There’s a lot of information, and you could even say pressure online about the importance of knowing your niche. The consensus is that if you don’t know your specific niche how can you target your appropriate customer.
This advice is sound, but it can be very hard sometimes to know your specific niche, especially if you’re starting out, or a new business.
What is your unique niche? Who should you be targeting? How do you find your customer?
These are all great questions.
From a small business perspective, it can often be tempting to go after a broad customer base in the hopes that your business will appeal to more people equalling in more business prospects or customers.
But unfortunately, especially for small business‘, this plan can backfire and leave you with less or no customers.
Contrary to conventional wisdom you can work on fine tuning your niche. You don’t have to know it right away.
Take your time seeing which of your services are most popular. Monitor other similar business’ and keep track of how you excel from them.
Proper fine-tuning and targeted business promotions take time. Don’t panic if you veer off course a few times. You’ll get it right in the end.
Just keep monitoring your successful ventures, those are your niche opportunities.
For a great example of a business that knows it’s niche well, I’d like to share a model for inspiration.
Recently, on one of those glorious autumn days, I glanced out my front window and was immediately drawn to a red van parked near my house.
My eyes glanced across the lettering on the side of the van that announced their business name. What I saw, immediately grabbed my attention.
Below the company’s name, it said, “Experts in heating and cooling older Toronto homes. ”
Boom, I was hooked.
As an owner of an older Toronto home, I well know, the intricacies and problems associated with heating and cooling older houses. And here was a business that specialized in it.
I immediately wrote down the companies name for future reference.
Just by having their van with its specific niche spelled out they had gained a new future customer.
Now, that’s knowing your niche, and an excellent example of how vital being specific can be.
Bravo, Belyea Bros.
Note: Belyea Bros. also has a great website worth visiting if you’re a small business owner looking for ideas or a Toronto resident looking for heating and cooling for an older home. Just click the link above.