54: To niche or not to niche? 5 surprising benefits of choosing a niche for your business
Let’s talk about the great debate inside marketing and sales- to niche, or not to niche?
In this episode of ill communication, we'll weigh the pros and cons of niching in your business. We'll also talk about how niching affects and influences your marketing and sales. And I'll give you some questions to ask yourself if you want to define or refine your niche a little.
When you first start a business, it can be scary to niche down because you are worried about excluding any business. But the truth is there are many benefits to niching down in your business that might surprise you!
I’m sharing the top 5 surprising benefits of niching down that you need to know if you want to grow and scale your business.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why we should try viewing our businesses through the same lens as ecologists
How niching down is a fantastic way to increase your visibility
Ways that niching down can help you elevate your business and your profit
Questions to ask yourself if you want to define or refine your niche
I hope you found this episode helpful. I encourage you to have fun with this! Play around with it and find what works for you and your business. Your niche doesn’t have to be permanent, you can experiment and change it as you go along.
So, is it time to refine or define your niche? Listen to this episode for questions that will help you choose your niche!
And make sure you're following and subscribing to this podcast so you don't miss any episodes!
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[00:00:03] Welcome to Ill Communication, Copywriting, Tips and sales strategies for small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. Hey there. Welcome to episode 54 of the Ill Communication podcast. Today I'm diving into [00:01:00] a great debate in marketing and sales. Tarnish or not tarnish? We'll weigh the pros and cons of niching in your business. We'll talk about how niching affects and influences your marketing and sales. And I'll give you some questions to ask yourself if you want to define or refine your niche a little. So something I haven't talked too much about is how I used to be a bit of a nature nerd, and if I'm being honest, I pretty much still am. But my university degree was in environmental science and communications. In one of my summer jobs, I worked as a park interpreter in the mountains west of Calgary in Alberta. I was actually a singing and theatrical interpreter. I wrote 45 minute long musical theater plays about different kinds of animals or plants to teach campground visitors about the natural world and to develop an appreciation for it.
[00:01:54] I wrote and sang songs about duck migration to the tune of Like the Andrews Sisters. [00:02:00] I sang about how frogs fornicate, and I even wrote and sang a song about Bear Scat, which is the technical term for bear poop. And yes, I did sing it in the style of a jazz scat beat poet. There's an entire CD of songs out there called Heavy Petal, and if you find it, you'll hear me sing a few songs on there. But I digress, because what I really want to get to is telling you that the part of that job was leading. Nature walks and teaching guests about the plants and trees and insects. And one of my favorite lessons was about how bees see, how they see their world, how they see flowers in particular, see bees don't see colors the same way we humans do. They see within the ultraviolet spectrum so they can see things that are imperceptible to the human eye. When we see a flower, we see some pretty petals in the center of the flower. [00:03:00] Maybe if we're paying really close attention, we can see the veins in the petals, but it's not very obvious. They look the same color to us. But when you look at those flowers through a lens, the flower looks completely different. The faint veins on the petals turn dark and bold.
[00:03:20] They look like runways or arrows pointing to the center of the flower. And the center of the flower is a bold contrast. It looks like a bull's eye. The outside of the flower is pale and the center is dark and bold. So if you could imagine if you're a bee flying over a field of wild flowers, how would you know which flowers are for you? Some flowers are adapted for butterflies. Some are adapted for tiny flies or ants or even hummingbirds. How would you know if you're a bee flying over this field, which flowers you should visit to get [00:04:00] the nectar? Well, flowers advertise to the bees using these arrows and bullseyes that are visible to the bees. In so doing, the flowers are advertising their nectar to the bees. But it doesn't just serve the bees, because when the bees land on the flower to collect the nectar, the bees are also collecting pollen, which they carried a different flowers, which helps pollinate the flowers and continues the species. It's a win win relationship. And it's because the bees and their flowers share an ecological niche. Now, niche is a term we use in marketing to talk about who your audience or your market is. And the word niche comes from the French word niche, which means to nest. So the bees nest or make their habitat where their flowers are plentiful and flowers nest, or make their habitat where the bees are available [00:05:00] and the flowers market to their niche audience.
[00:05:04] The bees. Now, what if we viewed our businesses through the same lens as ecologists? What is your niche? Where are you choosing to make your nest? What kind of clients do you need to sustain your business? How do you advertise and attract your right fit bees? Is he niching in business is multidirectional. It's a symbiotic relationship. It doesn't just help you grow your business. It helps the people or your clients or your bees within your ecosystem, find you and choose to work with you so they can sustain their role within the ecosystem. If you don't proclaim a niche, you will not be able to help the people you're meant to serve. They will not be able to find you. They will find someone [00:06:00] else and maybe someone who can't help them as effectively as you could. So a business niche is the area of focus for your business within your industry. Take, for example, coaching. Within coaching there are many different niches. There's mindset coaching, career coaching, health coaching and within health coaching there's fitness coaching or nutrition coaching or weight loss coaching. The same is true in entrepreneurship. There's marketing as a niche within marketing. There's visual branding like graphic design or there's copywriting. And then within copywriting there are further niches like content or blog writing or sales copywriting. A niche market identifies who you deliver your services to, as in who are your bees? So, for example, I am a sales copywriter for Gen X women In business, [00:07:00] there are email copywriters for e-commerce companies or blog writers for Mompreneurs.
[00:07:06] There are nutrition coaches for postpartum women, there are wellness experts for vegans and vegetarians, and there are wellness coaches for people with autoimmune disorders. Now, when people first start out in business, it can feel scary to pick a niche because you're worried about excluding any business. And I get it. But I have to tell you, I think one of the best things I did when I started my business was I claimed a niche. Right away I decided to focus on sales and conversion copywriting. I could have also written blogs or podcast show notes or weekly nurture emails, but instead I narrowed my niche to sales copywriting. And the niche audience I claimed was businesses selling high ticket services or products. So when I first started out, I positioned myself as the go to sales copywriter [00:08:00] for coaches who sold programs or services valued at more than $3,000. Now, over time, I've played around with my niche. I've explored what different services I want to offer and who I want to offer those services to. And you may have noticed that I have refined my niche instead of exclusively serving high ticket service providers. I now serve Gen X women in business, and as I've refined my niche, I've discovered a few surprising benefits. The first benefit is having a niche helps you focus. It helps you focus where you want to build your skills.
[00:08:43] It helps you focus on getting to deeply know your audience. You know where to do your research. You know how to build your skills because you've focused on a particular audience or a particular skill set. You know how to focus your services or products, you [00:09:00] can more easily focus on what kind of content you create, where you share your content. Because if your niche isn't hanging out on TikTok, no need to be there. All of this helps you cut down on overthinking, makes you more efficient, and it saves you time and energy. And at least that's been my experience. And one of the website copy clients I'm working with right now is shifting her niche from people who are just starting businesses to more seasoned business owners to help them scale up from multi 6 to 7 figures by claiming this new niche, her content team is now focusing creating content that will appeal to that higher level audience. They're not going to be creating content that appeals to a wide variety of audience. Now they're narrowing their focus to serve that more seasoned audience. Another benefit of niching is it helps you stand out from your customers as makes you more recognizable, makes you more memorable, [00:10:00] makes you more referable, and you just are more distinct and different from everyone. It's like the flower in the field of wildflowers you're advertising yourself. A friend of mine, Rebecca, is a sleep and stress coach.
[00:10:16] Now a lot of people need help managing stress and sleep, but instead of helping everyone, she's niching into helping women in midlife or Gen Xers. So if I'm looking for a sleep coach and I'm choosing between a generic sleep coach or a sleep coach for Gen Xers, guess who I'm choosing? I'm choosing the specialist. Another benefit of niching is it creates loyal customers. Your message is going to be so dialed in you will speak more directly to your ideal audience and they will feel seen, heard and understood. You'll demonstrate you care about your audience and customers. You become more referable and you will attract [00:11:00] and work with repeat customers because you are speaking their language. Another reason why niching benefits your business is it elevates you to expert status. You can devote more time to becoming a true expert instead of spreading yourself too thin, learning all the things you can focus on where and what you want to study to improve your skills. Plus, as you are focusing on that particular service or serving that particular audience, you are naturally going to refine your own ability and become super badass at it. You will also deliver a higher quality service, higher quality product, and you'll be viewed as the go to in your niche market, elevating you to that expert status. And the last way a niche helps you is it can increase your profit because customers want to work with specialists and experts.
[00:11:57] They're willing to pay for someone who gets them, [00:12:00] someone who understands us and who can show me that you can solve my problem. When you have a niche, you can effectively target and advertise and promote to that specific audience a little bit better, which is more cost effective. You'll have higher conversions. When you're speaking to the right audience of buyers, you may have a smaller audience, but it should take less effort to sell to them and you'll actually have higher conversion rates. And it might not just be a financial profit, but it might be a time and energy and creativity profit. Because now that you're speaking to a more defined audience, you can expand and play with your creativity. You may find it faster to create content for your niche market than if you were creating content for a wider market. So check in with yourself. Who or what is your niche? Where in this ginormous business ecosystem are you making your nest? [00:13:00] Who are you welcoming into your nest? Have sales been a little sluggish? Maybe you could experiment with targeting your marketing or offers to a more specific niche. So if you want to refine or define your niche, here are some questions to ask. Take a little bit of time to think about these questions. Maybe you want to journal on them a little bit, but the questions are what niche or market has a problem I can solve? Who do I absolutely love working with? Who will I absolutely not work with? Does my niche know they have a problem and is my niche willing to pay for solutions to solve that problem? Because here's the thing it is too hard to market and sell to people who don't know they have a problem or are unwilling to pay for it.
[00:13:53] Now the caveat If there are underserved and underprivileged audiences who cannot pay but you [00:14:00] still want to serve, you can choose to create free content, choose to offer free workshops or provide scholarships to help those who cannot access your level of service. But in general, it's unwise to build a business, to serve a niche market who is unwilling to pay or don't know they have a problem. So find a niche that will pay, wants to pay, needs your services and who you love to work with. And a final note about niching. Have fun with it. Play around with it. You can just pick a niche that interests you and experiment with it. Or you can sit down and do a little research to find a niche that will be lucrative for your business, both in terms of money and in terms of enjoyment and quality of life. Go ahead and update your social media bios with your new niche. Experiment with your email and newsletter. Experiment with your blog and podcast content and create some social media posts to test [00:15:00] and explore that niche. See what kind of response you get because you have to know this.
[00:15:06] Your niche is not permanent. You can and you will evolve and change your niche as you play and experiment and grow your business. So my friend, that's today's episode. Tarnish or not tarnish? Do you have a niche? What would happen for you if you refine that niche or chose a new niche? I know for myself, once I started creating more content around Gen X women, I had more engagement, more DMS, more people reaching out and saying they appreciate it, they relate to it. And for me, that's as good a reason as any to niche. So thank you for joining me in my little ecological niche for nesting with me every Wednesday or whenever you listen to this podcast. I'll be back next week with a special announcement, so make sure you're following, liking and subscribing to the podcast so you don't miss it. Bye for [00:16:00] now. And that's a wrap on today's episode of Ill Communication. Hey, if you're picking up what I'm putting down, I would love if you would leave a rating and a review to let me know. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss out on the tips, prompts and strategies I share in every episode. They're designed to make you an ill communicator, too. As always, you can check out all the links and resources from this episode on the web page. Just head over to Kim Keel dot com slash podcast. I'll chat with you again next week.
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