The “N” word almost makes you cringe, doesn’t it? “Niche” has become a buzzy, jargony term these days – everyone talks about it but less and less people actually know what it means, how to choose one, and, more importantly, what it means for your business’ bottom line.
We’re going to get into all of that in this, right here, right now.
Niche? Ok. Really, what is a niche?
Niche is just a fancy word for segmenting your market and getting clarity on who your audience truly is. Target market is another way of explaining the same concept. We will use both names interchangeably in this post.
Your niche, your target market isn’t something to be confused with an elevator pitch. Your niche market is not something that’s easily explained in a single sentence. It’s a profile of who your audience is, and I really mean WHO they are… What do they think about? What keeps them up at night? What do they believe? What are they striving for?
“Okay, great! I am a financial planner targeting entrepreneurs.”
Nope, you’re not – you’re a financial planner without focus. Drill that puppy down!
When you see the big fish in your industry crushing it, it’s so damn tempting to go after them and aim for a broad market when positioning yourself. But, you have to sneak up on it, you have to start with a narrow focus and slowly expand to the broader market, organically.
That’s how all the big brands got started and that’s how you will do.
What’s the big deal?
The number one thing that is essential to your success in business is finding a niche market to serve. Without having clarity on your target market, your products, services, and marketing messaging will not drive the results it should because it won’t resonate with people. You have no idea where to invest marketing dollars because there’s no way to identify where you can get in front of your target customers to generate a return on your marketing investment.
If you’ve spent money on marketing in the past and “it didn’t work” you either didn’t have your messaging honed in to resonate with your target market, or you didn’t get your message in front of the right people… or both! <– That really doesn’t work.
Identifying your niche is everything when it comes to creating a digital product.
How to identify your niche market?
The most important thing when identifying a niche market is to identify the market that has a need for what you have to offer, knows they have that need, and is willing to spend money on a solution for that need. It’s the trifecta of the perfect niche market. Too many people spend all their time and money attempting sell to a market that needs their product, but has no idea they need it and, as a result, aren’t willing to spend money solving a problem they don’t know they have.
Our Course Accelerator process will guide you through something we call the 10×30 Method that will help you identify your niche.
Here’s some questions to get your started:
- Who can benefit from your expertise/product?
- Who is most likely to buy your product or service?
- Why type of people do you enjoy working with?
- Who is your ideal client?
How understand your niche?
Identifying and understanding your target market are two different things. Getting to know and understand your target market is an ongoing process. It’s something that huge companies spend tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars every year to keep their finger on the pulse of their customer market.
Obviously we don’t have the luxury of a Coca-cola marketing budget, but we do have one advantage.
Personal touch.
Usually we can’t out-spend the big fish in our industries, but we can out serve.
Here are some questions that will give you a good jump start:
- What are their short term goals? (1-5 years)
- What are their long term aspirations? (5-10+ years)
- What are their short term challenges?
- What are their long term pain points?
- What are their fears?
If you’re not yet signed up for our Course Accelerator training, we’d love to help you create a digital product that actually sells like hotcakes and gets you more time with your family, gets you on more airplanes to see the world, and gets you more money to stash away.
Click here for more information on Course Accelerator.
