Step 1 in the content-led marketing strategy I’m constantly touting is “Understanding Your Target Person”. Well, there’s another layer ABOVE Target Person that’s just as important to think about in order to refine your marketing messages.
In this video, I explain the difference between a target person (or target market) and your niche, and three ways that you use to think about what kind of niche(s) your business is serving!
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How do you choose your niche?
In this video I explain the three ways that you can choose your niche and what that means for you, and how you should be shaping your marketing around it.
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So, Step One in the Content-Led Marketing Strategy that I take everyone through is Understanding Your Target Person. Your target person is slightly nuanced from what a niche is, and some people do get these two things confused.
Target Person vs Niche
So, just to clarify what the difference is, is that your target person is the individual who is going to be making the decision to buy your product or service. The niche is the segment of the market that you are serving.
Why this matters is because your marketing is actually more shaped by your niche than it is your target person. It’s shaped by both, obviously – understanding your target person is really important for some of those really fine details when it comes to discussing your product or service, but your niche matters on a much higher level, on a much broader scale.
The First Way to Choose Your Niche
So, how do you choose your niche? There are three ways: the first way is Industry. So, you might be choosing an industry like corporates, you might be choosing sustainable companies, you might be choosing schools, you might be choosing the hospitality industry. These are industries that you might want to niche your business into.
The Second Way to Choose Your Niche
The second way is Culture. And what I mean by this is community and people who have gathered together through shared interest. So, this might be something like hippies, this might be something like festivalgoers, this might be something like rock fans, it might be something like conservatives, it might be something like bird watchers. There’s lots and lots of different cultures and this is probably where most people end up niching.
The Third Way to Choose Your Niche
The third and final way that you can niche is by Product. And what I mean here is that you narrow your offering down into a more specific area of the thing you offer. So, an example here might be instead of a marketer you might be a brand storyteller or a copywriter. Or maybe instead of a healing practitioner, you’re a reiki specialist. Or instead of a corporate fashion company, you’re a corporate sustainable fashion company.
Does Choosing a Niche Alienate Your Other Markets?
There are a few little niggling details that I’m sure you’re wondering about here. A lot of people worry that when they’re targeting a niche, they’re going to alienate everybody else. And this is a fair concern.
Now, if you feel like your product can serve a particular niche, but it also serves a whole lot of other niches, then understand that, lay that out in front of you: what are the different niches that your business serves?
And then segment your marketing accordingly.
What Happens If You Don’t Niche?
This is really important because if you don’t niche, if you don’t understand your niche, if you don’t try to communicate within your niche’s jargon and their language, then your marketing is going to become watery.
As they say, if you’re trying to market to everyone, you’re going to end up selling to no one. So, really, try and understand some of your niches and put some marketing out there that’s targeting those niches.
It Is Ethical Marketing to Have Multiple Niches with Multiple Strategies
Now you don’t have to change your whole business and make it all centred around that one niche. You can have different marketing for different niches and that is fine, that is totally ethical. You’re not changing what you do, you’re not changing your offering or your prices, what you’re doing is you’re changing the way you communicate what you do so that they better understand it.
One of my first principles is that Marketing is Education and Not Deception, and this is where we start to walk that line.
And I want to be really clear here that you’re not trying to tell your niche that you do something that you don’t do. What you’re trying to do is understand your niche so that you can explain what you do in the words that they understand. And so you are educating them on what you do in a way that that they understand, that they respond to.
If you feel like you need any kind of clarification around your niche around your target person, you want to dig down deeper into that it’s something that I’m really enjoying doing with my clients and enjoy doing with people that aren’t even my clients. So, please get in touch I’ll be happy to help you dig down into that target person and refine your marketing a little bit deeper.