How to market a niche service

It's a really tough one anticipating search requests for a complex niche area.

One good avenue to test popularity or viability of promoting a particular keyword or search phrase is Google Trends (formerly known as insights)

eg: 

business travel security advice - no data, ie no ones searching or interested in it.

travel security advice - some interest, but a slow decline over 5 years albeit with brief spikes.

travel risk assessments - no data

risk assessments - more woolly search term, but lots of search data, but a lot is general H&S.

travel policies - lots of data, but looks like searches are more insurance based.

There is oodles of data out there, it's a case of analysing it to see if there is a viable market. Always easier to go the Virgin approach by exploiting a ready made market, rather than the Apple route of creating a brand new one. Although the latter is eventually more lucrative

Another trick I do when trying to anticipate search behaviour, is to play with small Google PPC campaigns. Similar to Trends, the keyword data will tell you how much interest there is in particular phrases, and no data will tell you there is no current market or interest.

Hope that helps.

Steve

Thanks for the info.  I also found that with risk assessment and travel policy searches.   According to Yell I have had a number of searches, but nothing has materialised.  Nothing from local Chamber of Commerce.  

Maybe I need to go into companies doing straight-forward admin work for them, then "sell" my niche service whilst I'm there......

Hi Julia

Great catching up with you the other day

It's an interesting topic as i hadn't even given this a thought from a company point of view.

I/we sometimes have to travel to Edinburgh for the sister company and with the potential of a very long day i usually just accept it as part of the job.

Of course i/we take breaks, eat & drink etc, so hadn't even thought of it of having a "travel policy" as i would have thought common sense would prevail?

We actually drove up last time, shared the driving, took a meal break etc, so would we have to document this to say we had discussed plans etc. What would have happened if we had an accident and none of this was captured?

Originally Posted by Garde

“Great catching up with you the other day ”

It is down to commonsense but you would be surprised how many people don't give it a second thought.  Must admit it hadn't occurred to me either until my ex-employer started doing business in some "hot spots" around the world.  About 3 years ago they didn't have a worthwhile travel policy covering not just costs but duty of care responsibilities as well.  Also, a colleague had a car accident on way to office one morning.  I was first person he called; not an experience I ever want to repeat.  Whiplash injury, rebuilding front end of car took 12 weeks.  

If you are working for another company then your trips should be recorded with them.  Fairly simple information as Edinburgh isn't considered a hostile area yet.  Date of travel/return, travel mode (flight number, train booking, travel insurance), accommodation details, etc.  If you had an accident then the company would have fulfilled most of its duty of care responsibilities by keeping these records.  The one grey area would be driving, as it's also a health & safety issue.  However, company if advises against driving but you still chose to do it, then their duty of care responsibilities have been covered.

Something that my ex-employer hadn't realised, in advocating driving against other modes of transport, is the lost working time.  You can work on a train or plane, but if driving alone then that's lost time to the business.  

I hadn't realised it was you at first 

Yea we chose to drive as we fancied a field trip and a change against the flight. 

Interesting that driving is seen as a H&S issue, Steve must have told them about my driving style ! Mind you, he slept for 2 hours on the way back, leaving me driving his new truck ..... whilst the cat is away, the mice will play ....... 

Apparently business travel is now covered by the Health & Safety At Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health & Safety At Work Regulations 1999 require employers to ensure employees receive adequate safety training.  This includes method of travel and customs of country to be visited.

To simplify a rather long article written by a legal bod, if an employee falls foul of local laws (example given of drinking alcohol or homosexuality in Middle East), then the employer can be prosecuted if the employee can prove they did not receive adequate training before their trip.  

I know Edinburgh doesn't fall into this category......