Define your niche.
I struggled to define my niche for years, until I came across a little book by Seth Godin, called All Marketers are Liars. He looks at niching initially from the perspective of your customer. This is what he has to say:
“Worldview is the term I use to refer to the rules,values,beliefs and biases that an individual consumer brings to a situation. Frames are elements of a story painted to leverage the worldview a consumer already has. Don’t try to change someone’s worldview is the strategy smart marketers follow. Don’t try to use facts to prove your case and to insist that people change their biases. You don’t have enough time and you don’t have enough money. Instead, identify a population with a certain worldview, frame your story in terms of that worldview and you win.”
Seth Godin - All Marketers are Liars.
As I started to read this little book I suddenly realised that a niche is simply a way of describing a group of potential customers who look at the world and tell the same story about that world. Now I get it… the more specific I can be in choosing my niche the easier it will be to target my marketing message and find new clients, based on finding what they have in common and telling them a story that meets them at their model of the world. Suddenly I recognised the challenge, how do I identify a niche and create a story framed in such a way that it will appeal to the common worldview in that niche? Here is a simple 5 step process that I synthesised to define or discover a niche and tell a great story:
Step 1: Start looking for shared worldviews.
Begin by going to your local newsagent and looking at the titles on the shelves. Any market that has sufficient numbers of interested readers to sustain a publication is a potential niche for what you do. Next search on goggle or use one of the keyword search tools like Wordtracker or Market Samurai.
Step 2: Ask your existing clients a series of questions to identify what they have in common.
Ask these questions and you may be surprised at what your existing customers have in common when you start to look more deeply at the answers they give:
What was your pain before you purchased our services?
What was your desired outcome or goal before you purchased our services?
What do you value about our service?
Why did you choose us?
Step 3: Build a worldview based on what you found in steps 2 and 3.
A great tool that I found recently on the web is to imagine that you are sitting in a bar listening to a person who turns out to be your ideal client telling his (or her) story to the bartender. For example:
Bob “Well, I graduated last year and I’ve been working in burger bars, cleaning, now I’m doing data entry… for £5.80 and hour, and guess what…
I hate my boss… he doesn’t understand me…
and to make things worse at the end of my shift he told me… you’re overqualified and he’s going to let me go.”
Bartender: “That’s really tough”
“Yeah. All I can afford is this beer. So, I’m going back to the job centre and they never have anything except care jobs and stuff… I don’t know what to do next…
Do you know anyone who will give me a chance and show me how to get a real job?”
Step 4: Frame and Construct Your Story.
Use the simple elevator pitch format to frame and construct your story:
Hello I’m…
We help…
What we do is…
So that…
Which means…
Step 5: Tell your Story.
Publish your story, on your web site, blog, newsletter, and tell it when you meet prospective clients face to face, notice how well they relate to your story and refine and improve it based on the feedback you get.
Enjoy.
Warm Regards
Graham
NLP with Whole Being
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Whole Being specialises in the application of NLP in personal development and business, combining over 13 years experience in commercial, account management and general management with 13 years of training and coaching people using NLP. We use NLP methods to deliver the training which means that the skills of NLP are easily and quickly converted into tangible benefits and bottom line results for your business. We have trained over 125 NLP Practitioners, NLP Business Practitioners and NLP Master Practitioners to date.
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