OK, so you’ve been in business a long time. Is it still a useful exercise to (re) identify your niche?

YES! You bet it is.

Because it helps you market your business. Because change in your business is inevitable. And it doesn’t matter where you are in your business journey – startup, growth, or scaling with one-to-many – business (and life) changes over time. Which means how you deal with your niche, how you talk to them – aka marketing – might need to change too. 

Here’s some of the changes that might prompt a rethink of your niche:

• A change in the things you offer, ie. how you serve your customers, probably means a change in who the people are that want your (new) thing.
• A change in who you want to work with. As above, when we age, the types of people we might want to work with can also change. Who you wanted to work with a year or two back is not what’s floating your boat right now. They’ll very likely be very similar to who you were working with – but there may be some subtle (or even fundamental) shift. A different income or career level? A different age group? A different attitude to spirituality?
• A change in your business name. A change in business name can be a big change or just a tweak. However, ANY kind of name change needs to be carefully considered, because the words we choose create a change in the message we send out about who we are. For instance, “Jenny’s Chickens” sounds grounded and practical, and has a very different feel to “Jennifer’s Emporium of Fine Poultry”. “Jen’s Hens” feels different again – fun and light-hearted. The three names will appeal to three different audiences.
• A change in your business structure. Perhaps you’ve taken on a new staff member, who has impressive skills in a particular area that you would like to utilise. Perhaps you want to pare down your offerings and/or the time you spend in your business because you have other things in your life you would like to concentrate on. Any change in business structure means new things to offer (or not offer) to your audience, so you need to rethink your niche to ensure what you DO offer aligns with what they want.
• A change in YOU. As we age, our values, our attitudes, and our likes/dislikes also change. Which means it’s good to reassess how we want to work, what services (or products) we want to offer, and/or who we want to work with – which is all of the above.

Your niche is absolutely something you need to check in with periodically. How often is up to you – but once every year or two would be ideal. (You can read more about branding/rebranding in this blog post here.)

So, how DO you (re) identify your niche? There are lots of ways to tease out who your audience is exactly.

Identify your demographics

Demographics is a useful place to start. Your demographics is all the practical, tangible FACTS about your audience – age, gender, location, income, family, cultural, etc.

However, all demographics are not created equal when it comes to being a useful point of difference in identifying your audience. For instance, if you’re like me and working via email and Zoom to deal with clients, location is not a hugely important thing (although it can be, because I’m not fond of getting up at 4 in the morning to speak with someone from the UK!) – but overall, I do not care if they’re from Auckland or Adelaide or Albany. But if you’re a builder or a plumber, then location is a vital demographic. Building a house remotely provides some serious challenges…

Income level is another demographic that needs qualifying before it becomes useful. If you’re selling high-end services, you might decide you want to work with those on $100K+ salaries. But – do they have families? Do they have big mortgages? How much actual discretionary cash do they have? If they’re running businesses, then hopefully they have their business finances separate from their family finances, but it still depends on how much they’re choosing to draw out of their business as owners’ pay, expenses, etc.

Family can also affect how much time they have available – young children tend to require a lot more input than late teens/early 20s.

Age is also an interesting thing. While you might speak the same language, come from a similar location, and have experienced many of the same things – a 20-year age gap is enough to be a generational age gap. And their points of view on some things are not going to be the same as ours. So when you say “I work with an age group of 20-60yos”, that’s around TWO generations – so think very carefully about how relatable each end of that age bracket is to you.

Some things – gender, ethnic groups – might not be a priority demographic for you to help identify your niche – but they are often included in a subtle way. We tend to attract people that are like us – because we’re humans and we like a sense of familiarity, as well as the idea that someone like us is more likely to understand our specific situation. This is particularly true of 1:1 services, such as coaching. So, if you have brown skin, speak languages other than English, are part of a minority community – please show yourself! Your own community will love to identify with you and work with you.

Identify your Psychographics

Psychographics are the less tangible qualities of your audience, and is more about how/why/what they think. What’s important to them? What are their attitudes to important issues, what do they aspire to, what things do they love, what are their values and beliefs?

For me, psychographics are a much more helpful way of defining your audience than just looking at demographics. Because it’s the emotional investment, it’s what’s meaningful for your audience, that becomes the biggest driver/s in deciding to work with you/purchase from you or not.

Some psychographics to consider are:

• Values & beliefs — Where are they on the scale of woo?  How important to them are activities such as creativity, personal growth, and purposeful work?
• Lifestyle & life-stage orientation — what are they juggling in their lives? Are they seeking flexibility or structure in their lives right now, and why are they seeking that?
• Interests, passions & hobbies — What do they love doing? Are they drawn to creative pursuits/arts? Deep-diving into healing modalities, personal development, and/or spirituality?
• Personality traits & mindset — What type of person are they at their core? One would hope they’re open-minded and reflective, growth-oriented and willing to learn and evolve. But depending on what you’re offering, AND where they’re starting from, maybe they’re more existentialist than that and just want to get away from where they are. Midset can also involve how they feel about MONEY. Some people are very careful spenders, some are more lavish. Some prefer to invest wisely in their education, others just want to make their lives more comfortable. If you check out the Sacred Money Archetypes, you can see the range of earning, saving, and spending types of people there are.
• Attitudes toward choices — How do they feel about consumption, and what do they choose? While choice may be limited due to financial constraints, they might still lean heavily towards the homegrown and handmade, value experience over convenience, and steer away from mass-produced and/or unethical goods.
• Goals, motivations & deeper aspirations — What are their motivators? Are they working towards being their best self and the empowerment that brings? How deeply do they desire to make a difference in the world – and is that local or global? Are they seekers of transformation, alignment, and authenticity? Or do they just want the quick fix? A short-term solution to their immediate problem?
• Also – your audience is always looking for the SOLUTION, not the method to get there. So what are you actually offering to them?

Journey Stage

This segmentation is vital information. Where have they come from? What have they tried, what have they been through? Where are they headed? And what exactly is it that they want to feel like after they work with you?

Technographics

Technographics refers to the way your audience uses technology. Depending on the service you’re offering AND how you offer it, then this might be a (less important) factor, when you’re looking at how to identify your niche.

For instance:

• Are they full-on geeks and able to flit between platforms? Everything in their house is hooked up and screen-driven? Or do they struggle with the TV remote?
• Do they choose to always work on desktop, or prefer the mobility of tablet and phone?
• And how often do they use tech? Have they always got a device in their hands? Or do they prefer to leave their phone elsewhere and immerse themselves fully in what they’re doing?
• What sorts of platforms do they use? How many times do they engage throughout the day?
• How do they use that tech? Flick through? Engage deeply? Do they have a gazillion tabs open (like me 😀 ), or are they more direct?

There are other ways to identify your niche too. You can dig down into the geographics if location is important to you. Country, region, city, suburb. Or, climate can be a thing if for instance you’re selling plants. And whether your audience is urban, suburban, or rural can also be a useful distinction. Generational segmentation is probably best described as part of the larger Demographic segmentation discussed earlier, but Generational also takes into account the time frame the person was born into, because they share common experiences – Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z, and more.

As you can see, there is a LOT to dig into when you want to identify your niche.

As a final word – the whole point of figuring out who you’re talking to is so you know HOW to talk to them! So they KNOW you understand what they’ve been through and what they want, and they sit up and take notice of you.

Having said that – I remind you that having a super narrow niche does NOT stop people who don’t tick all the boxes from working with you. If I give you the example of a person with a checklist of say 10 criteria, looking to work with someone who does the thing you do – if you only fit 9 of those criteria, chances are they’ll still choose to work with you. If you only fit 8, or 7, they’ll probably still work with you. If it’s only 5, they might keep looking… It’s a sliding scale of fit, and is NOT prescriptive.

 

So, do not fear niching! EVER. It’s a useful thing, and the clearer you are on who it is and what their motivators are, where they’re coming from and where they’re heading to – then THAT is gold.