Liz Strauss

Narrow Your Niche, Widen Your Opportunity

On the last night of SOBCon Colorado I spoke with someone about a project she’s working on. She was having trouble naming it. The project, in her mind was almost done. I asked a few questions. They made her nervous — certainly not my intent. I slowed myself down.

“Who will find you irresistible?” I asked.

She didn’t want to answer. Then I realized what was going on. Well, actually she told me.

“I don’t like to make decisions. Who an I to think I’m an expert?”

Boy I know that problem. But let’s turn it around.

Who wants to use a product from someone who’s not?

It’s Hard to Be the Expert of Everything for Everyone

As we delved further into her concept, what I found was that the territory she was trying to cover was way too wide for a first step. Because the content base was so huge the audience would include almost every kind of person from 21 to 65 who might step out their door to meet another one around the idea of business, social media, or tech in any place in the world. It’s no wonder she didn’t feel qualified to be an expert. Who would?

Here’s where narrowing your niche becomes more than a great idea and turns into strategy. Consider these points:

• When we choose a narrow niche, we can go deeply vertical. We get to know one certain group of people very well. We know who were talking to. That lets us know which words are in their vocabularly, which metaphors are theirs, which sorts of ideas get them to move.
• When we choose a narrow niche, we get the world of that specific customer group. We can more easily imagine and think about the ways they make decisions and what they worry about. We more easily decide ourselves what features and benefits serve them well and what will be just so much more noise to what they’re doing.
• When we choose a narrow niche, we can closely study the specific problems of that singular customer group. We get to know what frustrates them, what they yearn for, wish for, and which they never saw again. We have special insight into their view.

And as a result of narrowing our niche, they quickly recognize that we “get” them, that we’ve built a product or service that was made for them, and they become our fans and tell they friends that they should too.

It starts with a decision to be irresistible to one specific group. Then we can move out slowly to the group that stands right next to them.

Which group will you serve first?

Be irresistible.
Liz Strauss
How can I help you be irresistible?

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