There is one sure way to confuse your customers and blow your costs sky high.
And that is what happens when you are not clear on your market and you start trying to be the answer to all problems.
Find out what your niche is and focus on that area.
Ask yourself...
What is your specialty? What do you do better than anything else that you do? And what do you do better than anybody else can do? Then...
Find that market and FOCUS on it, Follow One Course Until Successful As with most of my other blog posts, I have recently seen a lot of examples of the subject of this post in the last month.
Some business leaders and owners are unclear on what their business is, ...
on what their business does, ...
and on what their business niche is.
They try to adapt to the whims and fancies of every potential customer that comes along.
They try to offer trading hours that suit everyone, even if it means trading at a loss.
They try to deliver the products and services that every possible customer wants, even if it means carrying stock they will never sell for years.
They will take on any project, even if it means working in an area that is not their expertise.
As a business owner, it is important to be very clear on what your business is, and what it does, and what market you serve.Or you run the risk of trying to please everyone and end up pleasing no one.
Here's an example of a group that meets weekly at a set time.
The start time was changed on a whim and attendances dropped.
Here is an example of a company desperately needing more customers, so it moved into an area that is totally unrelated to it's core business...
the business owner is pushing the new, unrelated products and now the customers are getting confused.
What is a niche? A niche is a crack in a cliff or rock wall.
Typically, it is very narrow, but it runs very deep into the cliff face.
And a good business niche is the same.
It is narrow - it does not have many products or services.
Maybe only one! But because it is so narrow, it runs very deep.
How this works is that the narrower your niche, the less competition you will have...
to the point where you can completely own the segment of the market that is your niche.
The more specific your niche, the more you exclude competition that might list the same type of products or services in their catalog.
You can make your niche narrower by defining more and more precisely who your target customer is.
Two extremes of defining your market.
Is your market all dog owners? Or is it breeders of the long haired version of the rare Himalayan Red Poodle breed who show their dogs in national competitions? Clearly the second market, (which I just made up), is a very narrow niche.
By saying your market is dog owners, you lump yourself in with every other pet shop and online store, in the world! But by specialising in a niche, you can "own" the loyalty of every customer in that niche ...
without any competition.
Well, that is quite simple really! What should you do now?
- Get very clear on what you market it.
- And then pursue it.