Things are pretty crazy right now.
Across the globe we’re seeing Pandemic Panic. Business owners are trying to make the best decisions to take care of their business and their teams, without knowing when this will end or how far the economy will dip before that happens. As my friend Mike Michalowicz was saying the other day, “it’s business as usual in unusual circumstances.”
Things are not normal right now, but you can find a way to keep growing your business.
Niching down your target market is a great exercise to work on now so your business will rise stronger than ever through this and on the other side of this!
Nearly every small business owner has been told “you need to niche down!” and followed it with an eye roll at some point in their career. It’s not our favorite piece of feedback, but it’s often extremely valid.
Here’s why this matters more than ever right now!
In a recession and in a downturn, people are still spending money. They're just more reluctant to spend money unless they are confident they will get the outcome they need. They are more reluctant to take a chance on spending money on a jack-of-all-trades company and prefer to spend their money, even if it’s more than “the other guy” with an expert and guaranteed results.
Niching-down allows you to nearly eliminate the risk in their eyes, build trust, and stand out as the only option to serve them.
Here’s a few tips on HOW to Niche Down to your Ideal Target Market when you are struggling!
Consider Two Perspectives: What you offer & Who you offer it to!
What Do I Offer
You can niche down by the services and the packages that you offer.
For example, you may be a branding and design firm who only offers full-service packages to design brands from start-to-finish or overhaul a complete brand. Or a pressure-washing company who only washes exteriors of residential buildings.
Too often, start-up businesses are so happy to have any customer that we roll over and do whatever it takes to keep them happy. Even when those things aren’t part of our niche. The graphic designer who does branding design but says “Sure!” when asked if they can design social media graphics because they want to keep the client and create ongoing revenue.
What they don’t realize is that those social graphic designs every week are sapping the time and energy that should be spent generating new branding design clients and diluting their brand.
To sum up: Time and energy spent on things that aren’t a part of your niche steals time and energy from other aspects of the business that could create rapid growth because you love them.
This means you have to know what you aren’t offering people as well as what you are offering them. What are you willing to do? What do you love doing? Figure that out, and market those things so you can avoid the things you hate like the plague.
Then you take that information and create packages for your ideal customers, with different results in mind. Think of what kind of outcome they’re looking for when they hire you, and create different packages to achieve those outcomes.
Who Do I Want to Work With:
This is about knowing your ideal customer.
Think back to your history. Think of specific individuals that you enjoyed working with: a good coworker, a colleague, a friend, a client, a boss, etc.
Now list out the aspects of working with them that you loved. Literally list them out on paper (not in your head) because this will help you discover what it was about working with them that made it so awesome! And keep adding to the list until you absolutely cannot think of anything else about them that you loved.
Once you know WHO you love working with, now you can look at what problems & challenges they are struggling with and design your marketing to show them how you solve that specific problem. You might have a few extra clients show up that aren’t your perfectly ideal client, but regardless, you’ll have great clients showing up that you can produce results for!
The challenge most people struggle with is having multiple things they love and multiple clients they love. Start by choosing the thing and client you love most!
There’s nothing that says you CANNOT work with someone who isn’t part of your ideal target market. But you want to design your marketing to drive your ideal target market into your arms!
The end goal is that you want people to know what you're offering and who you’re offering it to. Because it sets you up as the GoTo expert on that subject, and you become the best option instead of one of the good options. It’s worth the frustration to figure this out.
If you can figure this out while we’re all wondering about this economic situation, you’ll come out the other side stronger for it!
Know who your ideal target market is? Now it’s time to figure out how to get your message in front of them! We’ve got a great course on creating effective online marketing that is available for free!