“IF you speak to everyone, you speak to no one” is a statement you will hear many marketers and even business strategists say.
I have probably said this countless times over the years too, but I saw it put to the test through a programme I developed and manage called Creative Business Studio.
It is a six-week virtual programme that assists creatives with professionalising their craft.
It encourages them to not only think about themselves as creatives, but as creative entrepreneurs that offer a service and have a product to sell.
It is Unpublished Africa’s flagship programme. In this article, I will be sharing how we tried to “serve everyone” and what we learned from opting not to niche down earlier on.
When we introduced Creative Business Studio, I was torn between having the programme serve all creatives or just visual storytellers.
This is as I had worked with creatives in different industries and noticed them experiencing the same challenges we hoped to help people with.
The middle ground became to serve photographers as well as founders of creative communities, with hopes that they would teach others, or at least become an example for their own community.
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While we were able to engage the participants during the programme and encourage them to share about their own journeys, I quickly found that we faced:
Facilitator challenges: Facilitators lost out on creating more relatable content because they had people with various backgrounds and niches in the workshops.
Networking challenges: The participants themselves were not so sure how to network. We found ourselves assisting by recommending individuals connect based on similarities in interests that we had identified.
Broad lessons: We were able to learn a lot about different industries, but the lessons were almost too broad, as we would have to do more work and research to decide on what to solve, or what would have the most impact for all or most individuals.
To niche down or not to niche down is a question a lot of founders tend to have. This is in addition to when to niche down or when to become a generalist, if you start by niching down.
Opting not to niche down from the beginning, in the case of our programme, had two main benefits:
Wider network: We were able to engage more people in the Creative and Cultural Industries for future collaborations, and
Programme validation: We were able to validate the need for similar programming for sectors within the creative economy.
This informed where we are heading as an organisation and the impact we hope to have in the sector in the mid to long run. With one of our key objectives being to create an opportunity for creatives to publish and showcase their work, not niching down in cohort, one posed a problem when serving people in different sectors of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI).
Ideally, the individual with a film community would have needed to produce a film, the actor would have needed to have a theatre production, the author with a publishing house would have benefited from an opportunity to publish work; but this was not the case.
Creative Business Studio culminates in a publication. This saw the first volume, including photographer’s work and written articles by the other participants.
Some published their work, while some shared about their work through the publication. This was quite different to Volume 2 of the publication, Africa Published, which became a photobook.
After choosing to have a cohort that only had photographers in it, we saw:
Specialised workshop content: Facilitators prepared material geared toward the photographer's journey (One used an example of how photographers choose their camera brand, another encouraged them to cost their editing hours when deciding on pricing). This made the sessions more practical, and the participants had steps on how to apply the material.
Improved networking and collaboration: The photographers reached out to each other, with more than two participants informing us about collaborative work they were working on.
Improved engagement: There were fewer hesitations surrounding submitting work for the cohort publication, and the conversation shifted to helping participants make decisions surrounding their body of work, bios, and artist statement contents.
Community building: Participants were more engaged after the cohort and interested in other programming or contributing to other programming. (For example, we collaborated with a participant on an exhibition.)
Explicit interest: Photographers reached out with hopes of being informed of when the next cohort was.
Niching down is easier to teach as a concept than it is to implement. As a brand strategist, I will agree with the notion that if you try to speak to everyone, you will struggle to truly serve everyone well.
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker.
If you are considering niching down, you can start by:
Reviewing data: Analyse past client data (services preferred, industries), client work, and identify your successes. Determine which clients you served best and those who provided significant positive outcomes. You can then target more clients like them, leveraging referrals and testimonials to showcase your expertise.
Conducting market research: Analyse competitor strengths and weaknesses to find opportunities. Identify saturated markets and industry challenges, learning from competitor experiences. Market research can reveal underserved sectors.
Testing and iterating: Like using a cohort to gauge responses to a programme with different artists, learn from customer responses to your offerings. Gather feedback from customers and prospects through interviews and forms. Encourage your sales team to ask for feedback on the product and pricing. Understanding your target audience will inform your decisions.
Your niche can be defined by your target audience or your specific offering. Niching down can feel like client elimination, especially before reaching targets, when all income seems valuable, but niching down offers numerous benefits.
Should you be ready to niche down, a few questions you can ask yourself to help you niche down are:
What are our skills and expertise, and are there any skills that are in short supply in the market?
What kind of work have we enjoyed doing (and want to get more of)?
Who is our target audience?
What specific traits do they have?
Are they willing and able to pay for our services?
What challenges do they have accessing these services?
What percentage of the market needs this service? (Can we still reach our targets?)
Will there be room for growth? (For example solving secondary problems, or serving people in other cities/countries.)
Once you have chosen your niche, you will need to tailor your messaging. A general message will not communicate that you now serve your target audience, or serve them better than most generalists.
Using niche-specific terms and jargon, will repel some people but; it will attract your ideal customers.
Understanding your audience's challenges, their perspective, current solutions, and what is lacking is crucial for problem-solving.
Trying to serve too many people can make becoming a “go-to” harder. Niching down requires a mindset shift from a scarcity mindset to understanding demand and supply.
The individual that becomes the expert surrounding a subject matter benefits, but the extent to which they benefit depends on their objectives. Have you niched down?
- Chikumba is a digital and brand strategist working with people and organisations looking to leverage the online space. She educates on brand online marketing fundamentals and is host on the podcast Building African Brands. She works with entrepreneurs to solve African challenges, and creatives to shift the African narratives. These weekly New Horizon articles, published in the Zimbabwe Independent, are coordinated by Lovemore Kadenge, an independent consultant, managing consultant of Zawale Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, past president of the Zimbabwe Economics Society and past president of the Chartered Governance & Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe (CGI Zimbabwe). — kadenge.zes@gmail.com or mobile: +263 772 382 852.
