How Committed Are You To Your Niche?

How niched is too niched and how niched are you? That's a lot of niches in one sentence. But that's what I want to talk about in today's episode of the Agency Accelerator. In my self running Agency Implementation Group Coaching call this week we had a conversation about how committed everybody is to their niche and it's a really interesting topic.

So I thought I would dive into.

That in today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. So, so grab a pen, think about how niched you are and let's road test your niche. And let's get on with today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast.

Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta.

Now, before we jump into today's podcast, I just wanted to let you know that today's episode is sponsored by Cloudways. Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that simplifies the web hosting experience for agencies. The platform offers complete peace of mind and allows agencies to focus on their growth with 24.

7 support and easy to use features.

Now Cloudways has just launched its Agency.

Partnership program that that's designed to help.

Agencies grow to a new level. So visit. And join the program to get access to extended technical support, discounts and co marketing opportunities with Cloudways. Now I'll put a link to that into today's show notes, but meanwhile let's get on with the show. Any of you who listen to me regularly or read a lot of my content that I post through my email list or on my blog and in social media will know that I am a massive fan of niching or niching if you are in the us. But it strikes me that a lot of people think they have a clear niche but when I check them out they don't. And this often happens at the prospect stage when I'm preparing for that call. They've answered some questions in advance because they follow the qualification process I teach my clients. So I've got some information about them and including their niche. But then when I go and check them out on their website or on social media, they're not really showing up clearly in that niche. So it got me thinking, how committed are you to your niche? And this was I was a discussion that we had in the self running Agency Implementation Group call this week and it was a bit eye opening for quite a few people. So that's why I decided to record a podcast about this today. Now I've recorded podcasts about niching in the past. But let me remind you why I think niching is so important. So right now we are in late 2021 and the last couple of years have been really challenging. And I think those agencies that have done well have managed to keep serving their audience. But my question is, how can you really serve your audience if you don't understand them really well? And if you don't have a clear niche and you're more of a generalist, then it becomes much harder to really understand your audience. When you have a clear niche, it means you can produce products and services that you know your audience wants, rather than making that huge mistake of producing products that you think they need. This is that whole Are you selling painkillers or vitamin pills to your clients? A painkiller is something that's going to get rid of their pain right now. A vitamin pill is something you know will be good for them, but it won't get rid of their pain. It might stop them having that pain in the future. But right now what the client wants is a painkiller. And that means producing products and services that you know your audience needs rather than the ones that you think they want. That is the vitamin pill. Now, an obvious point here is that a niche provider will always be able to charge more than a generalist. If you needed knee surgery, you would go to a knee surgeon and not your gp. And if you had to pay for that surgery, obviously the knee surgeon would charge a lot more money. When you have a clearly defined niche, you can also clearly define your ideal target customer, your customer avatar, your customer Persona, and really understand their specific needs, challenges, pains that they have that your product or service can solve. And when you understand that, you can create truly differentiating USP's unique selling points as opposed to those cliches such as we go the extra mile, we really care, and so on, which of course everybody would say. And when you've done all of that, it means that you can create really clear marketing messages and powerful content that really hits home. Your goal with your outbound marketing is for your ideal target customer to read it and go, blimey, that person is reading my mind. That's exactly what's going on for me now. And that leads them to think, tell me me more. Which looks like reading the content, clicking on a link, or even booking a call with you. Now, I'm not going to go into too much detail about how to create your niche. You can download a copy of my book, which I'll put in the show notes, which digs into Niching in more detail, but broadly speaking, your niche is the intersection of where you're most profitable. What type of customer do you get the best results for, and what work do you most enjoy doing? And when you've worked out that niche, you need to be really committed to it. And this is the question that I asked and brings me back to the kind of core title of today, which is a lot of people say they're niched, but they don't really 100% show up about that. So all their outbound communications don't necessarily show that niche. And I think that it's because people are kind of hedging their bets. Intellectually. They get the idea and the value of niching, but at the same time they've got this little voice in their head going, yes, but if you niche you're going to lose opportunities. But if you believe niching will lose you other more generalized opportunities, then let me tell you that quite the opposite is true. Because when you have a clear niche, your ideal target customer will be able to more easily find you. And of course, as the specialist, you're going to be able to charge higher fees. As I've already said, you know, most of us operate in a really crowded market. Whether you're a PR agency, you provide SEO, PPC services, you're a web design developer or a graphic designer, or a content marketer or full service agent, or even a coach like me, we are all in really crowded markets and we have to find a way of standing out. Now, standing out can't be because you're cheaper than everybody else or because you promise ridiculous levels of service. Because unless you're a completely online based company that has no interaction with customers, being cheaper is never going to make you profitable. So you have to have other ways of standing out. And standing out by saying we go the extra mile, we really care, as I said earlier is just cliches because I always think when you're trying to work out your niche, you need to ask yourself, when I'm coming up with my proposition, would everybody else say this? Would all my competitors say this? And if the answer is yes, which certainly they would be to we go the extra mile or we really care, then it isn't something that makes you different. So niching is definitely one of the ways where you can minimize the pool of your competition and get much more laser focused on who your ideal target customer is. So as I said, they can actually find you, which of course is the best way for you to be able to reach your target Audience. So outbound communications, providing value, demonstrating that you know what you're talking about, being very clear about who you serve to enable those people in the pool that you're fishing in to find you and reach out to you. And that means once you've worked out your niche, being super clear very quickly on the first page on your homepage of your website, being really clear in your LinkedIn profile, be really clear in social media content and email marketing and blogs and guesting and webinars and all the myriad of many things that you can do. Are you always showing up as that specialist niched agency or are you hedging your bets because you think there might.

Be some other fish that you can catch outside of your pool?

And let me tell you this, when you win business that is not in your core niche, it is always much harder to service because you don't really understand them as well as your ideal customer and they don't really understand you. So in order to service those customers.

It often leads to over servicing and.

Over servicing leads to stress and lack.

Of profitability and no time to go and win those ideal clients.

So there's a hundred reasons why getting.

Clear on your niche and being committed to it is super important.

Now, of course, you've got to work out how broad or narrow your niche is.

And my advice is always to go.

As niche as you can and then.

Broaden out over time.

But obviously there's some limits to that.

So if you were a web design agency and you might work with SME businesses, or you might even work, for example, with marketing agencies doing their websites.

You wouldn't want to go so niche.

To say that we are a web design agency that works with marketing agencies in Brighton, because you're going to limit your target audience to sort of maybe 10 companies.

But you also don't want to be.

So broad by saying we're a web design agency that focuses on WordPress development, that that is not a niche, guys.

That's just being a generalist in a very large pool. So that's a clue that you need.

To go more and more narrow.

How, when you have worked out your niche, how easy is it for you.

Then to find your ideal target customer?

Because If I'm a WordPress website design.

Agency, I'm not sure that it's that easy for me to find my ideal clients because they could be anybody and everybody. Now, I know that I sound like I'm standing on my soapbox and being really passionate and preachy about this, but I can't tell you how important it is.

It's interesting when I asked this question to my 30 self running agency implementation group members and I said to them, how committed are you to your niche? And then I work through some of what I'm sharing with you.

A lot of people kind of raised their hand and said, yeah Rob, you've got a point.

You know, one of the other questions.

I got is can you have multiple niches?

And yes you can. And sometimes they can even be disparate niches.

But what you need to do is find a way to present that on your website and you also need to find a story that links your disparate niches together.

But what you can't do is have.

So many disparate niches, like five or six disparate niches because that just makes you a generalist again. And that sounds like you are hedging your bets. What you can do is start narrow and ebb and flow over time. You know, I'm in year 15 of running my coaching business and I started out as a generalist coach. I failed spectacularly in the first two years of running my business. I really struggled. I didn't have compelling stories to tell big corporates and if I was talking to a small startup and I told.

Them I worked with a big corporate.

They'D think, well, you can't help me, you won't get me. So I then realized I needed a niche and it was easy for me to work out my niche because I'd previously run my own agency, so decided to focus on the marketing agency sector.

Over the next few years.

That worked really well. That's when my business took off. Then I was doing some work with a non exec director who works with recruitment companies and he started referring a lot of recruitment agencies to me. So suddenly I found myself with four or five recruitment agencies on my book. So it didn't kind of make sense to just say that I worked in the agency sector. So I then broaden out to say I work in a service based business.

I'm just going to put a timeout.

In that story there to jump in and say that when you are niched it doesn't mean you can't take on companies and clients outside of that niche. It just means that you need to make a very considered decision if you can help them and if you think you can help them and they get you and you enjoy working with them, then of course take it on. Anyway, back to my story. So I'd won these recruitment clients, so I then started repositioning myself to say, hey, I'm Rob Da Costa, coaching, works with service based businesses. After a few, well, not even a few years. After a year I realized that I actually don't enjoy working with recruitment agencies that much. Sorry, any recruitment people who are listening to this. And so I stopped taking on work through that channel and I refocused my efforts on the marketing agency sector and.

Then I narrowed it a bit more.

And said, actually the place I really enjoy working and the place I feel like I can get the biggest impact the quickest is working with smaller agencies. So my target market now is creative marketing agencies with between 1 and 15, 20 staff. And that is where 95% of my clients sit. I do have 5% that sit.

Outside of that there are the bigger.

Agencies or even they're not in the.

Agency sector at all.

But as I said, I made a very considered decision when I took them.

On and that is really how you.

Should approach your niche. So my question to you is, if I went on your website right now.

Would it be really clear to me.

About your niche and your specialism? And one other point to say here.

Is to remind you that you can actually split your niche in four ways.

You know, when we think about our niche, we always usually think about it by the sector that we serve, you know, tech or finance.

But actually you can split it in four ways.

And again, if you grab my copy of my book in the show notes, it digs into this in a lot.

More detail, but you can dig into it by the geography that you serve.

So if I'm a web design agency, I would say something like, we create websites for businesses in London.

You can cut it by the industry or sector, which is the obvious one.

We create websites for gaming businesses.

You can cut it by the deliverable.

So we create e commerce WordPress websites.

And then you can also cut it by the problem that you solve.

So this is focusing on the outcome.

We generate new business leads by improving your online presence through web development and SEO services. Now it's very likely that you would.

Combine one or two of those together.

But I've tried to be clever here.

And combine all four of them just to show you how you can do that.

And you would never do this, and.

This is a bit of a mouthful, but hey, I'm making the point. We generate new business leads by improving.

Your online presence by developing eCommerce WordPress.

Websites for gaming businesses in London. Like I said, that's a bit of a mouthful. And you wouldn't combine all four, but.

I just Want to remind you that.

When you're working on your niche, you can cut it in a number of ways.

So, back to my question. How committed are you to your niche?

And if I went and checked out your website, would it be clear about the niche that you're in? And if the answer is no, which I think for a lot of people it will be, then I really challenge you to go back to the drawing board, redouble down on your niche, be really committed to it, and make sure that your website and your outbound comms, such as your LinkedIn profile, all show up as that specialist. Because, trust me, when you're a niche provider, you can charge more money, it becomes much more easy to win clients and you stand out from your competition. So you shouldn't be shy about finding a niche. Like I said, what you should really do is go as niche as you possibly dare and then think about broadening out over time.

Another point to bear in mind is that when you try to appeal to lots of people because you really want to hedge your bets, so you don't want to be niched, so you try to appeal to lots of people, you actually end up appealing to nobody. And then the niche provider comes along and beats you in all the different areas that you are trying to win in. So if you're frustrated that you're not winning business or you're going into pitch.

But you're not always winning it.

If you're frustrated that clients that you're winning don't really understand you, then, like I say, double down on your niche and do some work on it. Grab a copy of my book because it talks you through the steps of.

Creating your own niche.

And if you have any challenges with it, reach out to me. I guarantee that the niched agencies always do so much better than the generalists. I've very rarely seen any kind of agency that's a generalist doing as well as the specialist agency. And as I said, if you needed knee surgery, you would go to the knee surgeon specialist, not the gp. And the same is true with your agency. So I'm going to get off my soapbox now. I hope this episode has been food.

For thought for you.

I challenge you to go back and check your website out, double down on your niche, and I'll see you next week for the next episode of the podcast. And oh, by the way, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving me a review on Apple podcast. And please think about sharing this with.

Your colleagues as well.

I'm really trying to reach more people and one of the best ways I can do that is with your help to get the algorithm to show this.

Podcast to more people.

But other than that, have a brilliant rest of your week, and I'll see you next week.