Could You Be a Specialist in Your Business?
Can you confidently say that you have the skills to specialize in the products or services you are offering? To have a unique business? If not, you may be overlooking an opportunity to hone in on those unique abilities of yours and work within a niche that aligns with your skills and strengths.
In this episode of “Marketing in the Wild,” host Laura Higgins, a once niche-adverse marketer, chats with niche-branding expert Todd Howard on how to Nail and Grow Your Niche Business and what niching down really means.
Get your hammer out; this is what you need to know before you launch or rebrand your business.
Don’t Start With Your Target Market
In Todd’s 5-step framework, working with your market is actually the last on the list. “When most people think of finding their niche, they want to say, “I like these people the most. And so I’m going to pick them, and then I’m going to reverse engineer something that I think they want, hopefully,”” says Todd. But you don’t want to do that. Why?
Because when people reverse-engineer from market to product, they often walk themselves into a solution they can’t specialize in.
Invest in Something You Can Be a Specialist In
So instead of beginning by identifying your target market, the first step in Todd’s framework is figuring out what you can do that no one else can: your unique abilities. This means investing in a moment to unpack what you could and should call yourself a specialist in. Todd describes to Laura that these are “things that come natural to you, experiences you can leverage.”
By identifying and embracing your unique approach, you can build a unique business & a strong connection with a dedicated customer base that truly values what you’ll provide.
As Laura summarizes, finding your niche is, in essence, “creating differentiation from your competitors, which means you’re narrowing in on what you do.” She continues saying, “You’re narrowing the whole time [through the 5-steps of finding your niche], and it’s not just a niche audience or a niche product; it’s kind of all of it.”
Todd’s process is all about this; it’s about “helping people discover what they have to offer, making sure it’s unique, and then connecting them with the people they can help the most, and at the end, build a product. These ideas are not independent from one another,” Todd tells Laura.
Want to know more about Todd’s 5-step framework to finding your niche? Listen to the podcast for more useful insights.
