How do you find your niche?
That was the topic of conversation with my good friend, Chris Ducker.
I has such a great conversation with him, I’m going to be highlighting my top three takeaways!
Become Someone’s Favorite
You don’t need to have millions of followers, millions of downloads, or hundreds of employees.
In many cases, chasing those things is what holds us back from actually achieving the things that are meant for us.
Because we get caught in this distant facade of, “Oh, we have to change the whole world”, and we’re missing out on changing the lives of the people right in front of us.
You might not have millions of podcast listeners, but you’re gonna have hundreds of people that say your show is their favorite show or whatever you do is their favorite in that industry.
But, how can you become someone’s favorite?
By serving a more narrow group of people.
It’s like you’re suddenly speaking the same language.
You’re able to use terminology that your audience relates with, so they go “Oh, you definitely serve me.”
Why does it work so much better to niche down rather than to go broad market?
What I realized is that when you serve a smaller market you have more opportunity to serve your audience in a deeper way.
You can ask them what they need and get an answer right away.
How to Find Your Niche
The second takeaway is how to niche down. And you do this by answering three different questions or as we like to call it, “The 3 M’s.”
The first M stands for “market”
Can you differentiate in the market that you serve?
If you serve a very specific type of person, you’re automatically niching down and creating differentiation.
At Brand Builders Group, if you look at it from a high-level perspective, we serve entrepreneurs.
If you go a level down from that, we serve anyone who does professional services.
And if you go down to the core, it’s experts like coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, and professional service advisors.
But then we narrow down to say, “We serve mission driven messengers.”
So they’re not just experts, they’re experts who care more about service than they do about sales.
They’re people who care about money, but the money is subservient to the mission.
Uber, for example, changed the taxi business model, which was you go stand in the taxi line, and you wait for them.
Uber said, “We come to you wherever you are.”
Instead of standing in a line, you push a button on their app and they come to you.
iTunes and Napster, changed the music business model.
It was the same in terms of it still being music, but the model was different. It wasn’t by a physical CD or a cassette tape, instead you could go online and download a file.
That’s a change in business model and that’s how to differentiate.
So that’s a part of how we have quickly differentiated and delineated who we serve.
Who you serve can be a demographic, like an age or geographic location, but it also can be a psychographic, like being mission driven messengers.
The second M stands for “model”
Our goal is to work with people at our live events and one-on-one.
We teach certain techniques that can help people make six figures in 60 seconds, like changing what you say on stage.
I was using this example this morning with our internal team, where we changed what one speaker said on stage, and made $100,000 just by adding a 60 second pivot.
So that’s our model.
The third M stands for “method”
Your method is what you actually do.
Let’s take Chris as an example.
We both have frameworks, techniques, and exercises, but what we do is actually different.
The models that he teaches are ones that he’s come up with and have worked for him and his clients.
The ones that we teach are different.
We have the Content Diamond for managing social media.
We have the Modular Content Method for writing your whole book in two days.
So, we have all of these different frameworks that you can’t get from anyone else.
There could be lots of people doing something similar to what you do, but they can’t do exactly what you do if you’re creating your own unique methodology.
And that’s part of what we teach people to do.
We facilitate the creation of your own unique methodologies, frameworks, diagrams, and charts and no one can get them anywhere else in the world.
And that automatically creates differentiation and distinction.
That’s how you niche down.
Focus on differentiated and narrowing in on these three things:
- Market
- Model
- Method
Choose Your Weapon
My last takeaway was when I asked Chris, “What’s the best way to get your first customer?
He said, “Choose your weapon.”
And here’s how I internalized that.
The formula for success is to do any type of marketing because you do it really well.
And the formula for failure is to do all types of marketing. Meaning if you do all of them, you’re not going to do any of them well.
If you try to do all of them at the same time, you’re not optimizing for your resources, especially if you’re a small business.
So, choose your weapon, choose one form of marketing, choose one platform, one technique, one strategy.
Learn it and do it really really well.
And if you come to Brand Builders Group we’re going to teach you how to choose the right type of marketing for your niche.
To put this entire blog in a few words, the riches are in the niches.
By narrowing down your focus, you will make more impact, more money, and more of a difference in the world.
So don’t be afraid to just let go and say you have permission to not need or chase millions of followers and just become someone’s favorite.
And the better job you do at doing that, the more impact, income, and influence you will create.
Share this blog article with somebody who you think would benefit from it.
And keep coming back here every week for more life-changing personal branding techniques!
