What is niching? It doesn't matter what stage of business you're in--whether you've had your business for one year or five years or 10 years or 20 years. I think you could still benefit from niching down.
Why Niche Down
Niching down comes from trying to figure out which segment of the market you serve best. So that can be niching down in terms of your services, in terms of your industry, or both. You can niche down with your services and your industry. So for example, you could provide:
- Disaster recovery
- Networking
- PC sales and service
- VOIP phone systems, and
- Cybersecurity
For the industry you serve, for example:
- Utilities
- Manufacturing
- Finance, and
- Construction
So out of those, that's five services for four industries. So that's basically 20 different markets there. That's a lot of markets. In niching down, that helps you identify which market you want to serve. Once you identify the service and the market you want to serve, you’ve niched down. That can be cybersecurity services for the finance section. So that's a very specific niche and you don't have to focus just on your local community to do this niche. You can go around the country doing just cybersecurity for the finance sector. You can fly all around the country doing just one niched down service and one niched down industry.
Does Niching Down Cause Business to Shrink or Grow?
Now, what does it mean for your business? Does that cause your business to shrink? It would cause your business to grow because you'll be known in that one service. In that one industry, you'll have lots of referrals because everyone will know that you do cybersecurity just for the finance industry or you would do disaster recovery just for utilities.
There is the possibility that someone will come calling asking for PC sales and service or networking. Once you've niched down and you can refer these folks to other people, other IT businesses to do the work or it can still take it on yourself. But the great part about niching down is that you have what Jay Baer calls a talk trigger. All you do is cyber security for finance. All you do is networking for utilities and it gets a lot easier to get business.
Knowing Your Ideal Client and Core Message
You can create your own Facebook group around this. You can create your own Linkedin leads around the single target niche. The sales side of your business becomes a lot easier because you know who exactly is your ideal client. Once you know your ideal client, you know what core message to tell them.
So once you know your niche, you have your ideal client, such as the CEO of finance companies or other finance company IT people that you can get connected to. There’s also the LinkedIn lead lists on Sales Navigator that you can create because you have such a clear niche and clear ideal client.
From that ideal client you have, you gain a better understanding of your market and then you give them a core message that they can resonate with. So with this ideal client and core message, you can go to the market and pretty soon you'll have a lot of people knocking on your door because you're so niche down and people know who to refer you to do a specific service in a specific industry.
So I hope this helps on niching down. Let me know in the comments if you find this video helpful or if you'd want to make any changes. Thanks.
