Get Clients Online
Could you thrive in a non-traditional niche?
One of the biggest impacts the net has had on business – in my view anyway – is the opening up of non-traditional niches.
What I mean by that is that in the past your client focus was very much defined by practical aspects of who you could reach.
- Unless you were very big, you could usually only reach local or at best national clients.
- Unless you lived in a big city, you had to focus on a relatively general niche to make sure there were enough of them near you.
- You almost always had to focus on niches with “externally visible identifying characteristics”. In other words in order to be able to reach them with your marketing they had to work in an industry or a job function or be part of a demographic you could target.
That's all changed today.
While traditional marketing still works, of course, we now have other ways of reaching people.
Online advertising is so cheap (relatively) and the algorithms are so smart that you can put out ads to a broader audience and let the algorithm figure out who responds best to it.
You don't need to know in advance if it's people from a certain industry or with certain demographics or job titles. The algorithm can pick out common characteristics you couldn't possibly know.
Or (my favourite strategy) you can become a beacon that attracts the right sort of people for you.
You can't find “people who want to become scriptwriters” using traditional marketing targeting. But Lucy V Hay built a big following by publishing incredibly valuable resources for budding authors and scriptwriters and they found her.
You can't find “people who want to learn Airtable to automate their business” using traditional marketing targeting. But Gareth Pronovost built a hugely helpful YouTube channel teaching Airtable and potential customers for his courses found him.
Create valuable content for the people you want as clients (no matter how weirdly and non-traditionally they're defined) and they will find you – as long as you actively promote your content.
And it means you don't have to lock yourself into the boring old industry/job description/demographic niche model we were stuck with in the past.
Ian Brodie
https://www.ianbrodie.comIan Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and the creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.