Imagine you have flown to a new city and check-in at a hotel. You’re quite hungry after a day of travel, and you ask the concierge to recommend the best place to eat dinner. Her reply is, “What kind of food do you want?” You want great spaghetti this particular night, so you say, “I’d like the best authentic Italian food in this town.” She recommends a restaurant named Campisi’s, so you check the reviews and decide to make a reservation for 7:00 pm. You have just chosen a place to eat based on the brand positioning selected by that restaurant. Knowing four classifiers (best, authentic, Italian, and in this town), the concierge gladly recommended the restaurant that exactly fits your needs.
The same can happen for your business, but you must choose your niche or specialty.
Note: A niche denotes or relates to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population. A specialty is a pursuit, area of study, or skill to which someone has devoted much time and effort and are experts. A niche is more applicable to your product or service, and a specialty is more relevant to your organization’s team and their corresponding skills. For the sake of this discussion, we’ll use the terms interchangeably to mean “the product, service, or skill that sets your business apart.”
Some examples of niched businesses are:
Niching creates a valuable brand identity connected with a customer group’s specific needs and desired outcome. You become known for something. Having a specialty is very powerful. If you’re a foodie, you wouldn’t order Italian from a restaurant that also serves Thai, American, and German cuisine. You’d go to the Italian experts. If you drive a fully restored 1965 Mustang, you won’t take it to a drive-through service shop for a transmission overhaul. You’d find someone that specializes in cars like yours. Again, having a specialty is very powerful because it gives your customers peace of mind. After all, you increase the chance that they’ll get the outcome they want.
Another example of niching is our brand here at Ballistic Agency. We’re an eCommerce agency that serves manufacturers’ needs for direct-to-consumer sales using a minimalist approach, focusing on activities that stimulate revenue growth.
Let’s take a closer look at that brand positioning statement. We’ve bolded and italicized niching words in our positioning statement.
Ballistic Agency is a high-touch eCommerce agency that serves manufacturers’ needs for direct-to-consumer sales using a minimalist approach, focusing on activities that stimulate revenue growth.
Our positioning statement clearly defines who our customers are, what they need, how we serve them, and to what end.
You can do the same for your business. Doing so puts your brand in line with your customer’s needs and focuses your efforts, which pays off with better brand recognition, customer empathy, and improved sales.
If you don’t know where to start when choosing your niche, think about what you do best, and is the most rewarding. It’s probably the work you want to be doing, so why not become known for it? By reducing your services, you may reduce the number of available customers, but you increase the chances of winning the right customers. It’s what Ballistic Agency did to set ourselves on a course for improved profit, happiness, and customer service.
If you’d like to learn more about how your website can sell more, contact us for a free consultation. We’d love to help you achieve Optimized eCommerce™.