It is often said that you can’t be everything to everyone. This is especially true in operating your business. The worst thing a business owner can do is delude themselves into thinking everyone will buy from them, or that the business model
will make all your customers happy.
Trying to satisfy everyone’s requirements for your products or services is a big
task. It is a thankless task. Even if you manage to offer great customer service,
you can’t win at this game. At best, you will be only moderately successful at
keeping all your customers happy. This means customer satisfaction probably
won’t be sufficient to bring you lots of referrals and repeat business. You can’t
please all the people all the time. This is not to say you shouldn’t be great at
meeting your customers requests, just remember to not sacrifice the rest of
your customer to please one.
As a small business owner, you will do far better by focusing on satisfying the
needs of a very specific subset of the market. If your niche market has well defined
needs, then you can create specific products and services making your customers
easier to satisfy. Your selected customers are likely to be much happier.
You make a much bigger splash by jumping up and down in a puddle than if you
bob up and down in the sea. Similarly, focusing on a niche target market means
you have a much greater impact on the customers you serve if your focus remains
intact and doesn’t waiver. Your customer satisfaction soars, and your reputation
as a specialist grows as customers pass the word around.
The need for a well defined market niche increases dramatically as markets
become more competitive.
Consider this example. Imagine you are a former accountant who has decided to
cash in on the booming Internet business market. So you buy some equipment
and software, and you set up to provide website hosting services.
The market for this service is enormous. people everywhere are putting their
business online. You are dismayed, however when you find that attracting
any business is almost impossible for a small newcomer like you.
There are so many people out there doing the same thing at cut-throat prices you
just can’t get your business off the ground.
Imagine how different your experience might be if you only offered this service to
accountants, together with a suite of tools accountants require for servicing their
clients over the Internet. Your specialization would give all accountants who want
to get on the net a really good reason to do business with you. If you do diligent
research and provide the necessary accounting tools, you will have customers
who were previously hosting their website elsewhere.
The size of this target market would be a fraction of all the people creating
websites. But your ability to penetrate this niche market would be high, since
you can offer your expertise and experience as an accountant, and know what
tools and options are important to accountants.
Achieving dominance in a niche market is very rewarding. As a specialist, you
are also able to charge more for your products and services, which means you
don’t have to compete on price. And, because you become the market leader in
your niche, you are less vulnerable to the vagaries of market fluctuations.
This is a chapter from an ebook I have recently written… Business 101
It is available for free as a member of 1 Modern Solution. Just visit the library!
DA
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Hooray David!.
So many try to go too many places when they arrive on the Web.
STOP and think what makes “you” excited, what are your passions and then spend time researching where these people Hang out and Begin to develop a list of Like Minded people.
We have discussed the HOW TO to this easy approach in many episodes of Beginners Marketing Class Talk Show , held every Wednesday. FREE to join in
Great topic DA!
So many people start out online using the ‘shotgun’ approach. I will just throw up a website and see what happens will usually end up bringing in very little if any traffic and even fewer clients.
I like the way you defined what a ‘Niche’ is, in this case – Hosting for Accountants. So many times people will start with a broad niche like ‘Pets’ and then find out down the road that if they had put more energy into building their business focusing more on Dog Collars or Large Dog Collars, they would have done much better.
The main thing to remember is it is easy to fine tune your selected niche once you have your business established through the use of Surveys and Customer Responses.
The story of the supermarket clerk that always asked if the customer found everything alright is an example that comes to mind.
Surveys don’t have to be long and tedious. Many times you can gather much deeper insight into what your visitors want with one or two questions. And never forget to Thank Them for completing your survey!
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