Narrow Your Thinking to Reach More Clients: Think Niche

by Jennifer McCay

A client recently asked me why her business wasn't growing the way she had hoped. After all, she was marketing her services regularly, spent a great deal on a mailing campaign to generate new business and even placed a print ad in a popular magazine. She thought she was doing everything right.

After asking her a couple questions, it became clear that she was making one of the most common mistakes that most entrepreneurs do early on in their attempts to grow their businesses. She was thinking very broadly in terms of her target audience -- the ideal clients she wished she could have.

Rather than focusing on a specific group of people in leadership roles, she was literally trying to sell anyone and everyone with a job on her executive coaching. The marketing activities she was doing were good in the sense that she gained a little business from them, but she certainly wasn't netting the number of clients she had hoped for, nor was she getting the type of clients she wanted. In other words, she was wasting a great deal of her marketing efforts and budget on people who never would be inclined to seek out her services!

Have you struggled to attract clients in the same way -- despite marketing yourself, working hard to network and so forth? (Or are you just starting out and wondering how you can avoid making these mistakes with your own venture?)

If you want to ensure that you are getting the full effect of your marketing efforts, you need to answer the following question:

How well do you know your prospects -- the people (and companies they represent) who are inclined to buy the type of services and products you're selling?

Although this may seem like a no-brainer to seasoned marketers, I find that the vast majority of small business owners don't know whom they need to focus their branding and marketing on.

The better you get to know your prospects, the easier it will be to brand yourself appropriately and start attracting the kinds of clients you've always dreamed of having. You need to come up with a profile for your ideal clients, the prospects out there who have a set of needs that includes your product or service.

Who are your ideal clients?

This is where this article's title comes in. Thinking narrowly can help you accomplish more with your promotions!

The more you narrow down the group of people you want to market to, the easier it is to show your prospects that you understand their specific needs. So finding a specific market niche for your brand is critical. For example:

• A marketing firm in Southern California focuses solely on helping medical practices (physicians’ offices, clinics, etc.) grow their businesses.

• One business coach I know only seeks to help entrepreneurs overcome their sense of overwhelm as they work on growing their businesses. Her focus is on microbusinesses in the early stages of development.

• Although I am certainly qualified to help all types of small businesses and typically have one or two clients that don't fit my normal "ideal client profile," I specialize in helping solo professionals take their businesses to the highest possible level -- in terms of pr.o.fits and job satisfaction.

So, for example, as a food coach, you might focus on helping people eat healthily who have had eating disorders in the past rather than on all people in need of coaching. A financial professional might focus solely on helping environmentally conscious clients invest in ways that support their ethical values.

Why is this important?

Although it may sound counterintuitive, the more specific your group of ideal clients, the better you will be able to meet their needs, and the easier you will be able to connect with their “me, me, me” impulses. Specializing in a certain area also makes it far simpler to brand yourself because you don’t have to compete on the same playing field as vendors who would otherwise be considered your competition.

What niche do you currently cater to?

If you don’t already focus on a specific niche right now, it’s time to start thinking about how you could narrow down your focus. There are different ways of arriving at a good market niche that differentiates your company from the competition.

For example, you might consider the type of market you will cater to. Would you prefer a more upscale clientele than you currently have? Is it possible to use that upscale bent in your branding? A day spa might differentiate itself by focusing on extremely wealthy clients only.

Alternatively, you might focus on a mid-range client if the majority of your competitors focus on the upscale market. (In other words, your day spa would be about affordable luxury, or some such.)

Likewise, rather than focusing on all businesses as a target for your service business, you might want to concentrate on home-based businesses or only Fortune 1000 firms or U.S. businesses with 50 to 200 employees in the Southeast.

You might also choose a specific type of business to help, such as hospitals or independent publishers. I recently ran across a marketing firm that specializes in helping other marketing firms promote themselves! Just as the cobbler’s children have no shoes, many marketing companies do so much work for their clients that they lose sight of the fact that they have to get the word out about their own businesses. It’s a wonderful niche and the firm with this specialty appears to be thriving.

In case you're wondering if you might end up limiting yourself too much by focusing your efforts on a particular niche, don't worry! The more you home in on a highly targeted group of prospects, the more they will feel spoken to in your marketing, and the easier it will be to gain new clients. This has proved true for me, my clients and many other small businesses time and again.

In fact, the less you focus, the more scattered your marketing will be and the less likely you will ever be to achieve the success you've always wanted.

Your Steps for Solo Success:

1) Determine whether or not you're focused enough in your brand, which is the basis for any and all promotional activities you'll end up doing. Remember -- your brand is the basic overall approach you take in your business, the instant impression you give and an absolutely critical aspect of your business. (Need help establishing a brand? For step-by-step help with every aspect of your brand from start to finish, check out the resources in The High-Concept Brand Bible home study manual here.)

2) Do you need to focus more clearly? If so, it's time to brainstorm. Think about subgroups of people in the area you focus on (so, for example, rather than all large publishing houses, perhaps focus only on the ones that publish, say, scientific texts, or if you are a fitness trainer, perhaps limit your clients only to women or maybe to men who are looking to achieve six-pack abs or some such). Obviously how tightly focused you are will depend to some extent on the size of your market, so don't err on the side of going too obscure, but if you want to gain clients only locally, in large metro areas you'll definitely be able to focus very narrowly and find exactly the clients you want to work with.

3) Create a personality profile for the clients based on their activities, publications they read, the places they go to find information about what you do, etc.

4) Put together a new marketing campaign geared to your much more specific target audience, and reap the rewar.ds!

All content copyright 2004-2008 by Jennifer McCay and AvenueEast.com

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