Brandmerry Blog Archives
How to Find Your Niche in Business
Whether you are just starting out or looking to narrow down your niche, I’m sharing why it’s necessary and four questions to answer in order to niche down and grow your business.
How do you actually say Niche?!
It’s the great debate online, but one thing that isn’t debatable is the NEED for it.
Every single day your ideal audience is bombarded with messages that might sound similar to yours, so how do you stand out?
How do you build something that is worth the time and energy of your ideal customer?
It’s all in your niche boo.
Now, I know I know you’ve tried.
Maybe you even feel solid in your niche now, but still find yourself not clearly communicating your expertise with your audience.
That’s because there’s probably still more work that needs to be done.
So, let’s strip it back and talk about niching down.
Importance of Niching Down
It’s very important that at the beginning of your business you are known for something. And that something can’t be a million things, no matter how easy it might be to think you can create a business that helps people:
Discover their purpose
Save their marriage
Homeschool their kids
AND start their online business
When you try to be known for too much, especially in the beginning, you will lose your audience and potential customers.
The best thing you can do out of the gate is to focus on one key niche and problem you solve in order to build expertise and momentum online.
As your brand grows and more importantly your awareness, THEN you can begin to introduce more elements and therefore expand your niche.
Be known for something - especially in the beginning, building a business (expert)
Why is this important?
Niching down is not just the what, it is also the who. And in order to create magnetic messaging online and pull in the right people to your brand you need to specifically create content for them and their problem.
Niching down requires you to get specific on the problem you are solving for a specific person.
DETERMINING A DEMAND FOR YOUR NICHE
It’s crucial that what you want to offer your ideal client not only solves a problem but is in demand.
This is why I love a competitive market.
People shy away from creating something because it’s been done before or there are so many people who offer products and services in a specific market and I say GO FOR IT!
So what does a competitive market tell us? It tells us there is a demand. It also tells us a lot about what is being offered and how we can fill the hole.
It’s not about a small, barely touched market, you’ll actually make more with a big market. The key to niching down is getting specific.
SPECIFIC NOT SMALL.
For instance, Branding is a big market there are a lot of people - it’s competitive. The hole that I discovered early on was that people didn’t feel confident in sharing their personal life through their brand, people we’re struggling to connect with their audience and that people wanted to build a personal brand.
So I found a very specific niche inside of branding that is related to storytelling and personal branding.
SOLVING A PROBLEM WITH YOUR NICHE
The most important thing you need in order to create a profitable niche is a problem. If your product or service doesn’t solve a problem there will be little demand...see how everything is connected?
Think about the problem that you're solving first. And then think about how you're going to solve that problem - that’s your framework, product and/or service.
This is why looking at the demand and possible competition is so helpful, you can literally see what people are saying their problem is.
Then you can explore how that problem is being addressed. Do you offer a different take? Is there a gap that you’re seeing in the market that you could fill?
Identifying this allows you to stand out. It’s like this weird reverse engineering process.
Look for the demand.
Look at the competition in your specific market.
See where the holes are.
Fill the holes.
Market to the specific person!
4 QUESTIONS TO ASK TO IDENTIFY YOUR NICHE
Before we get into the questions I want to take a second to talk about qualifications.
Hear me when I tell you that it’s not about your “qualifications” it’s about your experience. Yes, of course, your experience could be your degree or certifications, but it doesn’t have to be and for many of you it won’t.
If you think you have to have a specific degree or certification to start a business, you’re holding yourself back. Start with the experience you have now and expand on that as your business grows.
ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS
1. Create a Master List
The goal of the master list is to find your ballpark - think of the overarching market for your niche. List out all of your skills, certificates, degrees, work experience and even what people ask you for advice on. You’re essentially listing out anything you could provide or teach others.
After you’ve created your master list, look for “like” areas of interest. For instance, when I made my list early on I saw a lot of topics around communication so I decided to explore that further.
2. Create a Content Topic List
The goal of this content list is to begin to brainstorm the different topics you could share through your brand. Content is so important as an online entrepreneur and showing up, consistently talking about your specific niche is hard if you don’t have a lot of information in your brain.
Ask yourself, “If I had a Youtube channel what would I make videos about?”
Or
“If I have a blog, what would I write blog posts about?”
After you’ve created your content topic list you can look once again for “like” areas of interest. Compare this list to your first list of skills to see where the crossover is.
3. Determine The Demand.
Once you’ve narrowed down a couple of possibilities for your niche it’s time to ask and look for the demand.
I always suggest asking friends and family who might fall into the category of needing this service to rate the demand, but there are also tons of tools online to help you determine what people are seeking support on.
You can use tools like YouTube, Pinterest and Google to see what people are searching for. You can use these platforms to search for your central theme that you’ve determined and see what specifically people are searching for.
For instance, let’s say you want to go into marketing and on YouTube, you see a lot of videos on Instagram marketing, that might be something to explore.
The key is to look for video views that will tell you what content people are consuming. For Google, you can use a tool called Keywords Everywhere to see search volume.
Another thing that you can do after narrowing down the demand is to look at your competitors and see what they charge for their services. This will also give you an idea of the demand based on price.
4. What is the Problem and Who is it For?
Let’s pretend that you’re wanting to be an Instagram Strategist - great! Now we need to determine who you’re solving the problem for so we can further identify the pain and problem they are experiencing.
As an Instagram Strategist, you could consider if your services are for a brick and mortar?
Is it for an online coach or consultant? Is it for small businesses? Is it for a solopreneur? Is it for someone with a personal brand? Is it someone with a company brand?Is it for a service or product?
These are just some of the things to really start thinking about.
PAIN
Let’s be real for a second...people pay for pain, or specifically to eliminate pain.
As humans, we can easily tell you what we want to eliminate or experience less of over what we want more of. This pain point or problem is the deciding factor for your specific niche.
After you’ve determined your overall market, found a demand for a specific sector of that, identified where you can fill the gap and then narrowed it down further to a person/persons and a problem solved...you’ve got it boo!
There has to be a problem that you solve - if there's not a problem, it's going to be really, really hard to market. Having a business that you are passionate about is important, but if that passion doesn't solve a problem, you will have a very hard time marketing and therefore making money.
So start with the master list, writing out things you love and work your way down!
CONCLUSION
Remember the three things you want to identify are...
What problem do you solve?
Whose specifically do you solve that problem for?
How do you solve that problem?
P.S. Aside from the video below, I’ve got another video and blog on Discovering Your Niche here.
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MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
Not sure what to post on social media? 5 tools to help!
Does coming up with content for social media seem overwhelming? Maybe you feel like you get a good start at the beginning of the month, only to fall off the wagon come the 15th. There are five tools I use every single day in my business to make sure I constantly have a stream of high-quality content ideas. No matter what your industry there tools will work for you.
Not sure what to post on social media? 5 tools to help!
September 5, 2019
PREFER TO WATCH, INSTEAD OF READ? I’VE GOT YOU BOO.
SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH A QUICK VIDEO!
Does coming up with content for social media seem overwhelming?
Maybe you feel like you get a good start at the beginning of the month, only to fall off the wagon come the 15th.
There are five tools I use every single day in my business to make sure I constantly have a stream of high-quality content ideas. No matter what your industry there tools will work for you.
Running out of ideas won’t be a problem after this post #youcanthankmelater.
The reason these tools work so well, whether you have an audience or not, is because they are based off of what people are searching for online! Seriously, even if you don’t have an audience you can get started right now creating content to build your online community and expand brand awareness.
As always, if you want to watch the video or see some examples of how I use these tools you can watch the full video below.
1. Answerthepublic.com
Using this free tool you can type in a topic, let’s say you type in photography and it will share with you what people are literally Googling. This is so powerful because it gives you hard data as to what people are searching for online + allows you to further explore that topic via Google.
You can find specific questions people are Googling (i.e. your ideal client), the category they fall under (ex: Why, What, Where, How…). From there you can explore what others are sharing around that topic and fill the gap with your own content and start to brainstorm specific topic ideas that answer those burning questions!
Answerthepublic.com is a free tool.
2. Keywords Everywhere
This is a Google Chrome extension and something I use every single week for my blog and youtube content. The reality is, it’s important that the content you are creating is actually being searched for online and this tool not only can give you great topic ideas, but also tell you if what you’re thinking of creating content around is actually being searched for.
Once you have the extension downloaded you can simply type anything into Google. From there you can see how many people are searching for this keyword every month, the top posts and on the bottom right of your screen you can see “like” content or similar content that people are also looking for.
This tool in and of itself can give you tons of content ideas as they pertain to your specific niche.
Keywords Everywhere is a free tool.
3. Simple Internet Search
This option can be one of the most effective ways to come up with content ideas and it involves stalking...ok, not real stalking, but you are going to browse the internet for ideas.
You can use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube to browse the comment section to see what people are asking. For instance, let’s say I know a bunch of my target audience are in a specific Facebook group, you can go into that group and use the search bar to find questions and posts about your specific topic.
I use to do this every single week when I was starting my business. I would simply search “branding” and see what questions people were asking about this specific niche.
Another hack I love is finding influencers who are in the same niche as you. Take a look at their videos and content and see what people are asking in the comments section.
Seriously, there is an influencer I follow who asks her community about once a month what topics they want her to cover on her podcast - this is a top rated podcast so she had a lot of fans. These fans are also my target audience, so I find that post and catalogue the questions people are asking as it applies to my niche and create content around that.
All I have to do is go look through that post and bam I know what people want.
4. Start Sharing Your Story
I couldn’t do an entire piece of content and not talk about sharing your story.
If you’re ever at a loss for what to create it’s important to know that sometimes just sharing your own story can not only be a valuable piece of content, but also can get great engagement.
I’ve found time and time again that when I share a piece of content that is centered around sharing a relatable story with my audience, then I see the most engagement of all my posts.
When doing this, it's important to be super strategic and make sure the story you are sharing is relatable to your audience. If your audience can’t relate to it, they won’t be as inclined to engage. A couple questions I recommend asking before posting a story are:
☑️ Will they find value in it?
☑️ How does it support them on their journey?
☑️ Does it build trust?
Be sure to watch my video on Brand Story if you want more tips on sharing your story online.
5. Ask Your Community
Everything I’ve shared up until this point can be done without a community, but I wanted to include this at the end because I know so many of you already have a community started.
Even if that community is only 10 people who follow your brand that is enough to ask and start serving them at the highest level. Seriously, some of my most popular content has come from my audience and it can be super simple to get ideas.
I suggest using tools like polls in Facebook groups or on Instagram Stories, asking open-ended questions on social media or having my community complete a short questionnaire (again with open-ended questions).
Every 90 days in my business, I survey my audience to ask them what kind of content they need to reach their desires to make sure I always have a bank of content ideas.
I’m telling you we make this so much harder than it needs to be. Of course, there will be times where you know exactly what to share and times when you feel a little fuzzy, but now you have 5 tools you can use to quickly get out of that content rut.
Content is such a core part of the branding process, it’s ultimately how you create a thriving community that leads to a revenue-generating business. In my new masterclass I’m sharing The Build a Better Brand Method, where you’ll learn my 3-part branding process to stand out on social media, create high-value content and build a community that leads to a revenue-generating business.
Watch the class at brandmerry.com/brandmasterclass
Please share your biggest takeaways from this blog post and how you’re going to implement this information in your own business!
P.S Don’t forget to join me for my free masterclass at brandmerry.com/brandmasterclass
How to Discover Your Niche {video inside}
How to Discover Your Niche
Today I'm really excited to share with you my top tips for coming up with a business idea and how to niche down in a way that allows you to attract your dream clients and standout online. Before I dive into my tips, I want to share with you about an upcoming master class that I have. It's on five simple steps to create an authentic brand that allows you to grow your community with ease and leads to more clients. For more information on the upcoming time, checkout this link: brandmerry.com/authenticbrand
1. Look at your story
Tip number one, which is my favorite thing to freaking talk about and it's about really looking back at your story. Really looking back at your life and seeing, "Hey, are there any signs about what I could continue to do, what I could build a business around?" This was really powerful for me in my business, because my background and education was in communication, it was in advertising and public relations. When I looked at the pieces that I really enjoyed among all those things that I had done, the branding element really stood out to me. Then it was the piece of my story after identifying what had really happened in my life on a personal level that it became clear that I wanted to really empower women to show up as their authentic selves. To not be stifled, to create a life and a business that resulted freedom.
So, for you what is it? What can you look back at your story, look back at some major transitions of your life and say, "Whoa, I really feel passionate about that. I really feel like I could create that into a business." Often times, everything we need is already inside of us. It just takes a couple minutes to look inward and say, "Oh, yes, that is important. Oh yes, I love that," and then put the energy towards actually making that happen.
2. Come up with a list
All right, number two, I want you to come up with a list of ideas that you have based on your story. So come up with a list of ideas of things that you could teach or you could guide other individuals on to create a business around. Then from that list I want to see if anything pops out for you. Are you getting really clear on who you actually want to attract to your business? 'Cause this is such an important part of niching down that often doesn't come until later in people's minds, but I want you to focus on it in the beginning.
What pieces of your story, what parts of the list are telling you, "Hey I want to work with women. I want to work with women who want to leave their nine to five. I want to work with the new moms." Right? Can you start to get an idea of the person that you want to attract to your new brand and your business. So that's step two. Listing out all of the possible things that you feel passionate about that you can share, that you can build a business around and are any of those pointing to a type of woman or man that you want to attract to your business.
3. Making the connection
Step number three, I call Making the Connection, but you might also consider it Narrowing the List Down. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at your list and maybe for a couple of those connectors, like a couple of those points you're like, "Whoa, I want to talk to the same type of person for each of these," and that's what we're going to look at. We're going to look at how can these be connected. Are there maybe five things that really point you to creating a business around branding? Are there three points that tell you really want to help individuals with mindset? Are there some parts of your story that keep popping up around marketing strategies? Looking for the consistency in that list and the things that keep popping up that pull your attention to that one topic.
This is how we start to niche down, because as humans we can do so much and many of you watching right now as entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs probably have so many talents and it's really hard to bundle them all up into one specific thing. But by focusing on it this way and kind of niching yourself down into more of a generalized theme allows you to focus on those different pieces. If marketing is popping up a lot, then you know that your niche is most likely marketing. If branding is popping up a lot, it tells you, "Hey, we need to focus a little bit on branding." And then, you also have the steps that you need to say, "Oh, I want to focus on branding and I want to help this particular person with the branding process." And that right there, the what you do and the who you want to attract is the most important of niching down.
BONUS TIP!
My bonus tip for you today is that you can really build a business around anything. It's about being really specific and clear what it is that you do, who you want to attract and how you market yourself to them. I have a video that I did earlier this year on messaging, so go ahead and click that, make sure that you watch that video, it's really, really important. That is the next piece after niching down and finding your ideal client. But remember that there are so many people in the world, and you truly can create a business for a particular audience, for your target market and know that whatever crazy idea ... They seem crazy now, I have seen crazier in the online space when it comes to business ideas. So feel good and feel grounded and what idea you have and know that it is possible for you.
I really hope that those tips were super helpful for you. If you want more of a workbook style, I do have a really cool niche workbook that has helped thousands of women. You can download that here: https://brandmerry.lpages.co/blog-discover-your-niche-workbook-opt-in/
It's all about niching down and it'll walk you through this entire process, which is going to be so valuable for you, especially if you are just now thinking of starting a business. In addition, don't forget to join me for the Five Steps To Creating An Authentic Brand masterclass, which you can join here, and that's going to be really powerful for you, because I'm sharing what my journey has really looked like from working nine to five busy mom to creating a six figure business in just a year of having my coaching business, and I'm going to be sharing those steps for you. I'm all about simplicity.
You can watch the whole video for a more in-depth version of this and several bonus tips below!
Head over to my YouTube Channel and be sure to like and comment on the video while you are over there to help more people see this information ↠ https://youtu.be/NzNhn373nvs
And as always please share and comment on this blog post, I love connecting with you!
Michelle Knight is a Branding and Business coach for female entrepreneurs who are struggling to gain visibility and traction to take their business to the next level. She works with her clients to dive deep into their story so they can create a brand and message that positions them as an expert and allows them to create their desired income to free up time in their schedule for what matters most. Learn more >>