Jessica Osborn [00:00:00]:
You're listening to she's the Business Podcast. And today we're answering the question, can you niche too far? Well, stay tuned, it's coming right up. So can you niche too far? Well, this question does come up a lot with clients when they join me in Business Jam and we're going through the positioning module, the very first step in the framework for your marketing strategy. And they're like, if I niche it too far, then I'm really going to restrict, restrict my market, restrict the opportunities. And there's a lot of fear really that comes up around that. And to answer the question, well, most people have, even when they have niche down and maybe niche down again, there's still further that they could go. I find it's very, very rare for anyone to have actually taken it too far to the point that they've made their market so small. And what normally happens is that the deeper layers that people go with their niche, they actually find.
Jessica Osborn [00:00:59]:
Suddenly they are finding it much easier to attract clients. And not only just any client, but the right ones. The ones they're like, wow, this is my dream client. Literally just, you know, popped into my inbox or booked a call and they discover the power and the benefit of niching. However, let's have a chat about this because that's a very quick 2 minute answer to that question. The reason why it came up is that I'm seeing a lot of people who are asking questions and wondering why people aren't signing up with them. There was a guy on Threads just this week who was asking, you know, why are people hiring coaches, business coaches, and not people like himself? He's a financial planner slash advisor, so he labeled himself as such. And of course there were a whole lot of different comments around, you know, coaches, financial planners, et cetera.
Jessica Osborn [00:01:53]:
But no, I decided I would join in the conversation. I don't always do that, tend to watch a lot of them unfold. But, you know, I said to him, they're two different things. You know, a financial planner slash advisor is very different from a business coach or someone in marketing. So they're not the same. You're not replacing one with the other. And went on to say that, you know what a financial planner does, being finance and the numbers and very, very important. Obviously a really great thing to have is, you know, it is far more specific around the finances in your business, as you would assume, being that that's what they are.
Jessica Osborn [00:02:40]:
They are a financial planner slash advisor. I said that, you know, often you get coaches, business coaches, marketing coaches, far more Sort of holistic in their approach because it's not just based on the numbers. Yes, I think anyone worth their weight in gold does understand numbers and can help you use numbers in order to get much better insights, but it's not the only thing that you do. And from my perspective, when I look at numbers in a business, I'm not just looking at revenue, profit, expenses and cash flow. They're the sort of traditional financial numbers that financial advisor, accountants and planners are looking at. I'm looking at the marketing numbers. I'm looking at things like leads, conversion rates, how many people are in your audience, what's happening at the different phases through the journey before we even get to the sale. Yes, they're all important.
Jessica Osborn [00:03:36]:
And they're very different, though. And I wouldn't be expecting a financial planner or advisor to be deconstructing my marketing numbers and giving me deep insights on those, because that's not the area of expertise. Right. They've trained in the finance of a business. And so that was my response to him, that they're just two different things and you shouldn't really worry about it. People will hire financial planners and coaches. They're not mutually exclusive. And he comes back and says to me, ah, but this is where there's a misunderstanding because I'm a financial planner, but I am holistic and I, I do cover all of these things.
Jessica Osborn [00:04:14]:
And I'm thinking, whoa, ding, ding, red flag, right? Because there is no, you know, and maybe he does have some understanding of various things, but he made a point of saying that he's experienced as a financial planner. Now, anyone who's in that area thinking that they have the same level of insight and expertise to provide in the marketing, numbers in the strategy, in the business, go to market strategy, how you're pricing your products, how you're positioning your products. Well, I would have to say that's probably why he's struggling, because he's kidding himself if he thinks that being a financial planner is in any way similar or related to the experience and advice and expertise of people who are business strategists and marketing strategists. And here is what we're getting to. Can you niche too far? Well, for him, he's clearly a long way from being niche. He's trying to be broad, trying to be the holistic person, something for everyone. And while he might see that as being a benefit, I actually think that that's a real detraction because people were confused. They're confused about what he's saying.
Jessica Osborn [00:05:27]:
He is. Are you A financial planner or are you a business strategist? They're not the same thing. There are crossovers, absolutely. There are some similarities here and there. But you're not hiring a financial planner to help you with your business strategy. What, who's your ideal client? How are you positioning to them all of those things? Something that would be far outside the realm of a financial planner. So that brings me to, you know, the question today, you can go a lot deeper with your niche than what you probably think you can. And the trap that a lot of people fall into in believing people want something more holistic.
Jessica Osborn [00:06:09]:
Holistic is a, you know, it's a real green tick word, isn't it? Because we want nutrition, that's holistic. We want exercise, that's holistic. We want a business strategy that's holistic. Yes. Although we may not be getting that from just one person. We want a holistic view of your business. I am a massive believer in the parts of your strategy need absolute alignment. But you can take your strategy and then go to a financial planner and get some financial planning services done that are going to help you to plan out, budget, forecast, look at cash flow, expenditure and those sort of things.
Jessica Osborn [00:06:48]:
That is fantastic. But that is an output after you have your business strategy in place. And so this was the confusion. I'm. I think he's in. I think his audience are in around really what is the role that he's playing in a business. And he's wanting them to think of him as a business strategist. And as far as my opinion is concerned, that is clearly what he is not.
Jessica Osborn [00:07:11]:
And it would be really detrimental to the clients to hire him in order to provide that different visionary service. And the things that aren't the numbers in the strategy of, you know, who is your business being like, what is the purpose of it, what are your values? How are you showing up, who are you attracting? So he doesn't understand his client and they're not understanding him. And this disconnect that's going on is leading to his frustration in the lack of clients showing up. He's finding it hard to attract the right clients. So what a lot of people don't realize is that there are many layers and ingredients to the ingredients in your strategy. So we can look at the top level of a business strategy and say, well, that's broken down into a marketing strategy, a finance strategy, operational strategy, and there may be others that are just off the top of my head, a few sections, but within those, each of them have strategic areas. So Inside your marketing strategy, then you have other strategies. You've got a positioning strategy, you've got an product and pricing strategy, messaging brand strategy.
Jessica Osborn [00:08:24]:
There are a number of different strategic elements within that. You've got your client acquisition strategy, go to market strategy. So there are some strategies within the strategy and then you can go even deeper into that. So when we look at client acquisition, you're commonly looking at what tactics are we using? So are we on social media? You might have a social media strategy. Then we're going to go down another layer to a particular platform. And if you've chosen to use YouTube, for example, you'll have a YouTube strategy. So as you can see, there's layers and layers and layers within. And that's where the insight, the clarity is.
Jessica Osborn [00:09:03]:
What level are you working at right now? Which part and which, how deep is the strategy that you're working on at the moment? Understanding that will really help. And when we do positioning strategy, for an example, inside business jam. So positioning is just one of the ingredients in the framework. In your core, what I call the core, the essential marketing strategy, you've got positioning, you've got the offer, the slash product, you've got the pricing goes within that. You've got your brand, you've got your client acquisition and your sales. They are the sort of five key parts of it. And when you take positioning, even though that's one of the ingredients, now there are three ingredients to your positioning and when we take all three, it's where you can get the level of clarity on the niche. Your niche is where you are positioning yourself in the market.
Jessica Osborn [00:10:02]:
That is the description of it. So we like to use the word niching because it's like, it just means clarifying your positioning in the market. What, where are you going to go and do business, who are you talking to and what is it that makes you different? Now when you break down these ingredients and analyze each one, merge them together, then you come out with a really clear positioning that people can relate to. They can sort of see, ah, you are the person that I need. This is what I'm needing help with at this point in my business. So if you are thinking, well, maybe my positioning is a little bit vague, or maybe I'm being too holistic or too high level, broader, hadn't realized about all the different layers that go beneath it, that so much clearer then this is the time to sit there and think, okay, this is a change that you could make in your approach, in your marketing, your messaging, in order that people can see you More clearly for the value and expertise you bring. There is no value and expertise in saying that you do all things. Like to give you an example, a dentist, we all know dentists, they know where the muscles in your face are, particularly obviously around your mouth.
Jessica Osborn [00:11:18]:
They're very clear on them because they put the needles in when they need to make your mouth numb so that they can do some work. Now, they're the exact same muscles that your beautician will inject if you wanting to do Botox or something like that, where you were wanting to relax the muscles in the face, of course they're putting something different in, but they are the same muscles. So can your dentist therefore give you Botox injections? Would you trust them to. Well, no, you're not going to go to your dentist for Botox because that's not their expertise. You're very happy to go to them for anything to do with your teeth. Likewise, you're going to go to your beautician or the, specifically the person who's trained in Botox in order to get that Botox treatment. Right. So to give you just a really basic example there, same goes in your business.
Jessica Osborn [00:12:09]:
It's why you're not going to a financial planner for marketing advice, or I hope that you're not, because you're really going to get steered down a path that maybe just because you might get stared down a path that you think makes sense, but it's only because of the level that that financial planner knows and there's so many deeper levels that they probably have no expertise in in order to be able to guide you properly. So if you need help to clarify your positioning, to know, well, where is it in the market that I should be standing, that I have the expertise, I have the ability to, to attract clients, that they're going to want to hire me for that thing, then that's something that I can help you with. It's one of my core pieces of my expertise is helping people define their positioning. And I created a short seven day program. I literally took this out of my much longer, more intensive coaching framework where we look at the entire marketing and sales strategy. But we just pulled this one piece out into a seven day program. Your positioning, you can do that with me over seven days. I named it as a challenge.
Jessica Osborn [00:13:21]:
You know, look, a challenge meaning you're going to do a little bit each day for seven days and by the end it will be done. It's not going to be, I think, an incredible challenge for you. That's why the process has been created over that time. Because I ask the questions that you actually need to be asking to get to the answer. Instead of just going around in circles, instead of searching online, comparing yourself to everyone else, asking other people what you think it should be, these are the questions that you actually, actually need to ask to get the answer. So you'll find in the show notes a link for the Niche Buster challenge. You can come and get that niche busted, you know, bust through the confusion, the lack of clarity, and get to your point of clarity in this seven days together. So you'll find it there.
Jessica Osborn [00:14:08]:
Or head to jessicaosborne.com Niche Challenge and get yourself enrolled. Let's do it. Seven days. Nothing could be more easy. One small piece per day. By the end of the week, you have the clarity on your niche, like your actual expert zone where you have the most powerful positioning possible. And that is going to lay out the rest of your strategy for you. The next steps are going to become so much clearer.
Jessica Osborn [00:14:36]:
So I highly recommend doing it if that's something that you've been having trouble with and otherwise maybe you're thinking, yeah, I'm good. I've got a really clean niche. Well, great. Well done for you. Um, that is a place that most people would love to be in and aspire to be. And it is so, so important. As you would know already, once you're clear on that niche, you absolutely know what is the. What the right offers are, how to price them properly, how to talk about them, what marketing you should be doing, what's the right sales system.
Jessica Osborn [00:15:08]:
All of those questions, all of that, those pieces of strategy are based on your positioning in the first place. So that is the absolute number one piece to nail in order that you have success with the others. And that's it for me today. I would love to have you back again next week and we will have a really great episode coming up for you. So stay tuned and I'll see you then.
