us find the solution. Keep it straight to the point and simple. After you presented both the problem and the solution, you can now send your readers to more information on the niche. The information path you send your readers down can be to an affiliate product, your own ebook, free info so they op-tin to your newsletter or anything else you wish your readers to view. It is really up to you. Your best choice is not to send your readers to a sales page. Better to entice them further with a second relevant information webpage.

2. Niche language – When you start doing your niche marketing research, you will want to notice what kind of words are being used to describe your niche. What phrases are being put together? What kind of technical words are being used? If we take our dog grooming niche as the example, you will start to notice a pattern or a way dog groomers speak. Also reading and reseach will help you find the hot buttons that grab the reader and keeps them focused on your website or subject. Keep an eye out for those little things and add them into your postings, blogs, articles, webpages and product descriptions.

When your readers and customers start to see you as an authority, they may send you an email about one of your articles, or websites. The better you can speak the language the more of an expert you will be.

3. Test your market before jumping into it – Lastly and a very important thing to remember is testing. You want to do a market test against your niche. Your main focus in this area is finding a niche market that does not have a lot of competition. The last thing you want is to compete with thousands of others in the same exact niche market. At the same time you want to ensure the niche market has enough traffic to make it worth your efforts.

When done right, these processes works like magic. It can be a very complicated and you will need just the right amount of traffic, competition and niche. It is hard to hit all three just right. Yet over time and experience your success rate witll grow.