When thinking about how to upscale your brand, the idea of using a niche strategy seems counterintuitive at first – especially when you’re just starting out. Why would you voluntarily cut down the size of your potential audience if your goal is to bring in more clients?
But just because your business says that it’s open to working with everyone doesn’t mean that everyone will be open to working with you. Your business could consider all eight billion people in the world as potential buyers, but if none of those people thinks you have something worth selling, all you’re doing is laying out a welcome mat in an empty void.
Instead, by shrinking both the focus and the potential audience of your brand, your consumer base actually ends up growing. Here are three standout reasons why you should consider choosing a niche for your brand, along with a bonus piece of advice if you find yourself stuck.
1. Targeted messaging condenses your brand’s weak broad appeal into something far stronger inside a specific market, helping to bring in more clients overall
Picture your marketing strategy like a fishing trip. You’ve been tasked with bringing in as many fish as possible with whatever limited resources you have at your disposal. If you’re creating a business with a wide range of potential customers, your strategy is akin to casting a wide net into the sea, hoping to haul in thousands of fish in one go.
The problem with this kind of thinking quickly becomes apparent when you realise that you simply don’t have enough material to build such a huge net without the openings being too large, and all of the fish you were trying to catch is able to escape the net with ease. Even if you could ensnare all those fish, only a large established brand could afford enough high-quality materials to stop the net from breaking or would have enough fishermen on board to know what to do with all the fish once they’d caught them.
The same principles apply to your brand. Casting a wide net using vague messaging will only result in no one feeling truly inspired to reach out to you or spending an endless amount of time wading through a sea of potential clients that you could have spent helping the few people that are actually interested in your services.
Meanwhile, a niche focus would bring in a smaller potential number of customers, yes, but the people that do come into contact with you will be much more likely to become long-term clients that you can make a real difference for. Why bother advertising to such a large number of people when you could simply target the people you know are likely to become a customer for your brand?
2. Specialisation in a narrow area of your craft is difficult for others to replicate
Generally, if someone is in the market for a service, they will have already thought about whether or not they have the necessary skills and tools to carry out said service themselves. After all, why spend money on something that you could do yourself for free?
A similar pattern of thought is present when a customer is looking to work with different brands. If you’re offering a generalised service, there are probably going to be many others who are doing the same, some of which will have more established brands or more knowledge on how to succeed in their area of expertise. If you’re the new brand on the block, it’s going to be hard for you to stand out against businesses that have been doing what you’re doing for years.
It’s only by finding a niche to explore that you can break away from the crowd and hone in on those important details that differentiate your brand from everyone else. An onlooking client will be much more excited to see their exact needs written out in your brand messaging instead of being a small part of a larger process because they’ll know that your entire brand is dedicated to helping people like them.
Plus, as an added incentive, a niche in a demanding field gives you permission to raise your prices a bit higher. The fewer people there are that are offering the same things as you, the more valuable your services become and the more influence you have on commanding the market in that specific area. If your niche is worth the investment you’ve put into it, then it’s also worth charging a little extra from your customers.
3. Niche branding can help streamline the process of defining your brand as a whole
In addition to figuring out what you’re selling, there are countless other smaller decisions every brand has to make in order to succeed in today’s market. It’s a tough job for anyone to tackle, whether they’re an expert or a novice in the world of business. Thankfully though, choosing a niche can actually help to make other choices related to your brand easier, helping to snowball your business into a better future.
Let’s take the example of customer personas. I’m sure everyone who has ever attempted to define their target audience has created a loose persona like this in the beginning: “Aged 18-60, male or female, lives in the city, has some disposable income and uses social media…”
There’s nothing to be embarrassed about if you end up with a persona like this. In fact, the persona you create might genuinely be accurate for your current brand – it’s just that you’re being let down by the brand itself being undecided on what it wants to do and who it wants to appeal to.
But when you define a niche for your brand, everything changes. Suddenly the audience you’re targeting might need a lot of experience in a specific area so that you can define their age bracket more strictly towards the higher end. Or, maybe the people interested in your niche have a specific online community they gather in to ask questions and post discussions.
Now that your target audience is better defined, your brand can switch to a personalised inbound marketing approach and make content tailored towards your new audience, placing it where you know your potential clients are going to find it. What’s more, these new marketing strategies turn out to be easier to monitor and quantify using analytical reports to find out what’s succeeding in pulling in customers and what isn’t, so you know exactly what to work on to improve your marketing strategies for the future.
All of a sudden, a cascade of chemical reactions has taken place within your brand, and the formerly painstaking process of outlining every little detail becomes a whole lot easier. It’s as though you’ve set off a long line of dominoes, with each one marking a small success your brand has now ticked off.
If you do decide to choose a niche, don’t panic if everything isn’t perfect at first
As amazing as the benefits of selecting a niche for your brand can be, it’s important not to put too much weight on the decision in the beginning. You might have decided to narrow the focus of your business a little bit, but you’re not expected to immediately come up with this brilliant, innovative idea that will revolutionise the entire world as we know it.
Finding a niche that works for you takes time, and it’s okay to stay more generalised for now. Why not use this period to examine all the different cogs in the complicated machine that is your current industry until you find something that clicks? Even if you come to a decision and end up regretting it later, it’s never too late to switch niches! Try to think of the time you spent in the past as valuable experience.
Work hard, remain patient, and trust that the fruits of your labour will grow
Hopefully, by now, you’re able to recognise that choosing a niche for your brand comes with a whole host of different advantages. Does that then mean that finding the right niche is a fast track to a successful business?
Unfortunately, nothing worth having comes easy. Choosing a niche can help you find your place in the world and support you on the way to success, but in order to reap those rewards, you’ll still need to show the proper preparation first.
Looking for an example of how to define your niche? Check out our blog on the eight best examples of CBD branding in the UK for some inspiration!
Alternatively, if you want some more personalised advice, then we at Loved Brands are here to help. Contact us and set up a call today!