Many entrepreneurs are afraid of declaring a niche. They are afraid if they specialize too much – if at all – they’ll lose business. After all, a niche means focusing on a smaller segment of the entire market. They want to be able to draw from a bigger pool of potential customers.
The problem with keeping your target market too broad is that you don’t really speak to everyone. You end up speaking to no one. If you don’t have a specialized niche, when you’re talking to your target market – whether in print, on the web, or in person – you don’t have anything specific to say so you keep to generalizations. And when you generalize you start to sound like everyone else.
When I was speaking with Michel Neray last Thursday as part of the Build Your Business Teleseminar Series he told us that entrepreneurs need to get past this fear of specialization in order to succeed.
The real problem is that there is considerable competition out there. In order to convince people to spend their money on your product or service, you need to be able to demonstrate why you are different from all the other competitors. You need to be able to say what you do better than everyone else.
If you’re presenting yourself as a generalist you don’t have anything to talk about that makes you different – so you sound like everyone else.
You might say you have great service – but everyone says that. When was the last time you saw a business promote that they give crappy service? And if everyone says they offer great service, it starts to sound meaningless to prospects. They don’t believe what you have to say.
But by focusing on a specific niche, you can get very specific. You can look in detail at what specific problems this niche has and talk about how exactly you solve these problems.
Then, when you’re talking about these problems and your solution, people with those specific problems will recognize themselves in your message. They’ll connect with what you have to say. And you’ll start to stand out from the crowd.
Consider it this way. A few years ago my father had a subdural hematoma – bleeding in his brain. He was rushed by ambulance from Nanaimo to Victoria because there was no neurosurgeon in Nanaimo. The surgeon who performed the operation to release the pressure on his brain had done many of these operations. He was very experienced – a specialist. As much as my father likes his family doctor, he wouldn’t have wanted her to touch his brain. He wanted a specialist.
While this example is extreme, it illustrates a point. Most people are more comfortable with someone who is experienced in their particular problem than with a Jack-of-all-trades.
Take the first three guests in the Build Your Business Teleseminar Series. Each of them is a coach but they have very different niches. Yaro Starak helps people earn a living from blogging. Lyle Lachmuth, the Unsticking Coach, works with creative professionals that feel stuck. Michel Neray helps people find their Essential Message – the thing they do better than anyone else.
Yaro, Lyle and Michel are all coaching and mentoring business people, but they have very different niches because they solve very different problems. This makes it much easier for them to talk about what they do. When someone is looking for a coach they can quickly tell if one of these three coaches would be a match, depending on what problem they need solving.
There are many ways to choose your niche. It can be by demographics – for example, Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs. It could be by a particular geographic region. It could be by gender. It could be by a particular problem. You could choose a combination. You can even have more than one niche, but you need to talk about one at a time.
True, when you’re just starting out in business you may not know what your niche is. You may not know what problems you solve. You may not know what you do better than everyone else. That’s okay for a while, but if you really want your business to grow and thrive, you need to consider choosing a niche as soon as you can.
If you don’t have a niche, start looking at your past and existing clients. When did you do your best work? Who did you work best with? Who did you have the most fun with? What comes easiest to you? Start noticing patterns and write them down. You may not discover your niche overnight, but eventually you’ll figure out what you’re best at.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Have you chosen a niche for your business? Please leave a comment and share how you chose the niche and what impact it’s had on your business.
