The Only Two Niches That Matter (And How To Choose Yours)
I run multiple businesses, and you are about to learn the valuable lessons that made one prevail and the other fail. One is the agency that kicked off my self-employment journey. This business is alive and thriving today. The other is an agency I started almost a decade later using online coaching, and it sadly barely made a profit, then died.
Why did one prevail and the other fail? Proper niching tactics.
Two Types Of Niches
There are two types of niches you should choose:
The industry you want to work in
The service you want to provide
Knowing these two things will help you land clients, scale, and reduce stress.
Some of you may have a passion for a specific niche, while others have no clue. Some may have a specific skill set, while others are unsure of what to offer. Then there are those who want to start a business and are not sure about any of this. So, let’s get your niches set.
Quick anecdote: I started my journey using a skill set I already had. I worked as a copywriter for a search engine optimization company. I chose SEO as my niche service. If you have a skill set you want to sell, start with that in your journey. If you are passionate about a specific industry, use that to guide you to what you want to offer. Passions prevail!
Choosing A Service:
If you don’t have an industry you want to work in, start here. When you choose a specific service, you are branding yourself. You will be able to sell yourself as a specialist in that field. You can broaden your services later, but focusing on one thing will reduce variables and increase your success rate.
Since I am a digital marketer, I am focusing on that as an example. However, you could be a nutritionist, electrician, car dealer, etc. and follow this journey yourself (or hire me to help you 😉).
My search engine optimization service and agency have been going strong for over a decade. I specialize in SEO for service providers and white-label for other agencies (more on that method in Drafting). This agency is low overhead and easy to scale. It took me about two months to prepare for starting that business and becoming fully self-employed. To see why I launched so quickly, finish this article, then read How To Grow Your Freelance Business As Quickly As Possible.
For those starting from absolute scratch and who want to be self-employed, marketing services are the easiest to get into. They are low overhead because you only need a computer and prospecting. Below are niche services you can offer:
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Social media management
Social media advertising
Content marketing
Email marketing
Influencer marketing
Video editing
Affiliate marketing
Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
Online reputation management
Google My Business optimization
Local search optimization
E-commerce marketing
Marketing automation
Chatbot development
Web design and development
Analytics and reporting
Landing page optimization
Podcast advertising
Digital public relations
SMS marketing
Sales funnel optimization
What jumps out at you? All of these are very easy to learn using YouTube, Udemy, or any course! SEMRush, BrightLocal, and my favorite free class (you have to message me for this one) are all great to get you started. Study them, see what they entail, then hit me up if you have more questions.
Want to see what people are willing to pay a freelancer? Jump on Upwork, search for gigs, and see what services people want. This is by far the easiest way to find work as well. Clients are actually telling you what they want and what they want to pay.
How I Suggest You Choose Your Niche Service and Industry
Niches are often synonymous with industries. In the coaching classes I purchased, I pretty much had five minutes (not the two months I had with my SEO biz) to decide on a niche industry and had to use their model to sell advertising (a service I wasn’t focused on at the time).
The coaches suggested the auto industry because I had previously worked at an agency focused on automotive. Bad idea! These coaches knew I wasn’t a suave salesman, put me up against the HARDEST people to sell to (calloused, quick talkers), and to sell something I had no proven track record in.
If you aren’t proficient in sales, don’t be like me and make a quick decision. Good salespeople can sell anything because the focus is getting money right now. But my heart is huge, so I couldn’t take people’s money and fail. That coaching class made plenty of people lots of money, so it works. But not for me. I should have gotten a mentor rather than a course. If you are taking a course and have questions, contact me, and I will help you.
Write out the persona of the business owner and the business characteristics. If I had written out the persona of a car dealership owner, I probably would not have gone with them. Most likely, I would have focused on an industry that relies on a location (you can buy a car from anywhere). Better adjacent niches for me would have been mechanics or aftermarket parts and installation. They are not hard sales services, their customers are local, and they aren’t against big entities like Carvana.
The (quick) car dealer persona:
Look at this guy! He wants to sell cars, not meet with you for a discovery call.
Performs multiple sales a day. Positive because they make money. Negative because they are proficient in any selling tactic you use and rather make a sale to a walkin than make it to your meeting
Does not have a set schedule, so booking time is tough
Used car sales dont have set inventory. Good for scarcity marketing. Bad for product ads.
Used car sales has customers with bad credit or low income. Great for buy here pay here. Bad for standard dealers.
Used cars are easy to buy yourself via online marketplaces.
New car sales want the best in the business because it is big money. Hard to compete with bigger agencies.
Dealers are to commission sales. Good if you want to do all the work and get paid on commission as well when starting out. Bad because you rely on them to tell the truth.
Those are just notes I would jot down. There isn’t a right or wrong way to do this. You can write out a full persona or do a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis.
To see you on a path to success, I want you to focus on an industry with high-profit margins.
Your journey has just begun. With over a decade of experience, I can tell you reducing variables, being targeted, and analyzing now will give you a decade of success. Money tomorrow is great. You can sell to any poor schmuck. But having a service you can prove gives an ROI and loyal customers for years because you delivered on your promise is fulfilling mentally and monetarily.
If you need help, I am a click away!