Niching and Your Ideal Customer

Welcome we are back for another episode of No Fluff Small Business Simplified. And in this episode, we're going to be talking all about niching and your ideal customer. Niching is a super trendy term that you probably have heard before, if you've been in the online business space, if you've been spending time researching your how to build or start a business, you've probably heard of niching. Basically, what it means is getting really specific about who your ideal customer is, who you want to sell to your products or services, and tailoring your marketing content, your sales efforts, your lead generation to reach out specifically to those people. And there's definitely some big benefits that you will see from niching.

The main point being that, if you can get more specific around who you want to sell to, you're going to be able to get more specific to their pain points in your marketing and on your sales calls, and how your product or service solves that pain point or solves their specific problem, right. So there might be different types of people or different types of businesses that are purchasing that can purchase and can benefit from your product or service, right. But niching means really choosing one of those types of people and focusing in in narrowing in on them, at least at the beginning. Mission can feel super, super hard. Because it's kind of like, Well, my product or service, I know can help many different kinds of people. And especially if you're a newer business owner, and maybe a newer service based business owner, you may have worked with a lot of different types of clients already. Right. And so you just don't really see where getting more specific and turning away business is going to help you to grow and scale your business.

And this is a really common concern for a lot of business owners. Again, the benefit is you can get more specific in your marketing and you could speak directly to them. So when you are talking through the the problem, or the issue that your product or service solves, you can get really specific there so that when they're reading your marketing collateral or listening to your marketing content, they really feel like you know them and you understand them. And once they get that feeling, it's a lot easier for them to build the know, like trust factor with you and get to that purchasing point.

Now, one thing that I really like to point out to people is that the way that niching is talked about a lot online is not the only way to niche. Okay. So usually when you're talking about niching, people are saying like, Oh, you need to decide on one type of person that you're going to market to that you're going to work with, that you're going to sell to. But you can also niche based on where your customer is at. And what I mean by that is I'll just give you an example. In my digital marketing agency. We don't hone in on a specific industry, okay. A lot of people will niche and go into a specific industry. So they help you know, beauty brands or wellness brands through their product or service, right, they might get even more specific there. And they might say we help beauty brands and wellness brands that are owned by women and who sell to women. Okay,

that's your traditional idea of niching down. What I've done is I do work in a few different industry common industries. But instead what I do is is I focus more on niching to where a business is at so that I can more specifically speak to their pain points. For example, I work with small and medium sized businesses who do not have the budget to hire an in house marketing team to work, you know, as employees in their business, but they know they need marketing. And they need support around their marketing, because they don't have the time, or the knowledge or expertise to do their marketing themselves. And they want to make sure that the marketing that they are doing with the limited budget that they have, is going to be what is most effective for their business and what's going to get them moving closer to their goals. Okay, so just because I don't only work with businesses in a specific industry, that doesn't mean that I haven't niched down, it doesn't mean that I can't speak super specifically, to my audience, and to my ideal clients through my content, and through my marketing collateral.

What it means is, I speak a little bit differently, because every business no matter, the industry, is going to have some really common pain points around that. Right, they are struggling to get everything done on any given day, right. They're struggling to understand where they should be putting their time. And time is a really important resource for these business owners. They might be a team of one, they might be a very small team under five or 10 people. And so what they spend their time on is almost just as important as what they're spending their budget on. And so they're also wondering to themselves, do I spend money running Google ads? Do I spend money running ads on Facebook or Instagram? Do I spend money trying to increase my to work on my SEO and my search rankings? Right? What should I be doing on social media to grow? Can you grow organically on social media anymore? Or is it only paid ads that are gonna get you results? These are all questions that my ideal customer is asking themselves. And they're going to be common across any industry, any industry. And that is how I've been able to meet in a slightly different way. As you continue to run your business and grow your business and work with more customers, you will a lot of times naturally fall into working with specific industries, just through who you've worked with, who you enjoy working with, where you start to get a little bit more experience, and where you're getting your referrals, right, that you can allow that to happen a little bit more naturally. There's another way to niche right. You don't have to just put yourself in this pocket of I only do Pinterest strategy for bloggers. Well, what happens if you're kind of discovering that bloggers want to do a lot of their own Pinterest strategy? And so you're struggling to find or they're not monetizing their site enough? And so they don't have the budget to pay for Pinterest strategy. Right? What happens then if you've gone all in on that niche? What happens if Pinterest as a platform goes away? Right? These are all kind of questions that can come up for people who are scared of niching through us into a specific industry. And that's okay. Again, it is important to niche because it allows you to answer those really specific questions around the pain point and problems of your ideal customer and be able to speak really directly to those. But it doesn't have to be industry, that's the common piece of that puzzle.

And then you can allow yourself to continue to niche and get more specific as your business grows. And as you grow as a business owner. Another piece of this puzzle is making sure that you're doing market research, right? If you are thinking, Oh, I want to work with businesses who are in this specific industry, or they're at this certain spot or point in their business like I do, right? You want to make sure that you're having market research calls with some of those ideal customers and asking them what are your pain points? What do you struggle most with? Right? If you're a marketing agency, what are you struggling with? With around your marketing right now, tell me a little bit more about that. what frustrates you the most about your marketing strategy? Or do you have a marketing strategy? Right? How do you see your marketing strategy fitting into the larger piece of your business? And how do you see marketing versus other activities, driving your business closer to its goals, that is the other thing that you're going to really need to do, because that's where you can maybe discover, oh, I don't really feel good about niching into this specific industry, or it's not really feeling like a great fit to niche towards businesses who are in this space, specifically, right startups with no funding, that you might decide, oh, they don't have enough budget to work with me. Because I have, you know, I'm charging a premium. Because I have a lot of experience, and I really deliver great results. Okay, so, tying in that market research, once you have done some brainstorming around what you can niche around is going to be super, super important, because it's going to help you to then be able to speak directly to their pain points, what they want what's important to them, again, so that they feel like, oh, wow, you're in my brain, you really understand me, you, I feel so understood that it's probably much more likely that you're going to be able to help me, right, because no one wants to buy from a business that they feel like doesn't align with them as a customer and as a person, right. And this is where we see even on the product base side of things, more and more brands making in the environment more important, right? Or focusing on sustainability in their packaging, and, you know, natural ingredients and things like that, because that's a really important factor for their customers. And it allows their customers to really feel like this brand gets me this company gets me and they understand what's important to me. And they're going to be able to give me the best result or the best product of what I want, while also still connecting to my other needs and wants. So this is you know, if you're taking anything takeaway takeaway from this, should you Nish? Yes 100%? Do you have to niche into a specific industry? No, but you do need to get specific enough so that you can speak to that pain point. And how your product or service is helping them is valuable to them and is solving that problem for them. And then you need to make sure you are getting on those market research calls. So that you can get even more specific around the language that you're using. And start to introduce that not only into your marketing content and your marketing copy, but also into the language you're using on sales calls, right and when you're doing lead generation. So I hope this is really, really helpful. If you have any questions around any of this, if you are struggling to figure out how you can niche in your business, and how you can connect with your ideal clients. Definitely check out my digital strategy intensive. It's where we really take a deep dive into your business and we look at what's working, what's not working and you walk away with a step by step personalized action plan that is going to tell you exactly what you need to do in what order to get you moving forward towards your goals and really start to see that movement and those results. So you can check out the digital strategy intensive and learn more about that at Sam DiNicola digital.com. And as always, if you've been enjoying the podcast, make sure you go and leave a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts every single month. reviewers are entered for a chance to win a free coaching call with me it's the most effective way to get my eyes on your business. So definitely make sure you do that if you haven't already, and I will see you next time on No Fluff Small Business Simplified.