Find a niche and fill it:
You may have the desire to provide as much as you can to as many people as you can. But with that kind of thinking, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. It’s impossible to be everything to everyone. You can try, but you will fail 100% of the time.
Everyone isn’t your target market (or they shouldn’t be), so why should you try and be everything to everyone?
Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer. If you needed a lawyer to handle your personal injury case, would you choose a personal injury lawyer who specializes in these types of cases or would you go with a lawyer who handles these cases among their many others? You’d go with the first. Why? Because they have a set focus and niche and only spend their time within that area of focus, meaning they’re highly skilled and knowledgeable in that area. This is exactly what you need to be doing if you want to be considered a thought leader in your industry.When you try to be everything to everyone, you face several challenges and dangers. Here’s the hazardous road you’ll drive down if you choose this method of thinking:
- Your brand message becomes lost because you’re straying from it.
- Lose value to your brand.
- Slows down your business growth.
- Takes away the time you could be spending providing better, more meaningful efforts.
- The more you try and do, the less consistent you are with your work so you deliver mediocre instead of great work.
- Gives off a sense of desperation.
- Get easily burnt out.
The only way to be a thought leader in your industry is to focus and go narrow and deep into a niche. You earn more from this method of thinking, and can offer more to your target audience. It’s much easier and more profitable to connect with a smaller, more focused niche in a bigger way than it is to try and connect with a large, broad audience in a big way. Your mind and efforts aren’t being pulled in every direction, so you have the time and capability to offer a higher value to your audience. When you focus and go more narrow and deep, you offer the less-is-more method, which works greatly for you and is appreciated by your customers.
Your brand is stronger and your business grows faster when you’re focused. When you offer concentrated services to a target audience, 3 things happen: it’s easier to find your customers, it’s easier to convince potential customers to become loyal customers and your expertise in your industry grows, which in turn attracts more customers your way.
It’s human nature to not want to limit yourself and your abilities or turn away someone who could be a potential customer. But you will actually find more customers and more easily find them and turn them into loyal customers when you focus and go narrow and deep into a niche. You become indispensible, needed and highly sought after for your skills in your niche area. You turn yourself into the go-to thought leader in your industry, and that’s exactly what your goal should be.
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Decide on a DW 'niche' and see if that path doesn't help your merchant-gathering efforts gain serious traction!
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