It’s like pulling teeth to convince some service providers that they NEED to narrow their niche. I understand that it can seem very scary at first, but service providers such as coaches, trainers, speakers and consultants need to recognize that they can’t work with everybody. And, in fact, they will be able to actually help MORE people by narrowing their niche. One of the best marketing tips that I ever got was that I needed to make my market smaller.
Here are 5 reasons why it’s important to narrow your niche if you’re a service provider.
1. You’ll know what to sell.
To be successful, you need to create solutions to urgent problems. You can’t identify a market’s urgent problems if your market is “everybody.” But these problems become very easy to identify once you begin to narrow your niche.
2. You’ll know HOW to market.
Every market will have a different set of emotional “hot buttons” and triggers. They will also identify with different types of marketing approaches. This is a great reason to narrow your niche. Once you learn exactly who your market is, you will know exactly how to market to them.
3. You’ll know WHERE to find your audience.
Trying to solve all problems for all people creates an obvious problem: where do you begin? When you narrow your niche, you will know exactly where to find them. They will be hanging out on very specific forums, blogs, social media sites, networking groups, etc. One of the greatest challenges that many business owners face is knowing exactly how to find their market. Fine tuning your “who” will make the “where” a simple question to answer.
4. You’ll spend less money on marketing.
Since you now know exactly who you want to work with and where they’re hanging out, doesn’t it seem fair that you can expect to spend less on your marketing budget to get in touch with them? Yup! This is a great way to really get the most bang for your marketing buck.
5. You’ll be able to work less and make more.
Wow…now that’s a good reason to narrow your niche! And it’s a valid reason to boot. The more you can narrow your niche, the more efficient you can work. Your thoughts, energy and marketing ideas can go into “ultra laser-focus” mode, making you a lean, mean, money-making machine. OK, no more metaphors, but you get the picture.
So, what can you do with this new inspiration to narrow your niche?
Action step:
Take out a sheet of paper and write down exactly who your ideal clients are and what they need MOST that you can supply. Answer the following questions:
Who are they?
What do they like?
Where do they hang out to learn or gather information?
What hobbies do they have?
What’s their biggest fear?
What’s their biggest desire?
Take 10 minutes to answer these 6 questions and you’ll see that your marketing vision will become much clearer.
