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How to Use Niche Marketing for Better ROI

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Sometimes, targeting a smaller audience can have a bigger impact. Learn tips and best practices for niche marketing on Spotify.

While some campaigns speak to a wide range of consumers, others succeed by focusing on a niche audience. By following niche marketing best practices, small businesses can connect with a target audience more likely to be interested in their product or services. Ultimately, that can result in higher-quality leads and potential conversions.

Ready to find your niche market? Keep reading to learn more about market segmentation and find inspiration in niche campaigns from global brands.

What is niche marketing?

A niche marketing strategy targets a narrowly defined audience based on their shared characteristics.

It helps to think of niche marketing as the opposite of mass marketing. A Super Bowl commercial wouldn’t fall under the umbrella of niche marketing. Instead of an ad that reaches millions of TV viewers around the country, a niche ad might be targeted to Millennial pet owners on Instagram in the Columbus, Ohio metro area.

Targeting a smaller niche or vertical can pay off for brands. You may uncover opportunities to build deeper connections with smaller groups of customers by addressing their specific needs. You may also see better ROI on your ad spend when you’re talking directly to the ideal audience for your product or service.

Who should use niche marketing?

Niche marketing is a worthy tactic for companies of all sizes and across sectors, including:

  • Small brands with specific products. A dog food brand that sells a special kibble designed to meet the health needs of certain breeds might require a niche marketing strategy. In this example, it wouldn’t be an optimal use of budget to target all dog owners on a channel. Instead, this brand would want to target people more likely to own certain breeds.

  • Larger brands with specific products. A national pet retail company, for example, may also rely on niche marketing techniques. Say the company is introducing a new line of fish food in addition to its best-selling dog and cat foods. The brand can leverage niche marketing tactics to target ads to people who own or are interested in pet fish or aquariums.

Niche marketing on Spotify

Spotify Advertising can be a useful tool for niche marketers. With a wealth of listener data, Spotify offers a unique opportunity for effective targeting. This makes it easier for brands to reach their niche audiences instead of only speaking to the masses (though, that's possible to do too!).

Audience targeting on Spotify goes deep and includes the following:

  • Demographic targeting, including ages, languages, genders, and locations.

  • Behavioral targeting to reach people based on interests, preferred music genres, favorite podcasts, and more.

  • Contextual targeting to narrow in on listeners based on meaningful factors such as preferred platforms and devices, podcast episode topics, and other real-time contexts.

How to create a niche marketing strategy on Spotify

Tailored audience targeting is key to creating a niche campaign on Spotify. While the targeting possibilities are nearly endless—and as unique as your brand—there are a few niches and verticals advertisers are already seeing success reaching on Spotify:

Niche marketing ads: Examples on Spotify

Find inspiration from three brands that ran successful niche campaigns on Spotify.

VeraLab reaches Gen Zs and road trippers with a summer campaign

VeraLab promoted the launch of its new sun care product to Gen Zs and listeners aged 25 and over who might have been listening while driving. The brand created ASMR ads using evocative sounds like spraying sunscreen and crashing waves, combined with Canvas ads for non-driving listeners to tell a visual story on an eight-second loop. The generated upward of 4 million impressions with an ad completion rate of 95% and click-through rates (CTRs) that doubled Spotify’s internal benchmark.

IONOS drives traffic from designers and developers on Spotify

German web-hosting company IONOS repurposed existing ad creative to home in on SMBs, designers, and developers on Spotify. With two campaigns—one optimized for impressions, another for clicks—IONOS’ campaign saw CTRs that exceeded Spotify's benchmarks, driving traffic to their site. The cherry on top: IONOS created this successful niche campaign using existing audio and video assets—they didn’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Pan MacMillan's campaign gets in front of book lovers and culture buffs

Niche marketing is the perfect approach for generating awareness of a specific product—in Pan Macmillan’s case, a goal-setting journal called The Greatest Manifestation Journal.

Opting for a video campaign to raise awareness, the publisher zeroed in on UK listeners with interests including Books, Culture & Society, and Studying & Focusing—at a time of year when many people are reflecting on their goals for the year ahead. The targeted campaign saw a massive video view rate of 45.7% and an expansion rate of 0.45%, outperforming benchmarks.

Reach the right audiences for your brand on Spotify

By dialing in your campaigns to reach the right audience, you can uncover opportunities for stronger connections with the people who are most interested in your brand.

Ready to connect with your niche audience on Spotify?

Get started with Spotify Ads Manager today.