Many people try to be a jack-of-all-trades or a one-stop shop for anyone who may contact them. They try to cast as wide of a net as possible to attract anyone who might possibly need their services.
Understanding Niche Marketing
If you are a large company with a huge marketing budget, this strategy can work, but for most small businesses, they want to get the most bang for their marketing buck. To do that, they must focus on select groups of people, called niches.
Marketing is really about psychology. When your prospects read your marketing materials, they are looking for information related to their problems and concerns. They want to hire someone who really connects with them and understands their business or their lives.
By choosing a specific niche to work with, you are differentiating yourself from all the others by focusing on those people who are most likely to want or need your products and services and can afford to pay for them. The low hanging fruit.
There’s no point in targeting everyone when only a small portion of the population will have a need for your products and services and can afford to pay for them.
Niche Marketing is Cost Effective
Yes, when you focus on a niche, you will be reducing your chances of doing business with everyone, but you will be able to concentrate your marketing resources on a smaller group of people who are most likely to buy from you.
That same amount of money you were spending to acquire clients is spread across a smaller number of people, so you can afford to spend more money on each prospect, reach them more efficiently, and connect with them on a more personal level. This alone will make you more successful.
By focusing on a niche market, you focus on attracting the types of prospects who will give you the best chance of getting a good return on your marketing investment.
Sure, you might not get the business of people outside of your niche, but you are much more likely to attract more business from those prospects within your niche because you are telling them you are the company who understands their business and can specifically meet their needs. You become the obvious choice for them.
Niche Marketing Example
Let’s use an example. Say you are an attorney who wants to run an ad. Many lawyers will list their areas of practice and hope someone will need one of their services. For instance:
ABC Law Firm. Business Law. Commercial Litigation. Real Estate Transactions. Copyrights and Trademarks. Contracts.
Take a better example:
XYZ Law Firm. Specializing in helping start-ups get their business up and running quickly, profitably and effectively.
Which business lawyer are you most likely to choose if you are a start-up company?
The second one is more likely to connect with you because you are specifically telling prospects who you work with and the benefits of working with you.
Marketing to Multiple Niches
You can have more than one niche market, but how you market to each will be different. If you want to market to lawyers, IT firms and accountants, you will need three sets of marketing materials, each catering to the unique needs of those niches.
An accountant doesn’t care about all the services you can provide IT firms, but they will be extremely interested in how you’ve helped other accountants just like them.
Action Step – Choose Your Niche
So, in today’s action step, pick out one specific niche you would like to focus on. What types of clients can you help the most based on your background, expertise and experience helping people just like them?
Make a list of all the people just like them you’ve helped including brief case studies. Next, make a list of any relevant experience they might be interested in – such as books or articles you’ve published or talks you’ve given – that relate specifically to them. Finally, start making a case for why you are the obvious choice to help people just like them because you understand their biggest problems and concerns.
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