Riches are in the niches – Small Business Blunders vol. 10

Hi. My name’s Adam Lowe with Adam Lowe Creative. I help small businesses overcome the challenges and obstacles that we all face. One thing that I see a lot of small businesses fail to do is to find their niche. There’s an old saying out there that says “The riches are in the niches,” and I completely believe that’s true. That doesn’t mean that you niche down so tightly that you only focus on one customer, that you only take care of one particular type of customer, but it means that you should be directed towards that customer primarily, so think the 80/20 rule.

https://youtu.be/Fa69s_ykZQQ

That helps you in a lot of different ways. It helps you really identify what that customer needs, how to market to that customer, and how to best service that customer, so when you’ve either identified the customer segment that you’re focused on, or a very niche product or service that you’re focused on, it just gives your business that little bit of extra direction that you might not always have. When you’re first starting off, of course, you’re struggling to get whatever business you can in the door, and a lot of small business owners tend to make the mistake of using a shotgun approach. They say they’re going to do a little bit of everything. They’re going to market to everybody. They want everybody as a customer. Anybody with a wallet is my customer.

The problem is, how do you find everybody? It’s very, very hard to market to everybody. It’s also very expensive to market to everybody. When you really start narrowing in on your particular niche it gets much, much easier, and you find that your business grows so much faster. For example, maybe your niche is hair salons. That’s very easy to market to hair salons, as opposed to saying “I’m going to market to everybody in the beauty product space,” or maybe instead of saying “I’m going to market to all professional services,” maybe you say “I market specifically to accountants and CPAs.” Get really detailed in there. Maybe even narrow it down to a specific geographic location. Maybe only within your county or your city instead of saying that you’re going to focus on everybody, especially when it comes to spending money on things like AdWords or Facebook ads, or any types of advertising. The more narrow you can focus that, the more inexpensive it’s going to be for you.

So, identify your niche, whether that’s your target customer niche, or your product or service niche. Really focus in on that, and if other things come your way that’s a bonus, but make sure you define your niche, and that’s where you spend 80% of your energy. Until next week, take care.