Business revenue growth is hard. You try all kinds of ideas, often at once, to see what sticks. One rather counter-intuitive method to fast-track growth is niche marketing. The importance of knowing your niche: niche marketing is the practice of concentrating your marketing efforts on a small and well defined segment of a market. Many start-up businesses cringe at the thought of being narrow minded in their marketing approach. But it really can help your business revenue growth accelerate.
In this ongoing interview series with Christine Clifton of Mindful Business Matters, we explore knowing your niche, niche marketing and how it can sometimes feel counter intuitive to become narrowly focused.
Kalynn: We’ve been talking marketing, which of course is my love and why I wanted to do this interview with you. But I know that Client Centric Growth has been going through some changes. Can you tell us a little more about that?
Christine: Absolutely. I talked a little bit about starting out running marketing campaigns for my clients. What I found time and time again when people would come to me with this interest is that most of them didn’t have a clear message. I started having to make part of the marketing campaign getting their message really clear, because obviously I couldn’t run a clean and effective campaign if I didn’t have a clear message on their behalf.
The business has now morphed more into the coaching and consulting aspect of relationship marketing. That’s where I’m finding business owners finding the most need for support, is marketing messaging. As business becomes tougher, I think they believe that being all things to all people is a better method for success than being very specific about who they serve.
When I get them to think more about their business in terms of this marketing campaign – or in the past, the marketing campaign that I would do for them – they really began to get very clear on who they are and who they are there to serve. That’s where my time is primarily spent now: supporting service-focused businesses in clarifying their message and really getting out to the people they know already in a really effective way so they can grow their business
Kalynn: You mentioned something about revenue growth being an offshoot of this relationship building. I have to agree with you. One of the mistakes that many small business owners make is wanting to be everything to everyone.
They can help everybody. Let’s face it; there are a lot of people that we could all help, but you can’t find them en masse. You have to really narrow down your focus. The more you narrow down your focus, the more people you find to help. That doesn’t mean your business can’t grow and continue to help other narrowly focused niches. That can happen. But it [your business] will really take off if you narrow down and know exactly whom you’re helping. It’s counterintuitive.
Christine: Exactly.
To successfully engage in niche marketing, you have to be able to define it. Think about the people within the niche, what do they need, what problems are they having, what are their fears or concerns. Once you can identify who is really in the niche, you can begin to address their needs and build a marketing plan around serving them. That’s niche marketing, and it will grow your business faster than trying to be everything to everyone. It may feel wrong at first, to narrow your focus, but it is a faster way to develop and sustain business revenue growth.