How To Find Your Niche Audience – Ignore The Mass Market and Still Win Big
The riches are the niches – ignore the mass market to rake in millions.
“I’ll take two, please”
As she pulls two €50 notes from her purse and put them on the counter.
“I’ll take two, please”
“Of course,” Mary says, adding “Can I gift wrap these?”
“No, I’ll take care of that myself, I have special paper and ribbon.“
Mary offers the receipt and Ms. “I’ll take two, please” drives away in her new 3-series BMW. The afterglow of another happy customer was fresh in Mary’s mind.
“I’ll take two, please”
Life was not always that easy.
Don’t worry, I am Urban Renström, there is always science and research involved in everything I say, teach, and demonstrate.
Years ago Mary the boutique owner believed, wrongly, that If I sell one of these to everyone I’ll be a millionaire
But, everyone didn’t and she wasn’t a millionaire. The epiphany came when Mary focused on a small group of people, a niche audience, and not “I sell one of these to everyone“.
Yes, choosing a niche scary. Scary because you are ignoring almost everyone to focus on a small group.
Yet, serving a niche audience is exactly what you must do to get to one milsky💸 and stand out from the crowd.
Let us unpack and see how and why you gotta niche to go big or go home:
What is a Niche Audience?
A niche audience is an influential smaller audience group of a larger audiences.
Wikipedia
For example, high net-worth women over 50s, without kids and vegan.
Or, gluten intolerant, fitness freak, high achieving 18 years old girls.
Or, think of PTSD, ex-military, Christian, men afraid to commit to loving relationships.
Each of these audience is a small segment of a larger group.
Ex-military men, in the USA, for example, are millions. Christian men in the USA are about 100 million, afraid to commit, millions?
You get the point. Niching down is boolean terms is the And not the or operator. In Facebook Ads land, you are able to expand an audience, go board, or reduce the audience by adding more interests, for example.
Why Niching an Audience
The value in serving a niching is that over time people will,
a) see you as the specialist/expert in your field (skill niching) and
b) people will seek you out like you’re the chosen one (audience niching).
Marketers love to segment an audience into meaningful groups — age, location, education, income, or viewpoint — thereby allowing one group to be served.
PhD., vs “Jack of all trades, master of none”
A person can also niche their skill set.
Think of a person with a PhD., or bone doctor, serving only children – paediatricians, older people – geriatrics.
Or fine wood furniture maker vs. a general house carpenter.
Or marketing analytics, conversion rate optimization, CRO, search engine optimization, SEO, or Facebook Ads.
Or cooking (culinary arts), making sauces, pastries, or bread making.
Or plumbing, new builds, renovations, or vintage AGA oil-fired cookers.
Niching specialist is not a “Jack of all trades”
By ME!
Also, Google Rewards Specialists.
Follow Google’s E-E-A-T Framework.
E-E-A-T is Google’s method of determining if a website is based on first-hand experience, is from an Expert, is an Authority in their field and if the website is Trustworthy.
The E-E-A-T is from the quality rater guidelines.
The Opposite Of Niche is a Crowd
A commodity is a good or service which is interchangeable. The only difference is the price.
Think rice, corn, electricity, oil, and natural gas.
Absent a branding differentiator you are just a commodity with the only difference being price.
Yet, when you niche your audience or your skill set magic happens.
- You stop being a commodity
- You attract🧲 more ideal clients, and
- Your competition shrinks🤏
Nichingaan audience or speciality allows you to charge higher prices, and be the expert and the go-to man.
A Niche Audience is one part of a Whole Audience
The real niche audience problem is ignoring the 98.6% who will never buy from you.
Start by painting a picture in your head of an ideal client, your perfect customer, Ms. “I’ll take two, please”.
Define everything about her. What does she like? And dislike? Yes, include demographics — her age, her location, if she’s single or married.
Include her beliefs.
Political, and religious beliefs. Is she a vegetarian? Does she drink red or white or is she a non-drinker? Drive a BMW or Ford? Love ManU or Liverpool? Rugby or GAA? Apple or Samsung? Yoga, triathlete or neither?
Yes, be granular in defining her. Because she is that particular about you.
Painting a picture of your ideal customer is odd. Yet, defining your ideal customer helps you repel the 98.6% of everyone who will never buy from you. And help you attract the few who are important to your business.
And that’s the point.
98.6% of everyone will never buy from you. So why waste resources convincing them to buy?
If this sound familiar it is. What you are doing is creating a marketing persona for your ideal client.
Now what?
Tell The ‘Everybody Else’ You Are Not For Them
Do this in 2 ways:
1st: Align your branding to attract Ms. “I’ll take two, please”.
Do this with colours, words, and images on your website, and your Facebook page. Everywhere Ms. “I’ll take two, please” will see and visit.
And like magic when ‘everybody else’ arrives they’ll say ‘Hey this is not for me’ and leave.
This works because “I’ll take two, please” Ladies identify with your branding and others don’t.
2ndly, state your intent explicitly. Say you cater for the “I’ll take two, please” on the front page of your blog/website.
“This site caters for the single professional vegetarian woman. Who drinks red wine, drives a 3-series BMW, is an iPhone user, and is a Liverpool football supporter. Gives to charities, volunteers for old age people supports WWF and PETA.
The upshot of all this? You exclude a bigger group who will never buy from you.
Maybe you are asking the “I’ll Take Two, Please niche is too small for me to build a business upon”. Well yes and no.
Yes, this niche, by itself, is small. But, because of cohort audiences, you attract many many others.
Read on:
People will Look up to ‘Ms. I’ll Take Two’
Yes, by definition — your Ms. “I’ll Take Two, Please” audience is small, even tiny. By focusing all your efforts on her, you will attract girls, ladies, and women who identify and aspire to be like Ms. “I’ll take two, please”.
If your ideal customer is at the top stone of a pyramid, then every other stone is a different audience, each separated by age or the cars they drive or the sports team they support.
When you add all these cohorts’ audiences together, they become a large audience which you can build a business upon.
But, this only works if you first plant your flag in the sand and say “I serve Ms I’ll Take Two Please.”
And because girls, ladies, and women identify and aspire you build your business.
You can also build a business on a niche skill.
Niche Audience is an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep
Specializing Wins; Generalist Wither and Die.
To win customers you must solve a problem for someone. A specific problem.
Why specific?
People have specific problems. Irritable bowel, eczema, a wonky tire on a car, dodgy electrical outlet, broken electrical shower, no sales from Facebook.
A specialist is memorable. A generalist is not. Experts always win over generalists.
We take our car to a transmission specialist when it doesn’t change gears. We go to an exotic allergy specialist when our hay fever tablets stop working.
Specialists Skills Has Cohort Skills
If you want to improve your writing seek out writing experts. Jon Morrow or Jeff Goins or Henneke Duistermaat. They’re excellent at writing for the web, and successful business people to boot.
Yet, writing on the web, by itself, does not a successful business make.
You need more than one skill.
Skills in WordPress, audience building, email marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, podcasting, video making, finding images, copyright laws, etc.
If Jon or Jeff or Henneke speak on social media marketing we all should listen.
Are they ‘go-to’ experts on social media marketing? Far from it. Still, their working knowledge is better than most self-claimed experts.
And by association, this working knowledge gives them a level of authority in social media marketing.
These skills are cohort skills. Cohort skills supplement your core expertise.
So, have you staked your “One Inch Wide And A Mile Deep” Clam?
Now is the time.
Examples of Audience Niching
1) Adam Connell over at Blogging Wizard.com “gives people advice and resources to grow a blog and take it to the next level.”
2) Leo Babutta over at Zen Habits is in the wellness space. He aims to help people simplify their life. Slow down and enjoy your cup of tea.
3) Gary Korisko over at rebootauthentic.com attracts people who want to become influential.
Examples of Specialists Skills
1) Jon Loomer at Jon Loomer.com is the Facebook ads expert.
2) Mari Smith at MariSmith.com is a Facebook Marketing Expert. Facebook is a niche compared to all social networks. And Mari is very well known.
3) Brian Dean has a blog and business at Backlinko – his skill niche is ‘Seo Training and Link Building Strategies.
4) Ardee Diesel is a skilled specialist. They specialize in repairing common rail diesel injector systems.
5) Skill Specialists BladeSharpening.ie They sharpen cutting blades.
Over to you: “I’ll take two, please”
Niching on an audience ignores 95.2% of everyone and is a deep gulp moment. Yet this gut-churning moment is smaller than the leap you took in launching your business.
Over to you. Let me know how you felt when you made your leap.
