Old-fashioned marketing tries to be all things to all people; everyone out there should hire you. Niche marketing, on the other hand, targets your marketing toward a small, well-defined segment that other people may have overlooked. Finding a niche often means finding a part of the market that is underserved and focusing where there is less competition.

According to Geraldine Larkin, author of 12 Simple Steps to a Winning Marketing Plan, niche marketing offers these advantages:

• If you succeed, you have strong customer loyalty.
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• You have a head start in a market before it becomes popular.
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• Niche marketing is often less expensive to execute.

• Hold a free seminar on buying, selling, and investing in real estate.
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• Hire a registered nurse to give weekly free blood pressure checkups to seniors who take morning walks at the local shopping mall.
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• Print a chart to record blood pressure readings on the back of your business cards and hand them out at each event.
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• Earn the Seniors Real Estate Specialists designation, which awarded by the Senior Advantage Real Estate Council to REALTORS^®who have met certain educational and program requirements.

• Hold free home-buying seminars in renter-heavy neighborhoods.
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• Post information about low-downpayment mortgages and government-sponsored, first-time homebuyer programs on your Web site.
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• Offer a free report on “How to Buy Your First Home.”Publicize it in your mailings and on your Web site. Use a fax-back system or e-mail autoresponder to distribute it.

• Call foreign embassy offices in your area, and let them know you’re available to help people from those companies with their real estate needs.
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• Advertise your services in local foreign-language publications.
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• Hire a personal assistant or secretary who speaks the language of a major foreign group in your area.
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• Earn the Certified International Property Specialist (CIPS) professional designation. The curriculum for this NAR designation includes ownership and transaction principals of international real estate, cultural diversity, market data, investment trends, marketing strategies, currency issues and financing.

• Network with financial advisors, attorneys, interior designers, and other salespeople who cater to wealthy people.
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• Support and attend high-profile charity events.
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• Purchase mailing lists of people who own pricey cars, donate to local art museums or belong to golf, tennis, or other luxury sports clubs.
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• Track the registration numbers of private jets at your regional airport. At the airport, note the parked planes’ numbers and ask someone at the airport to look up the owners' information. Otherwise, a title company may be able to find that information for you. If a corporation owns a plane, look that corporation up in Standard & Poor's and send information about your services to all the executives. —John Cotton Jr., Cotton Real Estate, Osterville, Mass.
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• Place your listings in publications that are must-reads for potential luxury buyers.

• Locate your office among high-end stores or boutiques, and don't make it look like a typical real estate office. "Our office atmosphere is that of a gallery and draws people as they walk by. Your office becomes one of your marketing tools," says John Cotton Jr., Cotton Real Estate, Osterville, Mass.

• Seniors aren’t a niche if you live in an area where 80 percent of the population is over 65, but seniors buying golf-course homes or seniors relocating from other states might be a niche in that area.
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• Luxury homes aren’t a niche in an area where the median home price is $500,000 or more, but foreign nationals buying million-dollar residences or dot-com millionaires buying their first homes might be a niche in that area.
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• Entry-level homebuyers aren’t a niche in an area of mostly affordable housing, but single women buying their first homes might be a niche in that area.