Finding Your Niche

I hear variations on the following comment all the time from prospective clients & colleagues:

“I can’t really market my business until I know what my niche is. Until I know who my ideal clients are, I can’t start with my marketing; so I really can’t afford to spend anything on marketing until I’m clear about this.”

Feel free to substitute your own concern: “I don’t know what my services are yet,” or “I don’t really know what value I provide for my clients,” or “I don’t know what makes me unique.”

And with this declaration of what you don’t know, your marketing grinds to a screeching halt.

My answer is typically the following:

“You don’t find your niche. Your niche finds you. And this goes for your services, ultimate outcome, uniqueness, etc.”

What I mean by this is that you can’t really figure it out in your head. You need to discover it. And the way you discover it is to jump into the process of marketing.

I know this might not makes sense to you, but stick with me here, because this is really one of the biggest issues service professionals face.

I’ve seen it hundreds of times. I’ve seen people completely stuck because they can’t figure out their elevator pitch or perfect marketing message. And they “know” that when they figure it out, all their marketing will fall magically into place

Utter nonsense, I’m afraid.

Here’s the big secret that nobody has told you:

You take your best guess, give it a shot and see what response you get. That’s all, really. You don’t get it right. You get it wrong – maybe for a long time – until it finally falls into place.

Here’s an example, a prospective client is confused about which clients she should go after. But she doesn’t have to decide-not just yet. All she has to do is take a mad stab at it and say, for the time being: “These are the clients I’ll work with for now.” And then build a marketing message around that.

She’ll discover soon enough if it’s the right niche or not.

She’ll talk to a lot of people. She’ll use her newly created message, ultimate outcome, etc. She’ll get responses or not. If not, no problem, back to the drawing board.

If she gets a few clients in this niche, she’ll soon discover if they are ideal or not. She’ll learn as she goes, and fine tune her message along the way. After a while the niche will find her. She’ll stumble upon it. And ah ha! That’s it! And her next version of her marketing message will be right on target.

Let me give you an analogy in another field.

A new music student says: “I can’t learn music until I know what composers I’m going to play. I’m really conflicted. Will I play Mozart and Bach, or Beethoven and Brahms? Difficult choice. But when I’m clear on who, then I’ll start to learn music.

Wouldn’t we roll our eyes if we heard this? Then why do we take the declaration so seriously that someone can’t find their niche? It’s nuts.

Sadly, the chance of the above person ever becoming a musician is pretty slim. And the with this approach, the chance of my customer ever becoming a successful entrepreneur is pretty slim as well. The good news is she’s willing to try.

And starting is easy.

Get a book, manual, or tape program, or attend a course. Start with the first lesson. Do the homework. Apply it the best you can to your business.

You won’t be a marketing genius right out of the gates, but you’ll be way beyond where you are now. So get out of your head, let go of the need to have things perfect, be willing to fail fast and most importantly, just do it! Nike would be proud.

(originally published by Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing)