Riches Are In The Niches!

What specific incident taught you as a small business owner that you were going to get your butt handed to you if your business was not {a/the} solution to a {unmet or under-served} problem of a highly focused market?

Maybe it was:

• You are days or moments away from quitting your dream of having your own business.
• You are willing to compete on price to earn new business and you learned the painful lesson that there is always someone willing to go out of business faster than you by offering a lower price.
• You are preparing to explain to all your friends why you decided to fold your business and join the workplace again.

Although my intent is not to share with you everything you need to know as a small business owner to create and implement a sustainable business strategy around a highly focused market niche, I will share with you what I think is most important of what I’ve learned in co-building our own successful implementation company in working only with highly focused market niche clients.

It’s simple, but not easy to choose a highly focused market niche.

Here are the three ingredients for all of my fellow small business owners to succeed in earning more money in less time and with less effort by choosing a highly focused market niche:

1. Is my ideal prospect experiencing expressed pain and emotion by not having the best solution to their particular problem?
2. Is my prospect proactively looking for a solution?
3. Does my prospect have few or no options?

How about a brief case study…

What can we as small business owners learn about choosing a highly responsive market niche from this Hasidic Jew reggae singer?

Do you respect how Matisyahu, the Hasidic Jew reggae reggae singer you just watched perform on David Letterman, created a unique market niche?

I get that many small business owners reading this blog post right now are saying, “the Jewish reggae singer is cute, but he is an artist and that does not apply to my real world as a small business owner.”

First, stop being a putz and being closed-minded.

Second, I seek to open your mind about the possibility of becoming the Matisyahu of your market sector.

Here are my random thoughts on why you should create your unique market niche:

• More profitable. Would you rather receive the paycheck of a highly successful minimally invasive pediatric cardio-thoracic surgeon or a general surgeon? Loaded question I know, but same fair or unfair rules apply to specialists in the small business world.
• Get found easier. Regardless of what you do or sell, your prospective clients are using the internet to try to find you. Over time, consumers are more savy about conducting highly-focused Google search phrases based on problem + location. By being highly focused on a particular market niche, you can be found much easier and perceived as truly unique in the sea of sameness of your competitors.
  
• You will not be a copycat marketer. John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing warns us that most start-up entrepreneurs are really good at something and most of these entrepreneurs don’t think of themselves as marketers. So they look around at what everyone else in their industry is saying and doing and they mimic both off-line and on-line. Within months the creep of not being found and not being regarded as an expert begins to ache. Meanwhile, you read about the success of someone who took an obscure, seemingly tiny market focus area and became the rock-star of her market. Your shoulders drop in pain and weariness.
• Perceived as an expert. By getting there first in your chosen market niche, you can be perceived by paying customers as the expert first. Remember, it’s not enough to be considered the first mover in your industry, you must be the first mover who get’s it right to be considered an icon.
• More interesting story to tell & hear about. I could give a rip about the next new shoe company. What about you? But, I really care about Tom’s Shoes. In fact, I will buy them not only for me and my family, but also I’m essentially buying a pair for a deserved person, because I know with my purchases Tom’s Shoes will match my purchase by giving away the same amount of shoes that I purchased. It makes me feel good about telling that story. And when I hear the Tom’s Shoes latest commercial it makes me want to buy more.
• Fewer competitors. It works like this. As the market focus gets smaller, the marketplace narrows, and fewer small business owners are spending time and energy in that particular market. You remain and you will have fewer competitors.
• You will become a sustainable business. When you successfully dominate a highly-focused market niche by being more efficient, profitable, and unique, you are establishing your business to becoming more sustainable in any economy.

Let me illustrate a fun demonstration on how you might refine your chosen market niche:

• You are a consultant. {You and everyone else who left Corporate America-Pal}
• You work with small business owners to grow their business. {What the heck defines a small business anyway & every consulting firm in the world promises the same thing}
• You have experience in sales & marketing. {You & every other liberal arts major-Big Deal?}

You could (Watch how I refine the focus of this particular market niche):

• Equip professional service owners to grow their business with a proven sales and marketing process.
• The professional service owners would be fee for service medical professionals not working in a hospital and not requiring graduation from medical school.
• You could focus upon massage therapists.
• Massage therapists working with cancer patients.
• Who live in greater NYC area.
• Willing to sign-up for 3-months minimum.
• Who don’t have to travel to you because you are willing to meet them in their home.

Let’s play this story out…

• You are a proven sales & marketing expert in your own business experience.
• Your life was impacted when your loving mother was diagnosed and ultimately loss her fight with this horrible disease.
• Your mother did not feel pretty or even feel like she deserved to be pampered while dealing with cancer.
• You could only imagine how your mother deserved to feel, even if for just one hour a week, if she received a massage at her own house from a trained massage therapist at the comfort of her own home.
• You could teach massage therapists a sales and marketing system that would make them unique in a crowded market of working, generally, with only healthy people.
• You don’t have to really know much at all about being a massage therapist, you just need to know how to equip the massage therapist with your proven sales and marketing process.
• You may even be able to help the massage therapists who will pay you to teach them your proven sales and marketing process by uncovering insurance companies that may even pay for this massage therapy treatment.
• You would certainly be able to receive positive media exposure for your good deeds.
• You could dominate a new market and get paid very well to teach cool people to authentically market their services to deserving people who really need your services.
  

What comments or questions do you have for us in why it makes sense for you to create a highly sustainable small business by dominating your particular market niche?