8 Awesome Benefits of Having a Business Niche

“Business Niche” is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days. You would have probably heard this term before, and you may even already have a defined niche without having even consciously thought about it.

If you are launching a business, it can be a good idea to spend a bit of time thinking about what your niche is going to be. Having a niche has an array of benefits. Let me talk you through them!

What is a business niche?

In simple terms, a niche is an area of expertise in which your business will specialise.

In a sense, every business has a broad niche. For example, if you are a photographer, you already specialise in that area of business.

However, it can be helpful to narrow your focus even more. For example, you can be a wedding photographer or go even more niche and be a wedding photographer that specialises in Coromandel beach weddings. Or you can decide that you want to be a real estate photographer, and then narrow your focus even more and decide you are going to focus on taking shots of holiday homes.

What are the benefits of a niche?

Having a niche will help you find the right customers and the right customers find you. When you are starting a business, it may sound scary to focus on a niche as you may be keen to take on any customer that comes your way. It is totally understandable! Most new entrepreneurs don’t want to risk being picky and miss out on potential income.

Well, while it may sound scary to narrow your focus and say “no” to potential income sources, defining a niche would ultimately help grow your business. And not only that, it will help you build a business that you are truly passionate about, working with people that you really enjoy helping. How cool would that be!

Below are 8 awesome benefits of having a business niche explained in more detail.

1 – It is easier to become an expert within a niche

Once you define your niche, you can become a true expert in that area. It can be difficult to become an expert in a whole industry, but it is much more achievable to become an expert within a niche.

You can spend time learning and training to become the best of the best in your area of expertise. The pay off from this is that you can charge premium fees. Customers are willing to pay more money for expert services.

2 – Your marketing can be more targeted

There are heaps of businesses out there. The Internet is a busy, noisy place, and it can be difficult to stand out. Defining your niche will make it possible to be more specific with your marketing, making it easier to connect with the right people.

Once you know who your ideal customer is, you can use the right language, design, and colours to appeal to your target audience. For example, if you were a photographer specialising in corporate headshots, you would need a more formal style and tone of voice. If your niche is family photography, you would use a totally different colour palette, language, and design elements to create the right vibe and appeal to your clientele.

3 – Increase conversions

Knowing your niche will help convert the people that come across your business. When the right customer finds you, they are more likely to use your service if they feel engaged and understood.

Think of this example: You are planning your dream beach wedding in The Coromandel and are looking for a photographer. You do a Google search and check out a handful of photographers in the area. Who are you more likely to contact? The one that specialises in beach weddings or a photographer that does a bit of everything? Who would you trust to deliver on your special day?

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5 – It is easier to connect with ideal clients

Once you have a niche, it will be a lot easier to identify your ideal client. Having a niche will give you focus and direction. It will be easier to connect with the right people and generate new leads.

Let’s think about this Instagram Marketing example: if you were a photographer specialising in food photography, you could easily identify, follow and DM your ideal clients. This is a lot harder to do when you don’t have a niche.

With a clear niche, you know that you need to start engaging with restaurants, cafes, food bloggers, bakers, food manufacturers, ice cream parlours and so on! Where do you even start when you are a photographer of all things?

Once this ideal client checks your Instagram account, they are more likely to follow you back or engage with your content if you have a feed that clearly showcases your niche.

For example, if the client goes to your account and sees photos of real estate, dogs, children, weddings, hot dogs and landscaping. They may or may not think that it will be worth engaging with your business.

On the other hand, if this same client goes to your Instagram profile and sees that it is dedicated to food photography, has samples of food photography photos that you’ve taken and is packed with engaging content relating to the food photography niche, they are likely to have a different reaction.

Which do you think will be more effective?

6 – Authenticity is important for business success

People engage more with businesses (and business owners) that feel honest and authentic. Your niche needs to express your authenticity. People want to know the story behind a business and defining your niche is part of that story. Keep this mind as you define your niche. Does doing corporate headshots or food photography reflect your authentic true self more?

7 – Do work that inspires you

Most businesses start from a place of scarcity. New entrepreneurs will take on any job and do (almost!) anything for a bit of money and experience.

Once you start growing within your industry and developing a name for yourself, you can start to become pickier and assess opportunities as they come your way. You don’t want to become an expert within a niche that you hate. It can be pretty soul-destroying to “fall” into the wrong niche for you.

Choosing a niche will help you to not just build a business, but create a business that you are truly passionate about.

8 – Create a following of raving fans

When you are doing work you love, in a niche you truly enjoy, working with your ideal customers, something magical can happen. People will sense that you truly love what you are doing, and will be more likely to recommend you to others.

Imagine how good it would feel to arrive at a job feeling confident that you are going to do an excellent job because it is within your area of expertise?

How do you define your business niche?

Defining your niche can be hard, and it is not necessarily something that you need to do straight away.

Your niche should be a combination of your passions and your skills while being a service that people need (and are willing to pay for!). It needs to solve a problem for your ideal customer.

It is ok to start broad, and then narrow your focus. You may want to generalise for a while as you figure out what you can really be passionate about and good at.

Start doing work within different niches and see what happens. You will start getting a feel of the type of people that suit the work that you do and love. Over time your focus will become clearer. You will naturally start to attract a certain type of people and you can narrow down your niche then.

For now, you can start taking notes after you finish different projects. What worked? What didn’t? What did you enjoy? Sometimes you can only connect the dots looking backwards.