Are you trying to reach everyone or just a relevant audience?
Trying to reach and sell to everyone is impossible and will not generate results compared to businesses that focus on targeting their niche. In this article, we explain the importance of identifying your niche and adopting an inbound marketing strategy that is tailored to it.
Identifying your niche
A busines niche is like a specialisation; it defines the subset of the market that you are trying to attract. For example, at Somer Design, our broader category is that we are a branding, web design and digital marketing agency. But our niche, the industries that we love to work with, include not-for-profits, coaches and consultants and small businesses.
Here’s some questions to help you identify your target audience and niche:
- What type of clients do you usually work with?
- What industry are they in and what are their key characteristics?
- What are their common pain points?
- What is your solution?
- What is unique about your offering?
Once you have identified your niche, you can then tailor your marketing strategy to suit them. Not only does this differentiate you from competitors, but it allows you to specialise in a certain area and excel.
What is inbound marketing?
Let’s say you’re a coach that works to improve public speaking skills. Would you advertise yourself as a ‘coach’ or a ‘public speaking coach’? Obviously, you would include your niche. This narrows down your services to ensure that people searching for you are finding relevant content that they can relate to. After all, while broader marketing may reach more people, 99% of people will ignore it because it isn’t relevant or relatable to them. Instead, you should target the percentage of people who are actively searching for your services.
This is the premise of inbound marketing. It is about being specific and growing within your niche.
What are the benefits of inbound marketing?
- Increase visibility
By pitching the right concepts to a specific group of people, you are more likely to make an impact. It is easier to be heard within a specific marketplace compared to the overcrowded general space. Therefore, inbound marketing can increase your search visibility, as the content is optimised for specific and relevant terms.
- Connect with a specific social audience
Defining your niche can also help to enhance social media performance. Whether you’re using Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or another platform, inbound marketing in a niche is one of the fastest ways to organically grow an audience and increase engagement.
- Appeal to a wider audience
When you target a niche, you don’t just attract people in your local area, instead, you attract people interested in that topic from around the world. This can grow your presence and increase brand awareness.
- Become a thought leader
When you consistently publish content related to a niche, you can become an online industry specialist and thought leader. This shows prospective clients that you are an expert in your field and can effectively help them.
- Increase conversions
If you attract a more relevant, niche audience, then you are more likely to generate a higher conversion rate compared to if you try to target everyone. Inbound marketing ensures that you are actively attracting relevant people and they are more likely to convert than someone who is uninterested.
- Assess analytics
Inbound marketing is highly measurable. Using analytics, you can track performance and assess whether your inbound marketing approach is having an impact. This allows you to identify areas of improvement and constantly refine your strategy leading to enhanced performance.
