The One Week Marketing Plan summary

The first day of designing your business’s marketing plan should focus on finding your niche. While niche marketing may appear to limit your options, your specialization will pay off when you’re standing out from the competition.

Why’s finding a niche essential?

First of all, it provides visibility. To get new customers you first need to get their attention, and it can help to focus on an area of expertise. By building a niche you send a particular message to a particular target with particular needs. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. For instance, imagine you’re a Silicon Valley all-star who, after selling your stock options, is desperately searching for a way to avoid getting reamed by the IRS. You wouldn’t choose a general advice book like “Ten Ways to Save Money on Your Taxes” but rather one that suits your specific needs, like “Ten Typical Mistakes You Can Make with Your Stock-option Profits”.

But that’s not the only reason a niche is helpful. A niche can also improve your business. Consider JDC Repair, a phone repair chain. They started servicing only Apple products and doubled their sales within a year. How?

The niche route they took made them more credible as Apple specialists. But not just that, their employees also worked faster as they only had to repair one product. In short, they became experts in their niche.

So a niche is helpful, but how do you find yours?

Your niche could be an industry – for instance, you might only target companies in a particular field. But it could also be a function, meaning your business targets a particular audience regardless of industry. For example, you might offer a course on public speaking for executives from all fields. In this case, public speaking training is your niche function, but there’s no limit to your audience.

Start finding your niche by asking yourself questions like: Are there any common industries or functions between my current customers? Do some customers spend more money with me than others? Are some easier to sell to? By following the answers to these questions you’ll find your niche!