"Niching down" when you love variety - a new way for online business owners (Ep#5)

Every guru out there is telling you you'll succeed faster if you "niche down" - that is, get more specific on who your business is serving.
But you love variety. And besides, your service works for everyone -  and, let's face it, you need more clients - so why would you want to exclude anyone?

The brutal fact is that if you are trying to speak to everybody in your content and with your offers, you will end up being heard by no one.

But if you love the variety your work brings - what can you do instead?

This video shares a new way of niching that focuses on what is really important. It is the first video in a series of three talking about what has gone wrong with the whole "ideal client" thing - a cornerstone fundamental of business that so many struggle to get "right". 

You can download your copy of "The Ideal Client Anti-Avatar" here: https://www.orangesheepresearch.co.uk/anti

Also mentioned: Tad Hargrave, Marketing for Hippies www.youtube.com/@marketingforhippies

You can download your complimentary guide to "Three Techniques to Validate Your Offer Before You Launch" here: https://www.orangesheepresearch.co.uk/validate

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Transcript

0:00

If you've heard it once you've had a thousand times every marketing guru and business strategists out there has told you. Niche down. But you love variety. And besides you can help whole range of people with your best. S why would you want to exclude people and shut them out from that? The brutal fact is that if you're trying to speak to everybody with your content and your offers, you'll end up being hurt by no one. And you will struggle to get clients. This episode is for you. If you have struggled to pick a niche, you can stick to, or have been told your niche is too broad, but can't find a way to narrow it down that you can really get on board with. I'll give you a new way of thinking about it. And in the end I share an exercise. that you can do today to start building an audience of people who are perfect fit clients for you. But first. Here's the cheesy intro. Using marketing to persuade people to buy your thing is hard, icky and not an effective use of your time. It's an upside down way of doing things. Introducing upside up marketing. Helping you create offers people want to buy and share them in a way that feels good. All over a nice cup of tea. Hello and welcome to the upside up marketing podcast. My name is Katie Spreadbury, and I'm an offer creation, a messaging specialist, working with businesses. Um, who want offers that are so good, they can sell them without any need for the pushy FOMO driven marketing tactics. You see, so often in this online space. Now I know once you've listened to this episode, you're going to have a heap of thoughts and ideas to add to the discussion, not to mention questions about how you can apply it to your business and how you can use the things we're going to talk about to help you. Attract more clients and more of the perfect fit clients for you. So I want to just hear, I want to hear those things and I want to support you with this, but because podcasting is a bit of a one way thing, you know, I'm talking, I've got no way of hearing what you're thinking as we go. Um, I've set up a Facebook group to go with this podcast. It's called the upside up marketing movement. Uh, because this is a movement and it's packed with people like you, who are creating successful businesses whilst maintaining their values of integrity and respect. Creating offers that resonates so strongly with that ideal clients, they can sell them without the bells and whistles and FOMO and pushy marketing tactics. Simply search for the upside up marketing movement on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. Niching is something that I have worked with heaps of businesses on. And today I wanted to share with you the advice that I give that has led to the biggest aha moments in my clients. And I hope you can have that too. I think Nishan is one of those things that people get really in their own heads about. Um, and so I've developed, um, a new way of doing it that I hope is going to resonate with you. This is the first of three podcasts focusing specifically on the sort of who is your ideal client. Um, topic area and why? I think the current way of teaching it, that seems to be the norm is broken and isn't working for people. Um, and this first one is, um, yeah, specifically about niching. You can almost guarantee that any business course program challenge webinar. Anything at all to help you with marketing and your business. and your offers will begin in one place with one piece of advice. And that is. Pick a niche. Pick a niche or a niche. If you're American. I've got to stick with nature because I'm British and that's how I've always said it. I hope you can live with that. Um, so yeah, the advice is to pick a really narrow definition of person, the more narrow, the better and focus all your marketing efforts around them. This is great in theory. Um, and here are three reasons why getting specific on your niche can really help your business. Firstly having a specific niche helps you stand out to prospective clients, helping them identify themselves immediately in your content as the source of people that you can help. Um, I spoke more about this in episode two, in particular about the power of specificity. In your marketing. So do go back and have a listen to that one, um, to understand more about how to achieve this, but you can't be specific unless you're talking to a specific person. So that is one really powerful thing you can do to help you stand out. Being specific on your niece also sets you up as an expert in their field. Because you worked with other people like them, it builds confidence that you understand them and their exact situation, their unique challenges, and that you have solutions that will work for them specifically. Okay. And you can only do that. If you have a specific niche. And having a specific niche also allows you to target your marketing more effectively. Um, focusing on groups and channels where those specific people hang out rather than spreading yourself too thinly over too many channels, which can be really challenging. I once spoke to a VA who, who only worked with businesses that had anything to do with dogs. She really loved dogs. She had loads of dogs herself. Um, And so she's. Herself opposite VA for businesses in the canine sector for want of a better word. So think vets, dog, groomers, dog, walkers, you name it. This immediately made her stand out over every other VA to those specific types of business. Firstly, because it called out exactly who they were and made them re further. And then by giving them confidence that a due to her experience of working with other dog related businesses, she understood that industry and the unique challenges that came with that. But also. That they could infer from that, that her passion for dogs would, um, mean that she cared about their work as much as they did. Um, and would really, really want to do the best for their business. They wouldn't be just another client to her. She would care about them and their business and what they were doing. Um, so this was a really, really, um, I love this as an example of picking a really specific niece, but what can be quite a general service? That's all well and good. But in practice, if you don't feel particularly drawn to any one group of people over another. It's very hard to actually do. Sure you can fill in the avatar worksheets, pick a set of arbitrary characteristics, but then more. Imposter syndrome can start to sneak in. If you have no real reason to focus on this group over any other, setting yourself up as an expert, it can be very hard to then put yourself out there as the expert. If you've got no particular experience, more experience in that sector than any other. You can lose interest talking about one thing all the time can get very tiresome. It feels sort of person that loves variety in their work. This can be especially hard focusing on one group of people and working with just that sort of person again and again, and again, and again, and again. It could also lead to you feeling disconnected from your ideal client. You think of them as just one person in a sea of people of all kinds and struggled to target your messaging at them. Um, there's no real reason for you to be. Um, speaking to them. And so you can't re, you don't really have that passion that drive to focus on them. If you find yourself resisting, meeting down with every fiber of your being. If you're listening to audio only just a note there niching down, came with air quotes. I just hope resisting niching down with every fiber of your being. I want you to think about this today? A lot of us, me included, um, started out by thinking my service helps everyone. Why would I narrow it down? My ideal client is everyone who needs me. That's what I thought coming into the world of business from a successful career in market research. Oh, what was everyone that needs market research? Oh, well, that's every business, so I don't need to narrow it down. But I learned very quickly. If you tried to speak to everybody, you will end up being heard by nobody. No one listens because it's not specific enough. They can't see how it's relevant to them. And they don't trust. You have a good understanding of their specific situation. If you're presenting yourself as a Jack of all trades. So you do need to find some sort of angle. My service is for everybody. Well, what if it's not. The brilliant tad Hargrave of marketing for hippies has a great cross on this. He says, why do you want to work with everyone? You don't even like everyone. And I found that reframe really, um, really helpful. Maybe you help business owners to be more successful, but do you want every business to be more successful? What about the ones that are peddling snake. Whoa. What about the ones using sleazy marketing tactics and hoodwinking people into buying things they don't really need. Um, or buying things that don't live up to, what they, what they promise they're going to be. Do you really want to be complicit with them on that journey? Another one is think about maybe you helped with people managing stress and you do this through spiritual connection and meditation. Do you want to work with someone who thinks it's all hokum and won't show up and do the exercises. Who rolls their eyes every time you start talking, do you really need that in your life? Or would you prefer to work with someone who was already open to these methods and engaged with the program and gets the results? So you see your service isn't for everyone. It's for the people that are in tune with your values, your philosophies, the way you look at the world. People you enjoy working with and who will enjoy working with you? If you struggle with niching in the past, I want you to think about it again from this angle. Uh, taking myself as an example. I already mentioned when I first came into the business world, I thought I can work with every business who needs market research and that's every business. So, um, I don't need to narrow it down. I don't have a niche. Oh, well with everyone. Now the number of times, I've heard advice to get more specific on this. Um, it normally came from this from the angle of get more specific on what industry you serve or what sort of business owner, like female business owners or business owners who are parents or something like that. Yeah, I always resist. I've always resisted that. Service-based businesses. And does their marketing online? Is this Nita's I need to get on those surface demographics. I have no reason to focus on any particular agenda situation or industry. Um, I was saying earlier about industry. I thought about focusing you. When people were pushing me about this, I thought about focusing on the fitness industry. Cause it's my interest, but I have no experience of running a business in the fitness industry. I'm no more qualified to deal with, to deal with them as I am anyone else. And it would have just felt. Um, it would have just felt artificial. So I've always resisted that. However, there are some elements that are very important to me when it comes to who I want to work with. I want to work with people who respect others. I want to work with people who hold values of collaboration and championing others, not come competition and tearing each other down. I want to work with people who want to create an authentic business that really serves the people they want to work with and the people that look to them for advice. So that audience. Respecting them and wanting to market to them in an ethical way. They care about their ideal client about building that relationship now about getting people results. So my marketing is built on the values of building a person centered business and marketing in a respectful, ethical way, not on arbitrary demographic characteristics, like what industry they're in or whether they're male or female. That said. Some characteristics are very important and this would differ between businesses. And I will talk more about that in the next episode of this podcast, but for now, I just want you to understand that your services aren't there to serve everybody. So have a think about it from that angle. And if it helps, I find it can be really useful to flip that question on its head. Who are your services? Not for. So I'd like you to have about think about that this week. Um, and if you're getting stuck in a niching black hole and you find yourself glossing over the ideal client modular of any course, you do to jump straight ahead to the good stuff. I've actually got something that's going to help you. My ideal client, anti avatar removes all the fluff and focuses on. What's actually important about the people you want to work with most. And this is important because if you can fix this, you can start to create offers and content that not only caught in more people, but precisely the right people for you. And if not, you're continuing to find your content is getting lost in the noise. Like you're just shouting into the voice because like I say, being specific is important, but the things you were specific about might not be the things that you thought they were. If you'd like a copy, simply go to www.orangesheepresearch.co.uk/anti. That's anti a. N T I. Um, the link is also in the show notes. Pop in your email address and by the power of technology, I'll get a copy sent straight to your inbox. Right. I promise you an exercise that you can do today to check whether your audience is full of these Perfect fit clients for your new niche. Um, and how to attract more of the right people in future. So firstly, I'd like you to post on your socials and get a debate going amongst your audience, relating to the sorts of values you'd like to see in your ideal clients. Um, for me, this might be something about ethics in marketing. For example, here's one I've used in the past. Um, I just put a statement out in my Facebook group countdown, timers on emails, sales, sales pages, et cetera. Useful or unnecessary pressure. Take something that divides opinion and get the debate going. And the discussion you can share your views and this would automatically start to weed out people that don't share the same viewpoint as you. Um, they can decide whether they actually feel aligned enough to stay in your world or not, unless they follow or unsubscribe don't stress. This is your audience cleaning itself, making sure you're speaking to and focusing on the people that are absolutely perfect for your offers. This is part one of three episodes diving into what's gone wrong with the whole ideal client thing. So next time around, I'm going to be looking into more depth on what demographic characteristics you need to know about your ideal clients. And which you can just forget about and stop stressing over. So be sure to hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss that one until then stay curious and keep that marketing upside up.