Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. My name is Melanie
and I'm Esther.
And today we're going to be discussing whether it's a niche or not a niche. That is the question.
Is that the question or is it too niche or not to niche? Hmm, interesting. And in case you missed it first, guys, over the last few episodes, our sponsor has been Agorapulse. Now, Melanie and I both know how hard it is to juggle all the things in your business, accounts, meetings, never ending inbox, the list goes on. And that's why we've teamed up with Agorapulse to give you more than five hours back a week when it comes to managing your social media marketing, no complicated Excel docs, long emails or millions of open tabs that we're all guilty of. Simply manage all your social media channels in one place. Go to Agorapulse.com/mondaymorningmarketing to get one month free. Now all you have to do is figure out how you want to spend those five hours and whether to niche or not to niche
or niche
or niche. Yeah, we still haven't figured that one out. But that's what today's for as well.
Yeah. I mean, what are the benefits of niching?
Well, I think people will see you as an expert in that field to start with. So let's take, for example, our friend tweeting Goddess. When you see the word tweeting goddess, you're thinking..?
Facebook.
Yeah, of course, yeah, that's exactly what we were thinking. No, you're thinking. I'm not going to say Facebook, Twitter, you're thinking, oh, she's good at tweeting, she knows her way around Twitter, she knows her stuff when it comes to that platform. If I was to, say, the Facebook queen, then you'd know Marie Smith, Marie Smith. And it's the Facebook aspect that she's niche in to, now, when you niche though, it doesn't mean that you only have to be exclusively on that channel. Marie Smith is also on LinkedIn and Twitter tweeting goddess also gives courses on LinkedIn. She's also present on Facebook. It doesn't mean that you're only exclusively dealing with that part of or that platform or that customer market.
Hmm, there is a benefit, isn't there?
Of course there is. It means that, you know, you've got one set of in their case sticking with that example, the Facebook queen only has to figure out what updates and stuff happen on Facebook and how to portray those and present those to her audience. Twitter, the tweeting goddess has to check what's going on with Twitter and how to make you know, how to make sure her audience knows about the tweets, etc.. Whereas if you're a jack of all trades, are you a master of none?
Well, that was that is the saying, isn't it, Jack of all trades, master of none. But I don't think you have to be like that. I mean, I haven't particularly niche and I don't think you have particularly niche.
No, no. I mean, variety is the spice of life
Well, that's how I feel. And, you know, I am limited to being, you know, on my own. So I only know so much stuff. You and I share some similar, you know, traits in what we the areas that we work in. But you've got a larger team and what you don't personally know, you've got another member of staff who will cover it for you.
Yeah, but I mean, you have in a way, niched, because if somebody comes to you and says, "oh, can I have a website?", you're not going to, you know, be able to do that. It's not as if you're doing the website and bookkeeping and, you know, you're not doing everything for everybody. So in a way, you have niched in that your social media training. Yes. You're not just training on one platform.
No, I'm training on several. Yeah.
You train over several platforms and you keep up to date with all those platforms. Now that could be seen as a con in a way, you know, and your pros and cons
Yeah, thank you for validating that
Melanie is not a con. Melanie is a star. But you know what I mean, whenever you have to. OK, so recently every platform made updates. Stories have appeared on LinkedIn. Facebook did the whole facelift, you know, and there are just so many little tweaks that every platform makes all the time.
Hmm.
Is it good for your sanity to be keeping up with all of them? That could be one reason why a lot of people do niche, especially on social media platforms.
No, I agree. There's a lot to be said for niching in one field. You're not being overwhelmed with the updates and the expectations. That's the thing. Is managing customer expectations, isn't it?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, if you say, oh, I do ads, you'd have to specify whether they're Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google ads, LinkedIn ads. I mean. Ads in a newspaper, they're all different, just because you say you do ads doesn't mean you know everything about all the ads.
Yeah.
Anyway, niching makes it easier to market yourself and your customers then know what to expect from you.
Customer expectations. Yeah. And, you know, when I first started, I didn't really know. Well, I had an idea of my audience, but when I first started, I, I did too much, I think. And I ended up having to, you know, redress ads and reduce and rebrand. And, you know, it's. I don't think anybody really knows from the get-go exactly what they need to do, they've got an idea. And once you've got yourself out there and you've seen the feedback, I think you have to work out where to niche afterwards. Unless you have a particular favourite area, I suppose. What do you say?
Well, I think, you know, a lot of small businesses, especially and generally businesses and as a whole, whenever they start out, they do sort of cast the net wide and go, OK, well, like you say, you might have an area that interests you. But that might not end up being your niche. You know, even the examples that we give at the start, they all started in different areas as well, that we got started as funky, funky goddess.
Yeah,
you know, and well, that's a story for another day or you can go and check her out on YouTube, but she changed and rebranded. And that's OK, too, because people sort of get into the mindset of, well, oh, I've started this now I'm going to have to do this or I'm going to have to, you know, continue with these customers when they're if they're not your you know, if they're not to coin my condo, if they're not sparking joy, why do it? I mean, you're just dragging yourself down. I mean, Melanie and I are both entrepreneurs. We both started our own business. Is it something that we long to do whenever we get up every morning? Yes, if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here, you know?
I agree I haven't I haven't done a day of work since 2013 because I've been doing something that I've enjoyed.
Yeah. And if there's anything in your business that you don't enjoy, you outsource it to somebody who does enjoy it, OK?
I listen to our outsourcing epidose.
We've already talked about that. But like, you know, you say that you haven't niched, but I think you have because if somebody goes to you and asks for a website, you're not going to be able to do that. Yes, you do. Digital marketing, which people can incorporate a website into that. But that's part of digital marketing is not yours.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I have niched, yes.
You have niched and even inside social media training that you do, you've also niched in it because there are platforms that you don't know anything about and you don't want to know anything about because there's other people out there that do it.
Thanks to Sarah Jane Vincent for showing me how to do Pinterest,
you say. But again, it's one of those things that if it's not something that excites you to do it, then you don't even want to learn how to do it. You might need to learn how to do it, to know the general basics of it. But why, you know, why do that part if it is only Twitter that you love, just you Twitter. If it is only websites that you love, just do websites. If you love websites and social media and graphic design or you can have a team like we do, then offer all of it. There's nothing to stop you offering stuff, even if you you personally don't do them but niching it. It happens to us all eventually at one point or another, whether it's when we start out or whether we're two years down the line, five years down the line, 20 years down the line, your audience changes as you grow as well.
And that's the very important thing. Actually, you've made a very good point, that if you don't listen to your audience, then you are going to lose them. So, you know, for me, it was 18 months of doing or trying to push marketing in general press releases and social media training. And after 18 months, I did a focus group and established that people just didn't see me as a press release type marketing type person, and hence the name change from some marketing and PR to some social media training. But if I hadn't listened, my business could well and truly be over by now.
Exactly, exactly. And I mean, when we when we started IPA group, it was always going to be websites and social media management. Now we've expanded into social media training, into logo design, graphic design, even SEO, but we've added more people into the business as well exactly as we have seen our clients say to us, can you also do? Yes, we will. And we find somebody who can come alongside us and help us do that. But it's like an expression that I really like. And I think this is one that will relate to a lot of people. You can't be everybody's cup of tea or you'd be a mug. And with that will end it for today. We're back for more with more podcasting next week, guys. And if you are lucky enough, you would have caught us on, you'll catch us sorry, on a live later on today.
Scary.
That is not even Halloween anymore. Have a good weekend. See you later.
Bye.