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STOP Trying to “Find Your Niche” – Do This Instead!

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If you hate the advice of “find your niche”, or it makes you feel like you’re leaving money on the table, or not being inclusive, or you’re just not even sure how it applies to YOUR business…you need to read this.

Watch here or read on below.

STOP Trying to “Find Your Niche” – Do This Instead! Click To Tweet

If you hate the idea of niching down, or maybe you’re just not even sure how to do it without leaving money on the table or excluding people, you need to read on…

I don’t actually like the word “niche” mostly because of the connotation, what people think it means. So in order to make sure we’re on the same page, we’re talking about the same thing from the same angle, let’s start with a really clear definition. 

what is a “niche” in business?

We’re going to define this by looking at one definition that is actually related to entrepreneurship and two definitions that are not, let’s start with those ones.

  1. First – a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment sometimes also referred to as a calling. 
  2. Second – a shallow recess, especially in a wall, something like a nook or even maybe a little corner, (keep those things in mind). 
  3. Third – a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. 

So let’s draw some emphasis on these words: comfortable, calling, specialized, and particular

A business niche should feel like a comfortable corner inside of an otherwise very hectic, loud, noisy, messy marketplace that allows you to draw on your specialties, your calling, to serve a very particular person who’s going to most benefit from what it is that you have to offer and the way it is that you’re offering it. 

3 women laughing together
What is niche marketing? 

This just means that you are doing, marketing to, or from that little corner of that very hectic marketplace, and in doing so, you can tap into some of the benefits of niching in the marketplace.

Benefits of Niching in Marketing

  1. Talking to a smaller crowd means you don’t have to yell so loud. 
  2. This means that you can use fewer, easier, cheaper marketing strategies to reach them. 
  3. This is all because you know the people that you’re serving so well that you know exactly where to go to find them, which leads to… 
  4. Overall, a smaller marketing budget. You get to spend less money to earn more of it. 

Problems with Niching Down

  1. You’re probably worried about leaving money on the table or making less money, right? Because if you’re talking to fewer people, naturally, you’re going to be turning some people away. You’re going to be not making money from those people. 
  2. You might feel like you’re not being very inclusive, and in the world that it is today, nobody wants to meet, not inclusive. So a lot of niching down talks about demographics, how much somebody makes, their gender, their ethnicity, and those things might feel really gross to you if that does not align with your business. 
  3. You might find it boring. It might not be as fulfilling for you to work with fewer people. You might like the diversity of working with different types, different styles of people, different backgrounds, maybe that’s something that really lights you up in your work. 
  4. If your product or service can serve more people, can help lots of different people, you can feel bad, you can feel guilty even for not going out and trying to support all of those people. 
  5. Picking a niche is often just a really arbitrary thing that people tell you to do. 

So we know the problems cause we’re in the thick of them. We also hear all of the benefits and we can see it, it makes sense in a way. 

Black phone on top of white notebook that says "solve".
Your solution

How do you bridge that gap? What do you do to be able to get those benefits without handling or dealing with any of those problems? 

  1. I want you to remind yourself often, find ways to remind yourself that starting small is actually what allows a company to go big over time because you’re not diluting your message to try to reach the masses.

    Pretend that you have a bottle of wine and it is the best bottle of wine ever. And in order to get that bottle of wine out to people, to give them a taste test, if you want to reach a hundred people, you’re going to have to water down that wine to the point they’re not getting anything. This is what happens in our messaging.

    When we’re trying to talk to a lot of people, our message is no longer strong enough to really grab somebody.

    So even the best people that would have been a no-brainer are going to say no. And everybody else is going to say no too because it’s not clicking with them either. But when we allow ourselves to give 5 out of those 100 people, a really great glass of wine, they can get a real taste.

    They can read the things on our website, in our copy, they can see our product or service is specific to them. That’s going to get a hell yes from them. That’s going to get them talking about it to other people and telling people, you got to go and get this glass of wine because you didn’t dilute the message, trying to reach more people.

    I want you to remember this. Maybe even write it down somewhere. The only way you can spread it around is if you water it down.

    But that doesn’t mean you’re not going to be able to grow when you have the means and the ability to provide more than one bottle of wine to really reach people. You can then start doing that.

    I want you to look at companies like Walmart. They started off in a niche. They had one little store, in one area that served only the people in their immediate vicinity. That’s niche marketing. Because they started there, they got to know their people. They served them so well. It allowed them to then duplicate that into the next town and duplicate that into the next town until eventually, they took over the world.

    Same with Amazon. They started off just selling books until they got so solid, so strong in that, that then they were able to, again, take over the world. If you want your business to take over the world, you gotta be willing to put in the years of going super, super narrow, because that’s what’s going to allow you to reach all the people that you actually want to reach. 
  1. The second thing that I want you to do is to shift your focus a little bit. I want you to think about not “who are the people that I’m eliminating?”, but just “who are the people that I’m starting with?”.

    When we think about the idea of “I’m not going to serve these people so that I can serve these people”, it’s going to make us feel crappy. But if we instead say, “I want to serve these people – who’s first, where do I start?

    • Who are the people that make the most sense to cut my teeth on?
    • Who are the people that are going to be the easiest?
    • Who are the people that I can best serve?”

    That is going to allow you to get that really strong, solid foundation so that you can eventually reach these other people. 

    So what I’m asking you to do here is just shift your focus. It’s not that I’m not going to serve these other people. It’s that I’m serving these people first. And then I will start serving the next and the next and the next as my reach and my ability to reach grows. 
  1. Number three, focus on the psychographics

    When you are determining who your niche is going to be, who your target audience is, a lot of people will talk about the demographics – what’s the gender, what’s the ethnicity, how old are they? How much money do they make? And those are the things that gross us out. 

    What I want to encourage you to do instead is focus on the psychographics.

    • What’s their life experience?
    • What are their goals?
    • What are their needs?
    • What are their challenges?
    • What do they absolutely hate about the product or services that are similar to yours that you can serve in a different way.

    Get to know who they are, not what they are. This is going to allow you to still niche down, but not have to worry about it’s got to be this person who’s this age and they look this way. That feels really disgusting. 
  1. Next, I want you to know that niching down does not mean turning people away.

    If you’re marketing to a specific person, chances are you’re going to have other people who don’t exactly fit the bill. And that’s okay. You can still take those people on if they feel like a good fit.

    So whether you’re a service-based business or product-based business, when you’re marketing to one person, you’re still going to attract people outside of that. This might be people who want to be that person. This might be people who are moving in that direction. This might be people who are buying a gift for that person. This might simply be people that like you, they like what they have to say or what you have to say. 

    So remind yourself of that. I don’t have to turn anybody away. All I’m going to do is speak really clearly from this corner to this corner in the marketplace so that these people can really hear me. And then anybody else who’s passing by is welcome to come in as well. 
magnifying glass
How to find your niche

#1 – Allow people to pick your niche for you.

What I mean by this is get out there, start engaging, start communicating, start testing things, start interacting with real-life people. Instead of trying to figure this out in your head, which is going to be arbitrary, start connecting and see how that unfolds. It’s not going to feel arbitrary or yucky or uncomfortable when you naturally slide into a niche because your people are leading you in that direction.

This was definitely the case for me and has been multiple times.

I would start off with something and the feedback given to me by my client’s course-corrected me as I went along. And it was the best possible thing because had I chosen and maybe stuck with that choice just out of pure stubbornness, I would have missed great opportunities that are so easy and natural and comfortable and were right in front of me. But I just couldn’t see it. 

This is not the right strategy for everyone. This is not the right strategy for every business or every type of business. But I do want you to consider, do I have to figure this out now? Or can I allow the feedback through sales, through comments, through engagement, through conversations slowly, course-correct me over time? 

#2 – You make the rules

And then last, but definitely the most important thing to remember: You make the rules. And you can break any rule in business, including this idea of niching down if you’re willing to do what’s necessary to break it.

So for me, in particular, I don’t niche down in terms of the type of businesses I serve. I love the diversity and the challenge of working with lots of different business owners and lots of different industries that brings me fulfillment. But I also know that I get to do things a little bit differently because of that. I get to get really good at my copywriting. I get to really understand those psychographics because I’m using fewer demographics. 

So you need to know if you’re going to break this rule:

  1. What’s the price I gotta pay to break it? 
  2. What do I gotta do to still be successful at this? 
Learn more about niching down

If you would like to know more about my whole process of niching down in business and how I help people choose a niche that’s actually comfortable and do it in a way that actually works for them, I really encourage you to check out my Healthy Hustle Approach.

My free class, How To Use a Holistic Approach To Create a Profitable Business Without Burning Yourself Out will show you the 3 mistakes small business owners are making and introduce you to the tools and strategies I use to help you create a six-figure business in under 40 hours a week.

Grab your seat by clicking the button below.

What about you, boss lady?

What’s your take on the whole “find your niche” topic?

Scroll down to leave your comments below.

xoTara-teal

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Tara Wagner

Tara Wagner

I’m Tara Wagner, creator of the Breakthrough Boss®. I help small biz owners overcome burnout and create part-time schedules with full-time profits. Not with some new marketing strategy, but with a holistic approach to how you operate. Click here to learn more.
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