Niche Your Business and Thrive
“I know every mile will be worth my while. I would go most anywhere to find where I belong.”
The words come from a song in Disney’s 1998 animated film Hercules, but they can just as easily apply to many small business owners struggling to find their place in a competitive market.Breaking in can be daunting. It often seems the competition is bigger, badder and more importantly, already entrenched. If you try to be everything to everyone, you’ll end up spreading yourself too thin. To find where you belong, sometimes you have to find your perfect niche. If you’re good at something no one else is, why not take advantage of it?
Do What Others Aren’t Doing
Take a dentist looking to establish her practice in a new town. The community already has several dentists, and if she’s not careful our would-be entrepreneur will be just another face in the crowd. Our dentist might instead gear her new practice around children’s dentistry. Sure the other dentists offer services for children, but our dentist will specialize in it. From there, it’s not too hard to imagine her slowly expanding her practice to include the children’s parents. Someone has to drive them in to the appointment after all.
Be a Big Fish
That’s just one example of how niching your business can help you gain a foothold in the market. Creating your own niche offers other advantages as well. By focusing your business on what you already do well, you’ll develop an expertise in that area your competitors won’t be able to match. You’ll be able to work more confidently, close more sales, gain referrals more easily and become more quickly recognized as an expert in your field. Another great benefit is that as a recognized expert, you’ll be able to charge higher rates for your services.
Specialize and Build Tighter Relationships
Niching also lets you get to know your clients better. By specializing, you’ve gone from trying to cater to everyone to only catering to the customers most likely to want your product or service. You can focus on their specific needs and problems rather than being forced to offer one-size-fits-all solutions. A good relationship with your client allows you to adapt and tweak your product as their needs and problems change.
Better ROI
Niching allows you to better focus your marketing efforts. You know what you have to offer and you know who will want it, so you don’t have to waste time and resources with general purpose ads. Our new children’s dentist might be better served by spending time at the local school’s career day or working with one of the after-school programs rather than plastering the town with flyers.
Niching your business can be a great way to not only survive in a tough market, but to thrive in it. For our dentist and many small business owners, every mile can indeed worth their while.