Graham McGregor: Part 1: Memorable market niche

Focusing on a niche market may not work for every business, but is something to think about. Photo / Getty Images

A common marketing challenge that many of us have in business is to positively differentiate our business from the many competitors we usually have.

One strategy that you can use to positively differentiate your business is to create a 'Memorable Market Niche'.

You can create a Memorable Market Niche a number of different ways.

And in this column I'd like to look at creating a memorable market niche by selling your product or service to a narrow group of clients or customers.

Here are three examples of businesses that do this.

1: The business coach for web designers

A while ago I received an interesting email from a business coach in the United States. He told me his initial focus as a business coach was to work with a wide range of small businesses.

And when he had this general business focus he struggled and found it hard to make sales.

Then he decided to focus on one specific group of businesses.

In his case it was web designers.

In other words he became a business coach for web designers.

He explained that when he did this his income increased 500% in his first year of focussing on being a business coach to web designers.

He then found that he began being invited to speak at conferences for web designers because he was now a business coach for web designers.

Every time he spoke he had a large number of web designers contact him and ask if he could be of help.

He became known as the 'business coach for web designers.'

2: 'Done for you marketing' for insurance advisers

I had lunch recently with a business owner recently and he told that his niche was providing 'done for you' marketing services exclusively for insurance advisers.

Their website is called Marketing for Advisers.

This business works with insurance advisers that already have an existing client base.

They then send added value messages and resources to the clients of each insurance adviser. These added value messages and resources generate a large amount of new appointments each month for the insurance advisers. And these appointments lead to some profitable new insurance sales.

The best part of this service (from the viewpoint of the insurance adviser clients) is that most of the work is done for them.

They just have to chat with existing clients who are now keen to talk further about other insurance services that they offer.

You can learn more about this business and what they offer here.

3: The business coach for builders and tradies

I had the opportunity recently to interview a number of clients of business coach Andreas Becker www.builderscoach.co.nz who is based in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Andreas works exclusively with builders and Tradies to help them improve their business results.

His clients told me how easy Andreas was to work with. And went to say they were making more money, working less hours and were experiencing a lot less stress and problems in their business as a result of working with Andreas.

You can check out what Andreas is doing here.

Notice that by focussing on a specific group of clients and customers it makes it very easy to remember what each of these businesses specialise in?

(Andreas is the business coach for builders and Tradies for instance.)

And an approach like this might be something that you could adapt to your business as well.

I've written before about an insurance adviser who I met over 30 years ago. He became a multi-millionaire by focussing on offering insurance products and services only to people who were aged in their forties. He found that this group of people were interested in creating a nest egg for their retirement and were in a financial position to invest in insurance products that had an investment component. By focussing on this narrow niche of clients he did extraordinarily well.

Now focussing on selling to a niche market of clients and customers may not work for every business. (However it could be worth thinking about for your business.)

'Commit to a niche. Stop trying to be everything to everybody' - Andrew Davis

Take Action:

What group of clients or customers get great results when they invest in your products or services? Is there an opportunity for your business to specialise in selling your products and services to this group of clients or customers?

In next week's marketing column I'll explain a seldom use strategy that any business can use to create a memorable market niche. This strategy is simple and delightfully easy to put into action. (Watch out for it next week.)

Graham McGregor is a consultant specialising in memorable marketing. You can download his 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage' Ebook at no charge from www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com.