Find Your Perfect Niche

Do you find that marketing and selling seems to slip to the bottom of your To-Do list every week? That there are always other "better" things to do--people to see, places to go, things to do?

If so, it's a sign that you don't love marketing and selling. It may also mean you don't have a Niche, or you don't have a Niche of people you love to work with. You're not alone. And you don't have to change who you are to build the business and earn the income you wantyou simply have to learn how to find a Niche.

Your Niche is a specific group of people and businesses you enjoy working with, who have challenges that you can solve, they want those challenges solved, and they can afford to pay you for your products and services. They could be consumers, businesses, non-profit organizations, government agencies or schools or education-related organizations.

For example, if your expertise is in "motivating employees to work at their peak performance level", a Niche for you might be "employees in the healthcare industry" rather than "employees" in general. Or your Niche might be "employees in marketing departments of consulting companies".

With a Niche, you are providing solutions to a specific group of people who really want and will pay for your products and services. You're making your solutions more targeted and can deliver them in a laser-beam focus to a group of people who really want and benefit from your knowledge. Successful leading experts own a Niche. You can't be the leading expert for "everyone".

Why is a Niche so important? And what does having a Niche really do for you?

It simplifies your life and your marketing, and increases your income. When you're recognized as a leading expert in your field, clients and the media call you - you don't spend a lot of your time selling. And when your Niche sees you as an Expert, they'll pay more for your products and services.

Let's take a real-life example. One of my colleagues is a Virtual Assistant and provides services to business owners. Her services are appropriate for various types of businesses and their owners, including speakers, authors, coaches, consultants, free-lance writers and trainers. When we first met, she was trying to market to all of these groups at the same time. Now she's focusing on one Niche right now - speakers. And in her Elevator Speech she tells people that her specialty is speakers. Since she's started focusing on speakers, 1) she gets many more referrals than she used to, 2) she knows the challenges of speakers better, since she talks to them all the time, and 3) she's increased her income dramatically. Because she now focuses on a Niche, she understands the challenges that speakers face, since she talks to them all the time. And that means she can design services specifically to solve those challenges. Speakers gladly hire her because they know she's the Expert in this area. She's known as the Virtual Assistant for Speakers.

A key success strategy for marketing your business and becoming known as a leading Expert in your area is writing articles for ezines and newsletters. It's much, much easier to find publications to submit your articles to when you pick a Niche. For example, let's use the same real-life example. When my colleague looks up ezines and newsletters to send her article to, she used to look up "business owners". There are thousands of publications for "business owners", and she didn't know where to start.

Now, with her Niche - Speakers -- she still finds many ezines and newsletters for "speakers". However, it's a manageable number, and she now spends her time sending her articles out rather than deciding which of thousands of newsletters she wants to submit them to.

And when these speakers read her articles and call her, she has a program, answers and examples of how other speakers get more speaking engagements. So they know she's "the Expert".

Action Steps:

1. Start a folder called My Niche. Put it in a place where it's handy and you can look at it and add to it over the next few weeks. Take 3 sheets of paper, and put these headings on each: -- My Niche - Who I like to work with - for example, Accountants, Business Owners, men and women between the ages of 30 and 45, bright savvy executives, etc. Be specific! -- What people in my Niche do - job title, work they do, leisure activities, etc. -- Challenges that people in my Niche face, and really, really want to solve. Start making your lists, and write everything you can think of that goes on each one. You're looking for the ones that they'll do almost anything and pay almost anything to solve.

2. Take time every week and every chance you get to search the Internet, publications, newspapers, colleagues, books, and any resources you think of. Find out what people in your Niche are like. Find out about their challenges. For example, act as if you're one of the people in your Niche - a manager who wants a promotion, or someone who's stressed out and wants to make changes. Search Google for solutions. Look at the headlines on magazines. Go to a large newsstand and look at all the magazines that are out there now. These all give you clues. Find professional and leisure organizations that your Niche may belong to or participate in. All these give you clues to the challenges they face.

3. Know your Niche so well that you give them a name and cut a picture of them out of a magazine. Give them a personality. Keep adding to the information on all your lists.