Niching when you want to work with (almost) anyone.
If you’ve been troubled by whether you should laser in on a particular niche or segment of your market and you’re not entirely sure how to do this, maybe you’re in “niche-limbo”, read on because the advice here is not your standard.
In business, you’re far too often told “the riches are in the niches”, but the reality of most service based businesses is this; you want to focus on the problem you solve for (almost) anyone who has that problem, because you’re damn good at what you do regardless whether they fit into the curated niche avatar someone on the internet said to adopt. Sound about right?
So, how do you press forward, finding a way to market your services and reach clients you can work with… I hear you say; “there’s got to be an easier way”.
I’m going to share a strategy that you can start testing out which allows you to try on a niche without changing your entire business, plus it will create more focus when it comes to marketing your services, without complicating it.
The Strategy:
In tandem to how you run your business and marketing currently, there’s nothing stopping you from focusing on a specific niche or segment of your market for a period of time to help you test the waters.
With this approach, the strategy can be something that doesn’t take over your entire business just yet, as in, you don’t need to change your website copy, re-word your lead magnets or make public declarations of your new direction. Instead, let’s go for small but mighty steps.
This strategy requires you to have focused efforts that has you simply connecting with the chosen segment and this can be done in the background. Such as; building your network, having conversations, attending events, delivering presentations, sending direct messages, email outreach.
Let’s paint the picture with an example; say you’re a business broker who helps people to buy and sell businesses. You can help any person, any business, any industry with these transactions, but you’ve thought it’s time to see what happens when you target just the construction industry. The five steps below will walk you through what to do from here.
1. Business as usual
Without throwing everything to the curb, you need to maintain your existing marketing activities in whatever manner this currently looks like for you. We will talk about adding this new strategy into the mix of your business, but a big mistake many people make when testing out new ideas is stopping anything that was previously in effect in their business.
Even if you think your current marketing hasn’t been “working”, stopping these activities entirely is going to send your business backwards. So keep up what you’re doing, we’ll talk about whether you adopt these changes in step 5.
This means, continue any form of marketing you have been doing, even if it’s been a little adhoc.
2. Choose a more defined niche
With the case of our business broker example, they’re choosing the construction industry as the more defined niche (on top of their existing business activities). For your business choosing a more defined niche could be across these verticals:
Industry (e.g. health, sport, education)
Role (e.g. CEO, Human Resources, Learning and Development)
Demographic (e.g. Millennials, Gen Z, Baby Boomers)
Location (e.g. city, country, continent)
Choosing a more defined niche is beyond just the type of people you currently help, it needs to be a segment that’s even easier to identify i.e. people who want to buy and sell construction businesses.
3. Choose a strategy or series of actions
Now to getting on the radar of your defined niche, what’s going to be the best way forward to reach them? Remember, you have an already established, functioning business - you don’t need to change anything about your service offering or sales process, we’re just looking for a marketing method here.
Say you’re wanting to reach the aforementioned construction space, your strategy or series of actions could look like:
Guest interviews on construction podcasts
Connecting with 10-20 construction business owners
Partnering with 3-4 notable construction industry icons
Creating and delivering a presentation at a construction industry lunch
Writing a blog article / series of blog articles for a construction organisation, association or platform
Note, none of these actions deviate from your existing business and marketing activities. You don’t need to adjust your entire business focus from helping people to buy and sell businesses (if you are our business broker), you’re simply getting in front of a more defined niche and showing up with your area of expertise.
4. Commit for a reasonable amount of time
Your local business isn’t likely to be a viral sensation and it shouldn’t be the goal, revenue / profit should be - thus, it’s important you commit to your chosen strategy or series of actions for a reasonable amount of time… this time being; how long will it take for you to receive data and feedback based on your input.
For some businesses, a month of dedicated focus will produce the data they require (as well as acquiring a few incredible new clients), for other businesses they need to test for six months.
5. Make a decision
Once you’ve followed the steps above, you’ll be left with a few decisions to make in your business. The three main decisions that come from this niche strategy are this:
Existing business and marketing activities + continue this new focused niche: You’re happy with how this niche experiment has gone so you continue this defined niche strategy on top of your existing business and marketing activities. You’re not required to change the front-facing positioning of your entire business if you’re reaching your goals. Remember to sustain both activities, the activities that built your business so far as well as the new series of actions created for this strategy.
Have multiple focused niches: Once you’ve nailed this defined niche, apply the same approach to other defined niches. For our business broker example, they may then add on hospitality as their next define niche to test out and layer by layer or niche by niche they start to reach the people who’s problem they can solve in a more defined, focused way.
You entirely focus on this niche: The clouds have parted and you’ve seen the light, you decide you now only deal with those in your defined niche. If you’re making this decision and you’re going all in on it, definitely give yourself a longer time-frame to assess this decisions (trialing this niche for one month isn’t going to cut it). From here you can consider re-branding your business, updating all your copy, making those public declarations that you only work with XYZ niche.
There you have it, a strategy for you to try on a new niche without adjusting your entire business from the get-go. If you’re a listening learner, you’ll love the audio version of this strategy on episode 40 of the Good Marketing, Good Business podcast here.
