You’ve got a great idea for your new business and you’re eager to get started, but wait! Before you start building your visual identity, you need to get crystal clear on exactly what you are going to offer and to whom, by carefully crafting a niche for your business.

A niche is essentially a small segment of your much larger target market. It’s a way to differentiate your business by specializing in a highly specific service, product, or area of the population.

The more you can define your target market, the better.

This can be a tricky task, but finding the perfect niche can be the key factor in the success of your new business. It is essential in order to make real connections with your customer base.

Having a firm grasp on your niche makes it easier to describe what you do. You will communicate directly with the people who need and want what you have to offer.

Ready to create a successful and profitable niche for your business? Download the worksheet and follow along as we answer the following questions:

• What is my specialty?
• Who is my audience?
• How will my business stand out from my competitors? 

and finally….

• What is my perfect, profitable and successful niche?

Step 1: Choose Your Specialty

What will you do to help your customers?

Start by narrowing your focus down to EXACTLY what you will do for your customers by choosing a specialty.

A specialty describes the style or type of work you do for your customers or clients. This includes specific uses or variations of the product or service you provide. For example, if you are a photographer you might specialize in weddings, fashion, or food. If you’re a coach, your specialty could be relationships, financial, or business-related.

To determine your specialty consider:

• What do you enjoy?
• What are you good at?
• What do your customers need and want most?

Identify your dream customer’s problems, needs, and wants by looking at the world from their perspective. Once you’ve identified the need, you can then focus on providing your own unique solution, or your specialty. Be very clear on what you will do to support your customers.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Market

Who do you want to work with?

Start out by getting really clear about who you want to help. This is your intended audience and your ideal customer. Be specific not only about what your audience looks like (age, gender, hobbies etc…) but also where they hang out, how they spend their time, and any problems and struggles they face.

If you want to work with the right people, you need to create a brand that will truly connect with your dream customer. You want your target audience to understand your message and form an emotional connection with your brand. It’s important to know your audience on a very personal level so that you can craft your brand strategy with them in mind.

Aren’t sure where to start? Ffirst consider who you actually WANT to work with and who will want to work with you.

Who is your dream customer? Use the FREE downloadable worksheet to find out!

If you could pick the exact person you would want to work with, what would that person be like? You may need to create a few different personas for this exercise. You might choose to base your dream customer off someone you already know or even yourself. The important thing is to form a really clear picture of who you would LOVE to work with. This is your dream customer.

Step 3: Determine Your Competitive Advantage

How will you differentiate your brand from your competitors?

Assessing your competition can provide valuable insight on how you should position your own brand, products, and business in order to stand out from the crowd. This is your competitive advantage.

Spend some time researching and analyzing your competitors by checking out their website, social media accounts, and online reviews. Take note of what’s working or not working well for them. More importantly, take a look at what others are saying about them.

When you have a better understanding of your competition, you can then distinguish your business by improving on what they are doing well. You’ll also be able to avoid any mistakes they’ve made or are making.

There are a number of ways to differentiate your business. Innovation, quality, customer service, price, speed, efficiency or any way that works well for you and your business. These key differentiators in themselves can work as a niche.  

Get clear on what separates you from your competition. If you don’t know what makes you different, then your customers won’t either.

Step 4: Craft Your Niche

A solid niche doesn’t just happen, it must be carefully crafted. Keep in mind, your niche is not your industry or specialty. It is a narrow market subset in which you focus, in order to connect with your specific audience. For example, graphic design is an industry, print design is a specialty, and a focus on print advertising for small craft breweries is a niche.

To narrow in on your niche, drill down to exactly what (your specialty) you will do for who (dream customer) and how (competitive advantage).

Dollar Shave Club has been able to craft a very successful and profitable niche by combining convenience, an affordable price, and a unique brand personality and marketing approach.

Lush has found great success in the bath and beauty industry by carefully crafting a brand based on the company value of being socially responsible. They’ve built a loyal following and differentiated themselves by using organic ingredients, eco-friendly packaging, and providing cruelty-free products.

What Makes a Niche Profitable and Successful?

A good niche should answer three questions:

1. What problem you will solve?
2. Who’s problem will you solve?
3. How will you solve it better?

Your goal is to offer specific solutions to specific problems for a specific group of people.

What does a great niche look like? 

• Supports your long-term goals and overall vision.
• It’s unique.
• Provides real value because people truly need and/or want it.  
• It’s evolvable and can grow and adapt with your business.
• It’s profitable.
• Makes you feel pumped!  

It may seem counterintuitive to narrow your field of potential customers, but in the long run, niche marketing can actually help you to get more customers. You can’t be everything to everyone and you can’t be an “expert” at everything. Rather than trying to meet everyone’s needs, or all the needs of a specific group of people, focus on meeting a very specific and special need.

With so much competition out there it can be hard to stand out. A targeted niche market will help you do just that.

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