May
17
Ask IttyBiz: Should You Make Your Niche Smaller?
According to Wikipedia (Unrelentingly Boring And Grammatically Incorrect Since 2001!), a business niche is described thusly:
A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing on; Therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.
(Unrelated side note: Around here, niche business is pronounced neesh business. Neesh. Not nitch. Neesh neesh neesh neesh neesh. Look at me, drunk on my own publishing power.)
One of the most frequent questions we get here is some variant of “How big a niche is too big?” or “How small a niche is too small?” We’ll try to tackle them all at once, quickly, before my cold medication sets in and I’m done for the day.
Niche businesses: the smaller, the better
When I was in England, everybody and their mother was starting a children’s clothing business. They called themselves mumpreneurs and they set up shops in their garden shed offices and put a shiny new website on their credit card and Voila! They were in the children’s clothing business.
I read about this phenomenon — although it was never called a phenomenon, and every writer treated each individual mum as if she was scandalously unique — in psychology magazines, business magazines and, repeatedly, home decorating magazines. Apparently there’s money in kids’ clothes.
When asked why they started these businesses, the answer was categorically the same. They were good at it and they really liked to sew.
Being good at something and liking it is not a sufficient business plan.
Now we have Oliver’s mum and Gracie’s mum and Hannah’s mum and Charlie’s mum all making baby clothes in their garden sheds. This is a problem. (This problem is handily described in How To Be A Titan Of Industry, in my opinion the best post on this blog. Possibly any blog.)
If you must sell baby clothes…
Be the fundamentalist Christian baby clothes seller.
Be the black transvestite baby clothes seller.
Be the baby clothes seller obsessed with barn owls.
Whatever. Pick something. (Technical note: Your onesies don’t have to show Christ on the cross in glorious Technicolor, by the way. You publicly thumping Bibles on YouTube and a subtle “Jesus rules, Judas drools” branded care tag is niche enough.)
Why people screw up choosing their niche.
There are two problems.
1. Underconfidence. I’m new. I suck. I don’t know what I’m doing. If I make my niche too small, nobody will buy anything. Plus, the owl thing is weird. Nobody else likes owls as much as I do.
2. Overconfidence. I am the best thing to ever happen to baby clothes. I’m a fucking revolutionary. EVERYBODY will want my baby clothes, even people who hate children.
If you are in one of those categories, here is my professional advice:
Stop being in one of those categories.
If you pick a niche, you lose some customers. If you don’t pick a niche, you lose ALL customers.
This is the number one reason I swear so much on this blog. (Two and three are that it makes people less freaked out when I speak with them, and that it makes my mother, who lives in England, feel like I’m right there in the room with her.) Some people love it. Most people hate it. Few are indifferent.
Indifferent customers = broke and confused you.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to be one of the 4% of businesses that actually USE the second part of Wikipedia’s sparkling definition and Wednesday I’ll tell you how to get 8379 new Twitter followers by Christmas. New here? Subscribe to IttyBiz for free and you won’t even have to come back. We’ll just send stuff to you. Automagically.
I’m intrigued and puzzled by this – I want to be a badass MFer that you are here, and also do personal development, and also do marketing – but I’m not sure where I fit. But maybe I’m just personal branding so putting out consistent content that is 8-10 on the badass scale will be enough to get shit done. But probably not, I have no clue.
But yeah, my point is that you’re right, but sometimes it’s hard to tell if I even have a niche picked out.
At what stage does the power of personality create a niche for yourself if you use it without focus in blog posts that jump all across the map?
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Along with trying to figure out how to convey my queer, feminist and generally subculture-ey but also cheesy and optimistic self online. It feels so scary to step out there on a limb and actually focus on a smaller (and therefore better) niche. Thanks for the reminder to keep. on. working on it.
Am testing out the name, which may or may not stick, but it’s closer to where I want to be from copywriting no-man’s land.
When I began freelancing, I had work which was great, but it was incredibly diverse that when asked what I did, I sounded like I had multiple personalities.
I knew if I wanted to do this long term and not go insane I had to refine what I did and didn’t want to write about.
So I’m picking projects now which give me a thrill or for people I admire who tend to be creative, non-conformist and crazy passionate about what they do.
I know that’s not a niche per se, but I also like to be known as someone who is straight forward and easy to order copy from.
Still refining, but getting there :-)
^ What Ross said! Here’s the thing – around here, there was a graphic design shop that had a VERY distinctive style because it was all about the owner. You could always tell if a new logo or set of business stationery was his, because it all had the same feel to it. It was fun, and excellent, award-winning work, and yet I thought (still think) that was bad for clients. Why? Because “You got a logo done by Mr. X” seemed less important than “You got a logo that REALLY captures the essence of your business.” Point being, that style was his niche. And I don’t think it was the best way to serve his clients.
OTOH, I’ve written for lots of different types of businesses, both as a freelancer and as an employee, over the years, and I’m not sure that’s the best strategy for my business. So right now I’m relaunching as a freelancer, and thinking about nichefying (which sounds better if you say it, “nitch-ifying”).
My whole point here? Timely post, thanks!
Yay at last someone else that can pronounce niche without putting a ‘t’ in it, that alone makes me a lifetime fan! ;o)
Right there with you :-)
Picking a neesh always got to me. Because of the third reason that you didn’t put up. If you are too clinical about picking a niche, it loses it’s heart. If your niche doesn’t speak to you, there’s no way you’re going to get it to speak to your customers. (unless of course you’re a corporate giant, then heart and soul have no place in your customer interactions)
I love how you think.
Even moreso when you post on a topic I was JUST going to ask you about: my next niche (who DOESN’T enjoy saying: “the neesh will make you reesh”?)
Taking the example market of, say, “Military Wives,”
then drilling down to “Air Force Wives,”
then drill further to “Air Force Wives of CIA Spies,”
THEN MY new niche is “Air Force Wives of Double-Agent Spies!”
But as a sex– er, fetish– er, “Porn For Romantics” offering.
A small but adamant, private, dedicated club whose independent members must get the support they need. But with more money than a military salary. And way more taste, desire and secrecy…
You can thumb up or down here and skip a gab, but since I’ll also need to push my normal business into a swell niche that NO one’s tapped for it at the same time (as a smart-but-modest cover so the innocent BoyPie doesn’t get suspicious when all the money comes rolling in), I may logline that for you — hell, I’ll be “pulling a Johnny” by painting new niche biz by the Naomi-numbers ~ !
Thanks, girl. I’m taking this timeless post as a pat on the back to flesh it out further, if only to find the holes (the less you have to do to influence people, the more powerful you are, huh?)
Appreciatively,
~ @TheGirlPie
Yup. Underconfident. Right here ::hand raised:: That’s me.
I’m better than I used to be. My skin is thickening. The blog has helped with that. So has getting critiques on my book while I’m writing it. I even celebrated when I got my first negative blog comment. That it made no sense (what’s a “wanna-be idiot” anyway? A smart person?) helped.
Still, I’m not sure I’m ready yet to let my freak flag fly. I think I’d rather be off in a corner with a glass of chocolate milk and Havi’s Monster Coloring book for a while longer.
God damn it, Naomi, I just posted about this and now you have to one-up me.
Your post is, like, five times better than mine, too.
Here’s the thing: your business should be in as small a niche as you can afford. (“Baby Clothes for Overweight Diabetic Club-Footed Psoriatic Infants Between 3 and 5 Months” may be a little small.) But you don’t have to be.
There is no reason you can’t have more than one.
You can have a Fundamentalist Christian Baby Clothes and a Barn Owl Baby Clothes. Put ‘em on separate websites. Your fundamentalist Christian parents will go to fundamentalistchristianonesies.com, and your birdwatching parents will go to barnowlsonyourbabies.com, and neither of them even has to know about the other. And bam – you’re making fundamentalist Christian baby clothes and barn owl baby clothes, and while your businesses have their own special little niches, you get to do what you love on both fronts and you don’t have to choose.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a domain to register.
Also, you probably pronounce “cache” as “kaysh”, don’t you? Kaysh kaysh kaysh.
*spit take*
Hey Chris,
Naomi may have beaten you to the post but you beat me to the comment that you can quite easily have two niches….just keep them apart.
I would say that if you want to pursue more than one niche then do it one at a time. It’s a bit like the guy at the circus that spins the plates.
Adrian
Building on what Adrian said. . . Perhaps there’s no reason why you can’t, but there may be very compelling reasons why you don’t. (or don’t yet)
Context, timing, application of resources, etc.
:)
OK, is the “neesh” bluebird of happiness flying over North America today? I published a niche lens on Squidoo this AM, and I’m about to release a niche ebook. Need a catchy title for it; wondering if I can somehow work in both black transvestites and barn owls….
;-)
I’m going to work on creating little sub-niches with their own landing pages on my site. I’m somewhat of a generalist right now, but after thinking long and hard about niches, I still came up with nothing. I’m going to experiment with niche-y landing pages and see how that works out. If one of those niches turns out lucrative and enjoyable, then I will pursue it further!
what i like best about this post:
“Being good at something and liking it is not a sufficient business plan.”
it made me smile.
I guess I should clarify. My niche will narrow once the novel is done and out in the world.
I’ve got my reasons for keeping my options open (er, my niche more general) for now. I know that sounds like chicken shit talk, but for now I’m saving the edgy stuff “for the page.”
You must have picked up on some out there vibes because I am another person that has had this on the brain.
Like Amy…I took on a lot of writing jobs that may have been out of my interest, but paid the bills. I’m accepting more that are “up my alley” but I’m not ready to yet to declare my alley and use it in a widespread way.
what if I’m not the best in my alley? what if my alley is to small? What happens to the people on the street that I’ve been helping that don’t fit into the alley?
I’m definitely in the #1 camp and need to answer these questions for myself before I leap into getting too nichey. Doing it on the sly is helping me ease into it.
children’s photography is the *new* children’s clothes. or maybe it just feels that way to me because that is my biz and it feels like everyone and their dog is starting that biz, in fact i had someone say that to me when i was starting out and it totally made me feel foolish. gah! i am bookmarking this so i can read it and remember my ‘neesh’ when i get overwhelmed with all of the other children’s photographers out there.
that’s a well written post about niche marketing Naomi, keep up the good work
you say nitch, I say neesh, I say shit, you say sheesh, I say tomato, you say . . . unfollow?
Personally, I love the swearing. It makes me laugh out loud. And I love to learn and laugh simultaneously. So thanks for that.
I don’t care how people pronounce niche – nitch, neesh – whatev. I just know it’s important to have one. Working on mine right now.
I liked the two problems descriptions, I seem to vacillate between the two, depending upon the time of day.
As for a niche (neesh here too, and cache is cash) I’m obviously going to have to pick one and soon.
Yes, yes and thrice YES!!! Neesh, neesh, neesh! If the only thing you ever achieve is spreading the correct pronunciation of this word, your lifes work will be complete.
P.S. My only concern with the super niche is that if you’re too narrow, there may be no market. But if there’s a market, I’m cool with being super specific. No point being the only owl fooker!
The niche is the only thing that is going to keep a start-up small business from going into the pile with “everyone else.”
You are so right that you need to divide the niche up into even SMALLER pieces. The smaller your niche that you can create with still a large enough customer base to put food on your table = a position for your small business that will be VERY hard for someone to take away from you.
-Joshua Black
The Underdog Millionaire
I’d like to see some cupcake shops for barn owls, please.
Good God–please don’t stop swearing!
I don’t think there’s been a more critical time to choose a neesh…thanks for the reminder.
Lovely writing.
1. For how small is ‘really’ small?
I started writing a blog on investing in Michigan real estate six years ago. This is as small of a niche as it can get. Couple of hundred visitors a day max. Forget thousands or hundred of thousands. So what? That blog first expanded my own business beyond my wildest dreams and became the basis of a thriving consulting / coaching / seminar business.
Does it matter if you get 10,000 visitors a week to a website who don’t buy, just glance and leave for something else OR is it better to get 50 clients every month, who are worth $3,000 each?
2. Can you make money on a small niche?
I have clients in the restaurant industry who will gladly pay (and do) for advertising on a niche blog that is talking to independent restaurants. No thousands of RSS subscribers required. Hundreds will do.
Same is true in dozens and dozens of niches for which one of my companies is responsible for buys ad space and joint venture opportunities in blogs and forums. Sometime we will (politely) point out to a good blogger that they can actually make more money talking to fewer people who could be ‘identified’ vs. trying to be ALL to everybody.
We find that small niche blogs have more ‘intense’ relationship with their audience / readers than a big mega blog with six figure visits. No surprises here.
So paying actually ‘more’ for a ‘smaller’ number of audiences make perfect sense because the readers care what the blogger has to say and they keep coming back for more.
Like here at ittybiz.
Because they want to hear more.
Like from you Naomi.
But full confession…
I could never figure out a niche for myself with 100% precision whenever I have launched something. To me it has always been start and listens to your traffic and customers and the ones who are not buying and re-adjust.
The real estate blog was aimed at global dominance till I realized that there were enough of us already. When I was meeting my customers face to face (I am old school) they kept telling me that the thing that they loved most was ‘somebody local’ was writing a blog.
I am not a genius but after 10 people said the same thing, I rebooted the business and completely became oblivious to everything else.
As a side note, I had lot of people telling me at that time I was putting myself in a ‘smaller pond’. They had good intentions. I don’t doubt that. But very few of them who choose to go mainstream with their marketing and business positioning are still around. So Naomi thanks for saying what you did in this post. Lot of startup founders will be happy 12 months from today that they read this post today. It will save them grief later.
I am weeping with joy!! I’ve had this conversation time and again on my blog (right, @linda?). This is a tough one for service professionals–we want to save the world and help anyone and everyone, not realizing that as generalists we sort of help no one. Once I neeshed my business exploded and now that I am neeshing even more people call me from, like, India to work with me (true story).
Yes. We are experiencing the same results as Susan.
Our small web agency has been reducing and reducing its niche (neesh) (at first we implemented websites in WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal; now it’s only WordPress; we also used to take customers who wanted fancy graphics design; now we only accept the ones who share our belief that the star of a website is its content and design and architecture should support content discreetly and simply, not the other way around).
We are currently expanding our team because being “picky” is actually paying off big time.
We may be losing some clients who wouldn’t be a good fit anyway (if you click on my name you will be taken to the page we send our prospects to, to check whether our process is right for them). On the other hand, many more of the right ones are coming our way through referrals.
After years of thinking I was just generally creative but with nothing in particular to make me unique, I have finally found my niche (hooray for correct pronunciation!) and have turned it into a fledgling business. I do love it and I am good at it, but the reason I believe it will be successful is that there is a market for it.
P.S. I have just discovered your blog this week, Naomi. On numerous occasions had to stifle laughter from here in my cubicle, particularly the permanent semi-colon.
damn good point! ” If you pick a niche, you lose some customers. If you don’t pick a niche, you lose ALL customers.”
You say tomato I’ll say… (Don’t mean to sound like a bitch) but we say nitch around here.
He he he…@
(Unrelated side note: Around here, niche business is pronounced neesh business. Neesh. Not nitch. Neesh neesh neesh neesh neesh. Look at me, drunk on my own publishing power.)
Very funny Naomi, Im an aussie and we say neesh too and Kaysh. Kaysh kaysh kaysh…. Neesh neesh neesh..
Great post, Naomi! And thanks for letting all those in the US know how others in the world pronounce “neesh”.
I have a question: how do you define your niche? (other than the fact you help small businesses who love the way you swear:-)).
Hi Naomi, I just discovered your site and already I love it. This article, in particular, resonated with me because I think my niche is too small. I sell hippo-themed collectibles at HippoMojo.com. How many hippopotamaniacs are there in the world? Well, so far I have 403 registered customers and I’ve been in business for a year and a half. Not so many. I am willing to baby this business along a little longer but at some point it needs to start making some more money or I’m outta there. I keep thinking I should expand to all safari animals or something like that. Any advice would be welcome. Thank you!
Never would have occurred to me to pronounce it nitch. When people said “nitch” I had no clue it was the same word, wondered what in the hell they were babbling about. Niche is a French word, took French all through high school, neesh is correct.
Just met your blog today. Love it!
I myself have been thinking about my own niche a lot lately. It’s been tricky, I have so many interests and a sad little inclination to initially attempt biting off more than a horse could chew. I usually wise up after a few months of head to brick action. In some areas I find myself wanting to invent a new word to describe my niche because it’s specific but hodgepodge. I’d been thinking of trimming away the fat and but was hesitant to make the surgical strikes on areas I spent gads of time on. But after reading this I just feel relieved and refreshed, like I know what I have to do, which surgeries to commit.
Of course I also find myself coming to the realization that perhaps shipping some of my offerings only within the US is pretty limited, especially as it’s dawning on me that many of my followers tend to be of the UK variety, and randomly elsewhere. Not real sure how that came about but it’s so none the less.
Thank you for this post. I needed it just at this time.
I am making a businessplan and am looking at the future expand possibilities. You reminded me to stick to the cat theme (sorry, no owls), as a signature.
Some custom orders I got were for hats without the cat theme, so I thought I should offer them too in my shop.
Big mistake! No one bought them.
So I added the cat ears to them and relisted them. And not only did I sell them, but I got more requests again for custom orders without cat ears.
Funny, that. =^x^=
Yuck…tried to read and sure that I could’ve learned a lot, but got turned off by the language. Too bad.
Ha! Carol is a good example of losing a customer from setting a niche. I wonder if she read the bit about how the language is part of your niche, hmm….
Anyway, 1/44 comments ain’t bad. If 1/44 people who saw my shop, bought something, I would be filthy, filthy, FILTHY rich.
Thanks for the great advice – every time I’ve expanded in MORE directions, it’s expensive and a capital F failure – - but I’m now moving toward a smaller core group, which will allow me to pump out the things I like making and ‘they’ like buying.
Fantastic :) XO, Anna
Okay, I’m on board. I will only make bandanas for big, black and brown dogs named Astrid. NOT! You made me think, though, and that’s not easy to do first thing in the morning. I’m usually running around making sure all my bases are covered. Now I find out I only need to cover one base. Easy….
Well then I must be ahead of the game. My niche is already pretty small. …NY/LA/Chicago. She is about 26 yrs old and the world revolves around her. She lives in the city, has 3 roommates. She makes about $60K or better a year and has $40 lunches and $12 drinks. She spends all her money on clothes & shoes.
I don’t think my niche can get much smaller than that.
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