You see the value of a niche. You do. But you’re worried. What if you start sharing great content related to your chosen niche, and potential buyers see it and walk away? What if they think, “That’s not me. There’s no point working with this accountancy firm. I’ll go somewhere else.”
Sending people away can be good.
The other day I spoke to the owner of a firm who wanted to get into content marketing and social media, but he didn’t have the budget. At the end of the conversation he mentioned he’s spending almost £1k per month on Google PPC ads (pay per click). He said he got a lot of leads from it.
So I asked how many leads. “About 20 or 30 per month,” he said. “And are they the best kind of the leads? The highest quality clients? People who like you and your firm and are ready to do work with you and pay you the money?” He said, “probably 1 or 2 of them are that kind of client.”
Here’s the problem: you’re so worried about sending people away that you are still accepting everyone. You’re so open that you get tons of leads, but they’re not the good ones.
Before you panic about sending people away, ask yourself whether that could be a good thing.
Wouldn’t it be better to invest your marketing budget in a way that delivered 3-4 really amazing leads to you every month, most of which converted to clients, rather than wasting your time on 20-30 leads that are not a fit?
Your niche is like a bouncer. A security guard. Its job is to protect your business from the riff raff, the time wasters, those who are banging on the door hoping to be let in but are only going to bring chaos to you and your team.
Let your niche do its job, and qualify people out for you.
Is your niche exclusive? Or are you in the testing phase?
Unless you have an exclusive niche, you’re going to be sharing marketing content for a variety of audiences.
Yes, you may have a landing page for dentists, and a guide for them. You may share a few social posts relevant to dentists.
But unless every single piece of content you share, every marketing message you send out, every social post, every video is exclusively and only for that niche, you’re simply sharing good content. Some of it is relevant to dentists (or whoever), and some isn’t.
You will only alienate people if that one and only niche area is all you ever talk about. If you have an exclusive niche, then that alienation is a win. (If you only work with dentists, why would you want an enquiry from a freelance designer?) And if your niche is not exclusive, share content for other areas too.
Let the buyer decide.
People don’t read every piece of marketing material you share.
This is one of the biggest mistakes that accountants make when it comes to marketing. You spend hours and hours on that blog post. You take and re-take the video until it’s absolutely perfect. You spend well over a year editing every tiny word and letter and colour on your new website.
Then you publish. And you wait in eager anticipation.
And you forget that your amazing piece of content is simply one of a million messages zooming past your buyer in a day.
They’re flicking at top speeds, on their phone, on the go, while doing about six other things. They skim. They forget. They save it and never go back to it.
Don’t panic so much about alienation when your bigger concern is simply being seen.
Let your audience filter through what you share and see the big picture of who your firm is. Your brand and style. Your people. Your niche (or focus areas).
Then you let them decide whether they want to work with you. It’s as simple as that.
Rather than worrying about whether you alienate people with your niche marketing, turn the question on its head. Ask yourself, “HOW will this alienate people? WHO will this alienate?”
Make sure your content alienates some people and wins over others. That’s its job.
You cannot be all things to all people. No one is, and no one ever succeeds with that philosophy.
Be who you are. Share what you want. Alienate those you don’t want and win over those you do. And let them decide if they like it or not.