subject: A Step by Step Guide To Niching Your Business! [print this page] A Step by Step Guide To Niching Your Business!
How Do I Niche In My Business?I am sure you have heard the saying, "the riches are in the niches".A niche is an area of expertise, or a narrow band of focus.Evidence is showing that businesses who specialise in one area only rather than being something to everyone achieve greater success.Most business owners get scared because they don't want to say no to potential clients, when you niche you are allowing more people in a specific area to say yes to you because you are the expert.When you niche you become the expert and your goal is to dominate that niche. You may have more than one niche, you don't have to limit yourself to only one! Remember thought that when you're marketing to only focus on that niche in your marketing messages.So once I have a niche.. what then?Once you have chosen a niche you then focus on the brand and this brand needs to stay consistent across all of your messages, products brochures and letterheads. Never change your brand once it's decided. You lose the momentum and credibility you have built up. Keep your branding in view on all of your materials and brochures etc.Make sure that your key messages are consistent across all your marketing to this particular niche.All of a sudden your marketing becomes so much easier when you are communicating similar messages, stories, images, branding and strategies to that one market.More bang for your buck!By narrowing your focus and by committing to your niche it becomes a lot easier and hence more cost effective to contact your potential clients.Whether you are advertising on the internet, sending an email campaign, using social media, if you have got one specific niche in mind you can more readily hunt them down and know how to contact them better than if you were trying to hunt down people who needed, let's say, help with achieving their goals.How do you track down those types of people!Word of mouth will spread like wildfire.By marketing to a specific group of people your name will pop up from time to time in the circles that they network in. If you have done a good job your name will travel fast with the people that they know and more often than not they will tell their contacts within their own industry and whom they network with.How do I choose a niche?How do you fill a restaurant? Is it the food? Is it the menu? Is it the service? No, all you need is a starving crowd and people will come. You need a market where there is a strong demand.Look for:* A niche where there are already successful businesses* A niche which can be profitable* A niche where you can be the leader, the best, the innovative, the first at something* A niche with lifelong demand, not one-off demand* A niche that is tech savvy, so not afraid of the internet, so can reach them easily* A niche you're interested in - not necessarily your passion, but something you can see yourself wanting to invest considerable time doing* A niche you can reach easily* A niche where you can establish credibility* A niche where you can get experience if you don't have it already - you must have the runs on the boardWhat do I offer to my niche?* E-books* Classes* Tele-classes* Workshops* Presentations* Telephone consulting* Free on-site consultation* Email communication* CD's / DVD'sThe important thing is not just offer one-on-one consulting. As time goes by, you will possibly feel yourself burning out and as a result your time becomes more expensive and you price yourself out of your market for many people.Because there is only one of you, you realise you need to reach a larger population and it becomes vital to have a replacement income and a way for people to still get you and what you offer. This is why your business and your product or service go hand in hand.Your key skills and how to get establishedGet established by accomplishing the following:* Read what your clients read and become an expert. Get accredited if applicable, become a member of relevant associations etc* Collect testimonials* Cover keywords of your niche on your website, so design SEO and Adwords campaigns around these key words* Have a call to action on every page of your website and marketing materials* Have photos and testimonials from people like your market* Capture contact information on the website so you can contact them and market to them* Develop auto responder series that offers content on their problemRemember to become a strong successful business the key is to niche. Niching isn't about trimming down it's about fattening up your business for bigger, strong and fitter growth in the future.Get really strong in one niche and use your knowledge to then go and dominate another niche.It's really that simple!
