What is niche marketing?
Many people understand the concept of having an ideal target audience niche where you narrow down your client based on age, where they live, their interests, potentially household income. A niche market is a focus on a group of ideal customers who are most likely to desire your products and services.
Why your business should narrow down your niche?
As you evolve and grow, it’s important to focus on the most aligned customer opportunities. One of my favorite sayings that I’ve found to be true is:
“the more you narrow your message, the wider it goes.”
When you look deeper than simply age or interests, and you understand the core motivators and beliefs of your audience, that you can more powerfully attract your ideals.
Here are 2 key reasons why you should be deepening your niche:
1. Brand Expansion
First, it helps expand your brand. Brands create value and people often buy from brands on something other than just “lowest price.” This is why it’s wise to aim to build a brand rather than be a commodity.
A brand is what people think and feel about your business. The more that you exist for a core audience and evoke certain feelings with that audience, the more customer loyalty is built, and the more that your brand expands. Where many small businesses can get hung up is the idea that they “don’t want to leave anyone out,” or don’t want to “be controversial,” or to “repel anyone.”
However, when it comes to brand expansion the more you focus on your core niche audience, the wider your message goes among that ideal audience.
Here are a few examples of brands that have done wildly well by focusing on a core niche. Browse them and see what you notice:
Outlaw Soap - soap for adventurers, imaginaries and outlaws
Black Rifle Coffee - Coffee for patriots, those who support the military.
Glorious PC Gaming Race - Tech supplies for gamers
Lefty’s - a variety of supplies for left-handed people
Soul Seed Strategy - business coaching, brand strategy and marketing for conscious, visionary leaders and companies
Athena Legal Solutions - serving entrepreneurs who want to grow as partners
As you look at those examples, you may notice things you resonate with and are drawn to, with some of them. Whereas there may be others that you don’t care for, agree with and would never buy from. Regardless of whether you’d buy from these brands or not, they are all successful.
And that’s because they’ve each focused on their brand strategy and understanding the niche they serve. To achieve brand expansion, your brand will want to focus on the same. You can’t be all things to everyone, because if you are, your brand becomes forgettable.
However, if you find your sweet niche-spot, you can grow and scale by focusing on serving that core audience.
2. Improve scalability, customer satisfaction + profits
The more aligned and focused you become, the more that you can systemize providing a quality, repeatable product or service for an ideal customer segment. If you are trying to customize and personalize a service for customers at various stages, it becomes difficult to create standards and practices for your team to follow, and it becomes difficult to scale.
How to narrow your niche?
To more powerfully identify and connect with your ideal customers here are a couple simple questions to consider that can help you better target your marketing and messaging, and make a more authentic connection with those who are the best ideal fit.
In today’s busy world – where people need to see a marketing message on average eight times before taking action – how can you best stand out from this cluttered space?
1: Consider your customer’s discomforts and desires. Put yourself in your customer's shoes to imagine their discomfort and desires. Often we need to get present with our own pain before we’re actually moved to make a buying decision. Your customers are no different. What are the pain points they are experiencing, and what outcome is possible when they engage with your product or service? If you can share some empathy and put yourself in your customer's shoes, that will better help you understand where they are in their decision making process.
2: Identify where your customer is in their personal journey
This will help you be a better service provider and establish greater trust. You can also identify if they truly are the right client or if they are at a different stage in their journey and would be better referred elsewhere. This means doing the right thing for the client and for your organization, and it saves your team time, energy and money in the long run by helping you focus on your most ideal client.
3: Interview recent customers along with those who didn’t buy
Building in a practice of interviewing both customers, as well as those who didn’t buy, will help you keep the pulse on changing market needs, beliefs, and decision making drivers. It will also help you recognize how your services may be growing and improving, or where you may have unknown gaps. Building in a regular practice of surveying and interviewing customers will help you keep a fresh perspective on what your ideal customer has to say, along with what they desire so that you will stay prepared to continue serving them.
Finally, scarcity marketing is out, and authentic marketing and connections will continue to be key in 2022 and beyond.
People are busy and want to know they can trust where they are investing their time and money.
This is why it’s a wise investment for your business to put in the time and money to understand who your most aligned customers are, and to keep the pulse on how they might be evolving.
Deepening your niche helps you and your team authentically connect and serve the most aligned customers. It’s a lot easier to serve those who are ready for what you offer, rather than wasting energy trying to be all things to everyone.
Desire to grow your business in greater alignment with your vision?
Soul Seed Strategy helps conscious leaders and companies to create soul-aligned-brand and marketing strategies for expansion. Start a conversation with Soul Seed Strategy today!
Guest Post: Amber Swenor, Transformational Brand Strategist and CEO of Soul Seed.
As a transformational brand strategist, Amber Swenor helps business leaders live and lead in authenticity. Amber is the founder of Soul Seed Strategy, a brand strategy, coaching and marketing firm that helps elevate conscious leaders and companies by implementing soul-aligned-strategies. Amber grew her own business to over $1M in under four years and is passionate about helping visionary entrepreneurs to create businesses that bring greater freedom, joy, profit and wealth. She's also a global speaker and business trainer, with an upcoming book, UNLEASHED: A Been There Rocked That Guide to Radical Authenticity in Life and Business. When she’s not strategizing with clients or speaking on stages, you’ll find her rocking with her metal band, Morningstar.