Five ways to niche your service-based business
To niche or not to niche IS the question on the minds of so many service providers and virtual assistants out there.
And my answer, quite simply put, is it depends on YOU!
It depends on:
HOW you want to grow your business!
Because, believe it or not, you don’t HAVE to grow if you don’t want to.
You don’t HAVE to make more money; you don’t HAVE to get more clients; you don’t HAVE to do everything that everyone else is doing – if YOU don’t want to.
As long as you are happy and fulfilled, that’s what matters!
Now, if you DO want to become more specialised in what you do, you DO want to grow your reputation as a service provider and expert, and you DO want to start leveraging your skills more profitably, then I’d say niching IS something that you should be considering.
There are many benefits to niching including:
✅ Making it easier to create more intentional and focused content
✅ More clarity around your messaging
✅ Raising your visibility and building your reputation
✅ Creating more profitable, packaged services
✅ Limiting your competition
✅ Easy for people to refer you if you are known as a go-to for something
✅ Able to gain more in-depth knowledge, skills and understanding in specific areas
✅ Making it easier to attract your ideal client
But I don’t believe it has to be as hard (or as cut and dry) as we are led to think, so today, I’m sharing FIVE different ways you can find a niche in your business.
The services that you offer
Niching services is one of the most common ways people initially niche. This means that they start to reduce the number of services they offer and focus on building their business and reputation around a select few instead.
Sales Funnels, Marketing, Social Media, Course Creation, Content Creation, Websites, Blogs, CRMS, becoming a systems specialist, Strategy, Inbox management, OBM role, Canva and graphic design (the list goes on!)
Think about the things that you know how to do well, the things you enjoy doing the most, the things you get the best feedback from, and the jobs you look forward to doing the most and see if there are commonalities or themes.
Remember, you don’t have to pick one; you can group complementary skills together to form your own niche offering.
The people that you help
If you enjoy offering a range of services and don’t want to niche down that way, you might find your niche in the type of individuals you enjoy working with or the sectors you enjoy working in.
For example, do you enjoy working with women more than men, or perhaps you like working with mums in business? Do you prefer working with solopreneurs or people with teams and SMEs? It might be that you like working with service-based businesses more than product-based. Perhaps your niche is more to do with the job role they have or the sector you work in, e.g. coaches, interior designers, makeup artists, lawyers, HR consultants, trainers, pet-based business, childcare or hospitality?
Where to start?
Are you naturally already attracting a specific type of person to your business? Think about your current and past clients and who you enjoyed working with the most – are there any commonalities? Look at your skills, qualities and experience; do they lend themselves to a particular sector that you could niche into?
The problem you solve
If you can’t narrow things down by your services or the people you help, perhaps it’s time to start considering the problem you solve for the people you work with. Maybe THAT is your niche!
For example, your ideal client is someone who is time-poor because you are kick-ass at helping them get organised. You love introducing structure, you can organise their diary and teach them how to time block, and you are a whizz at streamlining their processes and seeing where improvements can be made.
You might use a whole range of services to support them in becoming more time-rich (so you don’t want to niche your the services you offer) and don’t mind who that person is (so you don’t want to niche down on who you work with.
You can just as easily find your niche in the problems that you solve!
A common goal
If numbers 1-3 haven’t inspired you, maybe it’s because the people you like working with haven’t got shared problems, but instead have a common goal.
For example:
👉 Launching their first course
👉 Building their website or starting a blog
👉 Using Pinterest
👉 Making passive income
👉 Being more visible/growing their socials
👉 Finding PR opportunities
👉 Getting more organised and having more time
If the people you like to work with have a common goal, you can use that as your niche! Once you know the goal, you can break down the problems and challenges they face.
Values, interests and personality
The fifth method of finding a niche in your business sometimes comes along a bit later, perhaps once you’ve found a niche and you are ready to start defining that and specialising even more. But you don’t have to wait that long. This is a valuable thing to start thinking about at any point during the niching process, and that is taking into consideration people’s values, attitudes and shared interests.
For example, you may first decide you want to work with coaches, but after a while (and after working with different types of coaches), you decide that you really love working with spiritual coaches.
Other examples could be you enjoy working with people who are: Ambitious, introverted, health-conscious, local to you, value-driven, or that share your values, have a love of travel or share a religion.
Or, it could be all five!
You might be surprised to know that your niche could include ALL five of these areas. It might not at first, it might never! But the point I’m trying to make is that your niche is exactly that, YOUR niche. It doesn’t have to fit into a box and remember, having a niche doesn’t mean you are excluding people; it just means you are becoming more focused on attracting your ideal customers. You can still choose to work with people outside your niche if it feels right to you!
Here’s an example showing how sometimes my niche covers all five areas:
If you are an ambitious female entrepreneur and would LOVE to learn more about creating better content, attracting more of your ideal clients, pricing and packaging your services and growing a happy and profitable business, I would love to invite you to join me over in my free Facebook Group The Happy Business Hub.
Here you will find a like-minded community of female business owners with monthly free training and co-working sessions to support you in growing your business.