Writing for Small Markets Gives You Power

By Elizabeth Ann Quirino

When you pitch your writing, or manuscripts, and you’re told “You’re a niche market. Ethnic topics are a hard sell,” don’t be discouraged. Do not feel like you are the small fish in a big pond. There is an advantage to being a writer in a niche market. 

A niche market is a small but well-defined segment of the population requiring specific goods or services, according to business dictionaries. My skill-set is writing about Filipino food, culture, stories of personalities in America or abroad. And my niche market? Fans of Filipino food, and culture.

Determine your product or specialty. 

Writing is my specialty. I was born and raised in the Philippines. I grew up in a rural town called Tarlac, 60+ miles from Manila. My father was a farmer and an agricultural businessman. He planted fruits and vegetables in our farm. He raised cattle, had a poultry and a piggery. My mother cooked daily meals with the vegetables and fruits my father harvested. As a child, I was brought to the farm and into the kitchen to learn my mother’s cooking. 

When we moved to America, I brought mom’s recipes, cookbooks, and knew by heart the cooking lessons she taught me. I started writing about all these.

Write strategically.

Before my family and I moved to America, I worked for a global advertising agency. I learned marketing strategies and how to address a specific target audience. I have applied that to my writing and publishing business.

As a writer for most things Filipino while living in America, I focus on addressing a unique target audience. Instead of using the ‘gunshot approach’ of aiming at everybody, I zero in on those who desire and need Filipino food, recipes and culture. This writing strategy benefits my specific readers.

Find out who your demographic is.

Who are you talking to? When I write, I determine who my readers are. It is a fun exercise to learn who is reading what you write. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest provide free feedback about your posts. You can find out if your readers are from a specific country, and city. You can know their age, gender, status, education, economic standing and brand preferences. 

I give readers specific recipes they need, the origins or ingredient information. 

As a writer for a niche market, your writing business has more power. With laser-like precision, you zero in on the right target audience and give them their wants, needs and desires.

Be the expert.

Nobody else knows your target audience the way you do. You are the expert of your niche market. Only you know characteristics, and nuances of your demographic. You are one of them. 

The strategy of writing for a niche marketing focuses exclusively on one group. The more I write and share my recipes and back stories behind the dishes, I put myself across as an expert in this area. And in a niche market, there are not too many of us around. I lived and breathed Filipino food, cooking, culture and history since childhood. It’s not something I learned from YouTube or from Googling the topic. My authenticity gives me credibility.

If you’re a writer for a niche market, consider yourself fortunate. You don’t have to create your niche. You are living it. It’s ready-made. 

Move in for the kill.

Once you’ve determined who your readers are, go to them. Find their social media platforms. What are they reading, searching, and wanting? Give it to them on their terms. Be proactive. Reach out to your readers first. Tweet with a link to a longer article. Post photos on Instagram with enough to entice readers to click on your profile. Create a Facebook page on your topic specialty and feed it with fresh, new information. I post daily photos of Filipino food with recipe links to my blog. My site (Asian in America) has recipes, videos, stories and tips on Asian cooking. My blog, social media and published articles link to my Amazon author’s page where readers can purchase my books. 

Be one with the community.

I support my community. I write for Filipino and Asian publications. I network with Filipino and Asian culinary experts, writers, authors, historians, anthropologists, icons and experts. I endorse works by fellow Filipinos and Asians I believe in. I attend events. I travel to the Philippines and Asia to research and to renew ties. There is always a recipe or a story to find, new friends to make, and opportunities to explore.

You can’t be all things to all people. But you can write expertly about that ONE thing only you know about because you’re a writer for a niche market. And that makes you the BIG FISH in a small pond. 

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Elizabeth Ann Besa-Quirino is a multi-awarded winner of the Plaridel Writing Awards for best in journalism, given by the Philippine-American Press Club in San Francisco, CA. Her food essay “A Hundred Mangoes in a Bottle” has won a Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award. She was an awardee of the FWN Filipina Women’s Network 100 Most Influential Women of the World in 2013.

Betty Ann, as she is fondly called, was born and raised in Tarlac, Philippines and now based in New Jersey, USA. She is a journalist, author, and a correspondent for Positively Filipino online magazine. She blogs about Filipino home cooking recipes on her popular site Asian in America (AsianInAmericaMag.com).

She recently launched her cookbook: Instant Filipino Recipes: My Mother’s Traditional Philippine Food in a Multicooker Pot, a follow up to My Mother’s Philippine Recipes, a collection of her late mother’s favorite Filipino traditional dishes which Betty Ann transformed to everyday cooking in her American kitchen. Other books she has written are How to Cook Philippine Desserts, Cakes and Snacks; Statesman and Survivor Elpidio Quirino, 6th President of the Philippines; and she illustrated Color and Cook Food Coloring Book, an adult coloring book of Filipino food. All books are sold on Amazon.com.

Her writing has been published on Positively Filipino; FOOD Magazine by ABS-CBN Publishing Inc.; Rustan’s Sans Rival Magalogue; and QuirkDIY, Quirk Books Community Blog (Philadelphia, PA). She has made a guest appearance on the TV network KACL-LA 18’s Halo-Halo with Kat Iniba, which aired in California and Hawaii.

Betty Ann is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (NYC); the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance, and the Association of Culinary Historians of the Philippines. She is also on the President Elpidio Quirino Foundation Board of Advisors.

Betty Ann travels often to the Philippines and throughout Asia in search of traditional recipes and stories about culture and personalities. She is currently deep in the trenches writing her next book on Filipino food and family relationships.

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