[, Music ], i’m guessing you’ve, probably heard that it is super important that you choose a niche for your business or brand that it’s way better to be a big fish in a small pond than to be a tiny fish lost in a sea of competition.

And that, if you want to be able to grow your brand market, your business make sales get followers et cetera, et cetera, then you really have to choose a niche and the more specific, the better. So you’ve tried to follow this advice and you’ve tried to choose a niche, but instead of feeling like you’re choosing a good opportunity, you feel like you’re, just pigeonholing yourself and putting yourself in a box he’s in a box.

I know a lot of people struggle with this when they’re for starting their online business and often several years into the process. I know because i struggled with this myself a lot for a long time and also because inside startup society and other online business programs that we run i’m regularly talking to people who are in this exact situation.

In fact, i just finished a series of market research interviews where i was talking to people who were starting their businesses, and i was asking them about what different struggles they were facing and the number one most common struggle that i heard from them was that they Were trying to choose their niche and they were having a really hard time of it.

Solving this problem and successfully choosing your niche starts by realizing that when people say the word niche, they mean a lot of really different things, and i’m not just talking here about whether they’re saying niche or niche or pronouncing in some other way.

I mean they mean completely different things. For example, when some people say that you need to choose a niche or that you need to niche down, they mean that you need to choose a specialty, that you need to specialize and choose a specific thing that you are an expert at and maybe offer only One very specific service or sell one very specific product and by default that’s going to impact, for example, the content that you create and you’ll probably wind up only talking about one very specific thing in your business and brand and content now, on the other hand, other People when they say niche, they aren’t talking about what you sell or what you specialize in, but instead they’re talking about who your target market is.

So they are saying you need to define a very specific type of person who you help. For example, 42 year old bachelors who eat keto diets, now, as you can see, these are two very different ways of defining a niche and until you even recognize that that’s happening and that there’s this conflict of definitions a lot of times that can make choosing a Niche feel way more complicated than it is very complicated and then to complicate matters even further a lot of the time.

People think that you need to do both of these things, and so you need to choose a really specific type of person that you only help in one very specific way. So, for example, this would be like if you only offered linkedin advertising services, and you only offered them two 42-year-old bachelor to keto diets now, obviously, that would end up being a very narrow market, a very small group of people who might possibly be the right fit For your business and your services and who you might be willing to work with, and so then, when you try to define your niche like that, you wind up feeling, like maybe again, you’re putting yourself in a pigeonhole and you’re, putting yourself in a box and you’re Going to be missing out on a lot of potential opportunity and you’re going to have a really hard time finding anyone who wants to work with you since you are so niched down and so then, when you’re, looking at niches like that and you’re trying to decide Which one is the right one for you, it’s kind of like you’re, just looking at a bunch of different circles, some of them bigger, some of them smaller and you’re, trying to decide which one to put your business in.

But you feel like you’re, going to be missing out on all the others, but here’s the thing: it’s not just that you are having a hard time, choosing a niche. It’S that this whole premise is flawed. It’S that we’ve accepted this hook, line and sinker that we have to choose a niche as part of the foundational part of starting a business where in reality, most businesses, don’t even have a very narrow niche.

We’Ll talk more about this in just a minute, but you don’t even necessarily have to have a niche per se, although there are certainly other ways that you should clarify exactly what your business does and the businesses that do have niches.

Most of them develop those niches over a period of a few years of running their business, a period where they worked with hundreds of different customers, and they figured out a very specific type of person.

They want to serve so to understand where the concept of niche even fits in. We have to back up a little bit or maybe a lot bit back it up and first understand that your business is going to fit into some sort of industry or category.

So this is just going to be the general space that your business is in. It could be something like the health and wellness space or the fitness space or the education space or the fashion space or the gardening space.

These are all different general industries, and your business is definitely going to fit into one of them and you might have already decided what type of business you’re going to start or what category your industry, your business, is going to be in and if so, that’s awesome.

If not, that’s, okay, we’re just going to keep going for now and understand kind of this big picture and then we’ll talk about how to figure out those things. So within your industry, your brand is going to provide some type of specific value.

It’S going to be a specific product or service, and the most important part here is that the way you provide this value is by solving some sort of problem for your customers. So right now we’re not yet thinking really about who these people are we’re.

Just thinking about what it is, you’ll actually do for your customers. How are you going to help them so, for example, for this value layer of defining your business? Maybe you help people get out of debt or get financing for college or parent a child with autism or lose weight or plant an organic garden.

There are a million different things here that you could help people do, but that’s the next layer of defining exactly what your business does is, how it helps people and what that value is that it provides, and this thing this specific value you provide, it’s really the Most important thing when it comes to defining what your business is and what it does, because the value that you offer is the reason why people will choose to work with you to buy your products to subscribe to your email list or to follow you on social Media, it’s because they want that value because they have that problem that you help them solve and they want your help in solving it.

Hey there, i’m interrupting the video for just a moment. So if you’ve been on my channel for any amount of time, you’ve probably seen several sales funnel videos i’ve made over the last year or so about how to plan a funnel a funnel strategy.

How to set up an evergreen funnel lots more. You guys seem to love those videos, but in addition to just like lots of views on them, i’ve also seen a lot of comments from you guys asking me to go even deeper.

Asking lots of questions about sales funnels asking me to show you how to set up your own funnel and so i’ve finally decided to put together a master class and go even deeper about sales funnels, specifically evergreen automated sales funnels.

So if you want to improve your sales funnels, you have in your business and get them to convert more and make you more money or, if you’re, just setting up your first funnel. And you want to go deep fast and learn how to create a really high.

Converting funnel, then this is the master class for you. It’S happening later this month. It’S going to be live, we’re going to have a q a after i’m keeping it really affordable, because it is just a live workshop.

If that’s something that you would be interested in then check the description for a link for more info and to sign up for the master class. I hope to see you there. I know it’s going to be a lot of fun.

We’Re going to go super deep! Get super nerdy about those evergreen sales funnels right now, let’s get back to the video now the final layer of defining what your business is and dies the final layer of your marketing messages.

This is what i would really call your niche. It is the most specific you’re going to get with exactly what your business is and does, and this is where you would define exactly a specific type of person who you serve in a very specific way in which you help them.

So, for example, where your business is value might just be helping people get out of debt. When you come to your niche, you might be specifically helping single moms get out of debt by starting their own small businesses or, if the general value that your business provides is helping parents with autistic children, your niche might be helping parents with autistic children ages.

Two to six and the way in which you help them is through dietary changes that help their child, have better attention and focus now having a niche can be really powerful and it can supercharge your marketing messages.

But it’s not normally one of the first things that businesses decide when they are first getting started. It’S normally something that comes down the road after they’ve already worked with. Hundreds of different customers and they’ve figured out a specific type of customer that they really want to specialize in helping, probably because they really enjoy helping that type of customer and also because they have some specific angle or knowledge that helps them to be really successful.

With that type of customer, okay, so now that you understand the difference between these three things – your industry, your value and your niche – and you understand that is really the value that your business provides.

That is the most important and the thing that you need to figure out at the outset. If you want to be able to stand out and attract customers now, let’s talk about a couple different ways: you can figure out what that value is and decide on it.

In a really firm way and get some clarity on who you help and how you help them, so the first way that you can do this is by starting with the type of person that you want to serve. But when i say a type of person here, i do not mean something like people with brown, hair or people who live in albuquerque or people who even like to eat a keto diet.

The unifying characteristic that this type of person needs to have is people with a specific problem. So a lot of the times people like to help people who have a problem that they overcame themselves.

So, for example, for me, i really wanted to start my own business and i couldn’t figure out how to get it off the ground for a few years, and i really struggled with that process finally did and it changed my life.

So then, i wanted to help other people who were struggling to start their own businesses, and so that became kind of the value premise of my business and the way in which i help people for you, this is probably something else.

Maybe you want to help people overcome a specific disease or get out of debt or get financing for something specific, but this is one place where you can start defining the value of your business, just think about what you want to help people with from there.

Your next step will be deciding how you want to help this group of people now. Part of this is super obvious. You want to help them overcome whatever that unifying problem is, but the other part will require a little bit more thought and decision making, because this is where you decide exactly how you want to help them create the result.

So, for example, are you going to provide consulting for them? Are you going to actually do the work for them? Are you going to offer a course, or are you going to sell some sort of product that they can use to overcome this problem? The answer to this question is going to come down to first of all, what would actually help these people overcome that problem and then, secondly, what do you want to create? What would you enjoy creating and what would you be able to easily and successfully create? So that’s one way of choosing your niche, but now, let’s look at one other way, so with this second method, you’re going to start with something that you just enjoy doing so this could be writing public speaking, painting, woodworking gardening, cooking child care, literally anything that you Really enjoy doing and you’re interested in monetizing, then from there you’re going to think about how you might be able to help people with that service.

So, for example, if you like writing well, you could write a book that helps people by providing them with entertainment or with some sort of valuable information, or you could provide freelance writing services to publishing companies or websites, or you could write a blog yourself that provides Some sort of helpful content to people for another example.

If you like to do graphic design well, you could create designs and sell them as art or you could offer graphic design services or you could use your graphic design skills to create templates and then sell them on etsy for people to use to create their own Designs and then for one more example: let’s say you enjoy woodworking well, you could create and sell finished pieces or you could teach people how to do woodworking for themselves or you could offer custom woodworking services for people’s projects.

So at this point, using this method, you will have chosen something that you enjoy doing and brainstormed some different ways in which you could provide value with that service, and the final step is to decide what market you want to serve with that service.

So sometimes this is more obvious. Sometimes there are lots of different options, for example, if you want to do woodworking and you want to do custom projects well, then the most obvious target market would simply be your local area.

However, if you want to offer writing services and you’re thinking that, maybe you would want to write a book well, obviously there are a million different books. You write for dozens of different markets or you might have decided you want to do freelance writing services, and in that case you could choose a whole slew of different industries, but you will do the best if you choose one industry to specialize in.

So that’s why the things that are important is first of all, what is that value you’re providing? And secondly, what industry are you fitting into having a target customer and, having that be a really specific type of person like i said it can be valuable, but it’s not the first thing you need to figure out and it’s definitely not something.

You need to figure out before you can start your business clarifying. What your business is all about isn’t about putting yourself into a tiny box, it’s simply about deciding where you’ll focus and specifically, what you’ll offer the two biggest mistakes that people make when trying to choose a niche are number one choosing a niche too early and choosing A niche that’s way too narrow, which makes it really difficult for them to find customers.

When you arbitrarily choose a really narrow niche, and when i say arbitrarily i mean it’s not based off of work, you’ve actually done with people and who you actually enjoyed working with. But instead you just kind of dream up this imaginary person, who you think i want to serve that really specific person and you define them down to their hair, color and their age and what they like to eat.

That makes it really really tough to find customers, but a lot of people think that that’s what they are supposed to do or what they need to do for their business to be successful, and that’s just not the case, and the second mistake people make is that They don’t define their product or their service narrowly enough.

They leave their product or service very broad and undefined, and they don’t clarify the value that their product or service really offers. They don’t clarify exactly what problem they’re solving and that makes it really difficult for potential customers to see the value of the product and to understand why they would want to pay for it when you’re first starting out, you need to do exactly the opposite of these Two mistakes: you need to define exactly the value you’re offering and be really specific about that, but you need to leave your target customer fairly wide open.

Now, of course, you might decide you want to serve men or women or people in your local area or big businesses versus small businesses, or something like that. You might want to define your market to some extent so that you can target that market with your marketing messages, but just avoid marketing too narrowly avoid defining your niche too early or too narrowly, because that is really going to make your life so much more difficult.

Honestly, if you focus on choosing a specific product or service to offer and on simply clarifying the value of that and what problem you’re solving with that product or service, your target market is going to define itself defining your business’s value is one important part of creating A plan for your new business, some other parts of creating your marketing plan, involve deciding how you’re going to actually create that product and how you’re going to price it and how you’re going to market it and clarifying some goals.

If you want to learn more about that process, click on that video right there to learn how to write your own business plan and, of course, if you aren’t already subscribed, i would love to invite you to do that.

If you are interested in learning more about how to start your own business online and make great money working for yourself, my name is gillian perkins. Thank you. So much for watching and i’ll see you again next week.

Source Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJrO3iuSYuA