If you haven’t niched down your services, you could be missing out on valuable online business opportunities. Entrepreneurs and companies hiring service providers want to see experience and knowledge, which means you benefit from finding your niche and climbing your way to the top of your area of expertise.
Have you found your niche yet? If you haven’t, it’s time you start looking and marketing your services to a more focused client audience.
What Is a Niche, Anyway?
A niche is like a single branch of the online business tree. You may know a little about all branches of the tree (including online business management, virtual assisting, or social media management) but knowing more about one is actually more marketable and lucrative in the long run.
Here are a few things to consider when finding your online business niche:
- Which online services do you most enjoy?
- What skills do you have (or what are you best at)?
- Who do you want to work with?
- What type of services are most in demand right now?
It also helps to think about the purchasing habits of your target clients and how you can cater your services to them. Try to visualize your role for each niche option: Does a day-by-day virtual assistant role or a slower-moving social media manager role sound better for you? Choose a niche that suits your lifestyle and your skills!
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Why Is Finding Your Niche Important?
It’s tempting to market yourself to every online business opportunity there is. You figure more applications mean more job opportunities (and more chances to earn money). But the truth is, hiring managers are looking for focused experts. Finding your niche is crucial!
Once You Find a Niche, You Can Become an Expert In Your Space
Finding your niche means mastering your corner of the online business world. You’ll turn your basic knowledge into a specialty, so more people want to hire you. Not to mention, it’s easier to build trust and long-lasting relationships with clients who come to associate you with a job well done.
Suddenly, your brand will become more recognizable and clients will be more likely to share exactly what you do for them to improve business (theirs and yours). You may even see an influx in referrals from your existing clients!
After Finding Your Niche, You’ll Identify Your Ideal Client and Establish Loyalty
Who you want to work with matters. Finding your niche often means building your toolkit to attract the right kind of clients. For example, you can niche down as a virtual assistant and build fluency in scheduling applications, Microsoft suite, inbox management, or even invoicing and bookkeeping. You can niche down even further by marketing to law firms or real estate brokers exclusively (assuming their clerical tasks are unique).
The more focused you are in your corner of the virtual market, the longer your clients will want to keep you on board. Loyalty and longevity means rarely (if ever again) having to worry about financial or job security.
Related: 5 Best Tips for Marketing a Service-Based Business
You Can Make Better Business Decisions
Finding your niche is the natural first step towards creating your business goals. Maybe you hope to retire by a certain age, or you hope to earn a specific dollar figure by the end of the year. Whatever your goals are, they directly relate to a narrower job focus.
When you aim towards a specific target (or targets), you’ll be able to weigh decisions more precisely. For example, you’ll be able to make more accurate projections over the coming years based on demand for your services and holes in the market.
5 Steps for Finding Your Niche
Ready to zoom in on a more specific service-provider role? Here are five steps you should take when finding your niche.
Think About Your Passions
You remember the old saying: if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life! While all service providers experience ups and downs, there’s some truth to that expression, and some urgency to choose the path that will bring you the most joy.
Consider which tasks make you smile! Do you love answering emails and speaking with clients? Got a flair for scheduling things and organizing but don’t want the added pressure of managing a team? Maybe a virtual assistant role for a low-stress company is right for you.
Figure Out Your Goal for Finding Your Niche
Odds are you’re finding your niche because you’re tired of constantly running around searching for business opportunities—or you’re sick of flip-flopping your task lists based on which clients you’re working with each day. Maybe you’re in the midst of a total career switch and hope to find greater stability and happiness working remotely as a service provider.
Whatever your reason for niching down, it will help you choose the most important KPIs (key performance indicators) for your business. You’ll be able to closely watch your progress and reach your goals faster with a narrower lens.
Review Your Data
Use your data history when finding your niche! Data will tell you exactly where your talents lie—or where the highest demand in the market currently is.
For example, identify your most popular client offerings. The services that have generated the most revenue or drive the most traffic may point you in the direction of your new niche. It also helps to check recent client polls or onboarding and offboarding surveys to measure your talents against field demand.
Nail Down the Exact Problem Your Services Solve
Once you have a few good ideas based on your likes, data, and client feedback, think about what problems you can fix (or what questions you can answer) that are unique from your competitors in fellow service-providing roles.
Maybe you’ve noticed subpar social media upkeep across not-for-profits in your area. By marketing yourself as a social media manager specializing in nonprofits, you stand to solve a major problem for multiple businesses in need of your services. With that in mind, you can tweak your resume and gather data to create the perfect pitch to ideal clients.
Set Up a Landing Page to Test Out Your Niche
Your website landing page is the perfect place to test for success. Advertise your new niche and put out an offer or two that your target clients won’t be able to pass up.
But be prepared to fail a time or two! Finding your niche and discovering how to market it effectively takes some trial and error. No matter how passionate you are, you have to be sure that your narrowed focus will earn enough money to sustain your business.
If you realize your service plans are falling flat, return to the drawing board and try again.
As a service provider, finding your niche is one of the most important, lucrative business moves you can make. Use these strategies to weigh your options and uncover your perfect business opportunity! In a few years, you’ll know your role like the back of your hand and have healthy business relationships with clients you love.
Be sure to follow along on Instagram for tips, resources, and insights into all things metrics and business data.
Want to start monitoring your metrics to help you hone in on your niche? Register for our Measure & Maximize course to learn exactly how to use your data to grow and scale your business. And as a service provider, all this analytics knowledge can give you a leg up and become part of your niche (a data-driven VA or OBM? Who wouldn’t want to work with them!).
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