To Niche or Not to Niche

Are you like many enterpreneurs who are afraid to choose a niche for your offerings? I know there can be the fear that you're limiting your business if you narrow your niche down too much, but that simply isn't true. Believe me, it's so much easier and profitable to market to a smaller portion of the market (just think how many people there are in the world!) than to try to be all things to all people. And you'll be amazed to find out that you actually open yourself up to possibilities that would not have come up had your focus been all over the map.

Next let me say that lots of (particularly new) businessowners struggle with this issue. All you want to do is give your gifts to the world, and making decisions that make you feel as though you are saying "no" to a segment of the population may not feel right to you. But by choosing to focus only on a certain group of people who have a common struggle, you are ensuring that your work actually gets out there, and you will be astounded at what comes your way.

For example, even though my niche is solo professionals, once I started defining my offerings for and to coaches/consultants, my business took off. Currently, I have about 60% coaches, and 40% other solo professionals as clients. Once I started focusing my marketing efforts on a sub-section of my much larger niche, all these other potential clients (who are not specifically coaches/consultants) showed up. I promise this will happen for you.

In the meantime, if you keep in mind the infinite Abundance of the Universe, understanding that you can't (nor should you) serve everyone is a bit easier. Think about the billions of people in the world. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't possibly serve all of them - and you certainly couldn't please even the smallest percentage. Trying to do so really dilutes your genius work, your best work, instead of allowing it to truly help those people you are most meant to serve - your niche.

Consider the benefits below to help shift your mindset to choosing a niche sooner than later:

1. Your marketing gets a whole lot easier.

2. It's much easier for people (your clients and customers) to talk about you because they understand that you do one basic thing for one group of people.

3. It's much easier for clients and colleagues to refer you for the same reason as #2.

4. It's much easier to build strategic alliances/joint ventures/partnerships.

5. It's much easier to become and be considered an expert at what you do.

6. Other opportunities WILL present themselves.

When you focus your efforts and energy on one target market, you are directing the Universe to help draw those Ideal Clients to you. When you continue to put yourself out there with one clear message, those Ideal Clients will hear it and seek you out.

Your niche will continue to evolve until it hits a tipping point, where everything is clicking, including your bottom line. You'll know it when it happens. And the end result is a flourishing business, serving exactly the people you were meant to serve.

Exciting, isn't it?

Defining a niche is one of the most common stumbling blocks for my clients, which is why I devoted the longest chapter (Step #2) in my 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success System to help in uncovering it for you. We spend a lot of time on this Step in the 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success TAKE ACTION Group, too, both during our teleseminars as well as via the private discussion list, so that by the end of the program, you know who it is you were most meant to serve. The rest of the Steps fall effortlessly into place from that point ~ it's amazing!

If you want to stop struggling in defining a target market for your business, join us for the next (and last of 2008) session of the TAG. Go here for more.

© 2008 Alicia M Forest and ClientAbundance.com

Comments

[Linda P. Morton]

Alicia,

You are so on target with this post. So many business owners try to market to everybody and, in the process, market to nobody.

It's vital that small business owners pick a target market, learn everything they can about the people in that target market. And then design all their marketing around that knowledge.

Market segmentation makes this easy. Once business owners identify demographic information like age, gender, occupation, education, and race of their target markets, they will discover the best appeals for their target markets.

Then designing all marketing efforts and messages to these appeals makes it so much easier to relate to and sell to target market members.

[Bonnie Richter]

Alicia, you are so right about "niching", and having a narrow focus for your target market. I think many people are afraid to niche because they think they'll be missing out on business opportunities. For most solo entrepreneurs and business owners, resources (money and time) are limited. Going deeper into a niche is preferable than going broader (such as in mass marketing). You can make progress into penetrating that niche much faster!