“I keep hearing that I need to find a niche and not to be a generalist. Is that true?”
In short – yes, it’s true.
If you are very specific about who OR what you serve, you’ll be able to cut through the noise quicker and receive client inquiries on a more consistent basis.
Carving out a niche positions you as the expert in a specific area (and you will be, once you hone in on a few uber-specific tasks), making you the go-to VA for people in that market.
Let’s take the medical system for example.
If you were dealing with a concerning issue on your skin – horrible breakout, growing moles – you’d likely seek help from a dermatologist and forgo a family doctor.
If you wanted to inquire about a nose job or facelift, you’d likely seek help from a plastic surgeon and forgo a family doctor.
Now don’t get me wrong – I love a good family doctor, but when you have a specific and concerning pain point, you want to make sure you’re seeking out the correct help.
The same goes for your clients. They’re often not looking for the broad general VA, and that’s because they have hyper-specific pains that they are looking for help with.
So how do you pick a niche when you have absolutely no idea where to start?
Below are my five tips to picking out a niche that works for YOU+ how to position yourself as the go-to-gal in that area.
1.START WITH YOUR SERVICES
Take a look through the laundry list of services that you currently offer (or want to offer).
Jot down the ones that are your absolute favorites, as well as the few that you’d be perfectly happy never doing again.
It’s also a good idea to make note of which items your clients are asking for over and over again and which ones rarely come up.
2. NICHING BASED ON SERVICES
The first way to niche down is to offer hyper-specific services. (Remember, being great at a few select things is how you become an expert)
Make a list of who needs your *favorite* services.
Write down every type of client that you’ve ever worked for or that you’ve ever wanted to work for who are in dire need of what you like to do.
This is your brainstorming session, so make sure to get it all out, even if doesn’t initially resonate with you.
For example, you can become a superstar at using email marketing software like ConvertKit, and then decide to only offer email marketing services.
3. NICHING BASED ON CLIENT-TYPE YOU SERVE
Another way to niche down is to work with a particular group of people.
Make a list of who needs your *favorite* services and the type of professionals you’d enjoy working with.
Drawing from your life experiences can help you uncover areas you want to work in, too.
Perhaps your interests in running or biking pull you towards wanting to work in the fitness, weight loss or self-development niche.
Maybe you’re a big fan of Entertainment Tonight and have a desire to work with entrepreneurs in the media world.
4. DETERMINE THE PROFITABILITY OF YOUR CHOSEN NICHE
Before you go about changing all of your web copy and loading up hyper-targeted promos on social media, make sure that there’s a decent-sized market out there that wants what you’re going to offer. If so, great! Now you can build your business around your idea.
Do this by using the search bars on social media to see if there are FB groups, big Instagram followings, or communities on LinkedIn that are talking about or involved in what you want to offer.
5. TAILOR YOUR WEBSITE/OFFERINGS/SOCIAL MEDIA TO YOUR NICHE
Since you’ve already been researching the profitability of your niche, you should be fairly familiar with the pain points and language that your chosen niche uses when describing their problems.
Maybe your audience says something like, “My site doesn’t look good because WordPress is too complicated” or “It’s so hard to make my Google slides presentation look pretty.” Take the real words that your target market is saying and use them in your website copy.
When your market sees that you perfectly understand what their pain points are and that you know how to solve them, they’re going to be really attracted to your message.
But what if all the above isn’t giving you that creative spark that you were hoping for and you still can’t pick a niche?
Even though finding a niche will help you scale your income, there is no time limit on when you need to have this solidified by – it has taken some people months or years to pick their niche.
First and foremost – focus on getting visible online and finding people with problems that you know how to solve.
Search Facebook groups for problems like “I have an ebook that I just wrote and need some help proofreading it,” or “I need some help creating a few social media graphics for an upcoming event I’m hosting.”
Get out there, find problems, and solve them.
Along the way, you’ll start seeing that you attract a certain kind of business owner or industry OR you’ll begin to see that you LOVE working with a specific program/software and you want to do MORE of that.
You’ll see patterns. Those patterns are telling you what niche you’re attracted to.
xx
Reese
