If you want to discover the perfect niche for your marketing funnel business, treat it like my ex-girlfriend Sam

We’re going to discover the simple way to craft a niche for your marketing funnel business. If you want to discover the perfect niche for your marketing funnel business, treat them like my ex-girlfriend, Sam

There are 2 main problems when choosing a niche for a marketing funnel business.

  1. Have you chosen the right niche for your marketing funnel business? One with enough depth, potential and customers?
  2. How long do we commit to a niche in order to make it work?

There’s no doubt that choosing a niche market is 100% how you can scale your business. I talk about that a lot in my book, From Single To Scale.

It’s certainly an attractive proposition. The idea of cornering one part of the market in order to dominate it. Imagine being known as THE funnel agency for podcasters or THE marketing funnel agency for architects.

We all fantasise about crafting a super specific customer definition, which we could sell our services to. However, it isn’t as easy as it might sound.

Choosing a niche means narrowing down your focus on a specific subsection of a well defined market. It means that all your content, sales copy, email, graphics, products, services, adverts, blog posts, light bulb moments and website are targeted specifically at type of customer.

I think the real question that people are asking, when they question the niche they should go after is:

“what is the most profitable niche I could select TODAY, to make finding customers and generating profit much easier?”

And the unfortunate, let-down answer is that ANY niche you pick, commit to and dedicate your time to, could become a success.

It’s not going to jump out and bite your arse

Niches are like dating. The right one isn’t going to just jump out, make itself clear and bite your arse (unless you count my ex, Sam, who I met at a club and did do that to me and subsequently gave me the worst 2 years of my life).

I met Sam at a club in London. She was forward, attractive, intelligent and literally bit my bum as a way to get my attention. At the age I was (mid-20s), she was exactly what I wanted. However, if I had done the research and tested her, I would have found that we were incompatible.

Niches are discovered, researched and tested and committed to. You don’t commit to the wrong partner without getting to know them first. You also have to play the field in order or understand what you DO want to work with and commit to.

You also have to be clear what you’re looking for in a partner. Because in many ways, you are looking for a partner when you choose a niche.

There are more and more funnel builders, marketing funnel experts, gurus and software out there. The more options are available, the more you need to specific who you can help.

When you follow this process below, you can discover several niches and decide what you want to commit to. BUT – you must commit. I’ve talked about why that’s scary here and why you should swallow your fear and just do it.

First we must define what a niche is (and isn’t)

Small business? That’s not a niche. That’s 99% of the market. Don’t be stupid.

A niche –  a true, defined, specific niche market is a subset of a defined market or group of people.

Gardeners is a market. Gardeners who have just bought their first home and are new to gardening is a niche. You could even go more specific.

Gardeners who have just bought their first home and are new to gardening, who own a “fix-er-up” garden.

The idea is that we have a well defined customer type who fits into a market.

Now of course, we could get too specific. Gardeners called Dan (actually, that’s probably a massive market) might be too specific. Interestingly, what people often THINK as well defined and niche is in fact too broad.

The measure of a well defined niche is a) if everyone in that niche definition suffers similar problems b) if they recognise THEMSELVES in that niche. Or if other people recognise what that niche is.

Gardeners called Dan, while specific, doesn’t have a shared problem or goal across the niche. They’re just called Dan.

Gardeners who have just bought their first home and are new to gardening, who own a “fix-er-up” garden, have 2 or 3 very specific problems and goals.

Gardeners who are about to sell a home and want to add $20 000 to the value of their house by redoing the garden, is another well defined niche.

If your customer identifier is specific to them, they recognise it and that niche definition shares a problem or goal – that’s a well defined niche.

You can always use our list of 108 niche ideas for funnel builders if you want to get a few ideas.

Work out what you like to do and what you’re good at

So let’s start at the top. You don’t need to define the niche first. We’re going to work out what you’re good at.

List out what it is that you’re good at and what you enjoy. In regards to marketing funnels, what aspects of the process, delivery or product/service do you enjoy delivering?

Email automation. Traffic management. Landing pages.

What do you like to deliver and produce? Ideally, we want to work in a niche that wants those things.

Who would buy that?

So work out, what industries, customers, businesses and people would BENEFIT from what you’re delivering?

What kinds of products and services benefit from those services? List out as many as you can.

Would businesses who deliver physical products benefit from squeeze pages? Would service based businesses benefit from more website traffic?

I understand that almost ALL businesses would benefit from working with you.

I also understand that almost all businesses would benefit from specific areas that you’ve listed above. However, try to think of specific businesses, products and services and industries that would benefit from the parts of the process that YOU have listed out specifically.

This is probably the first stage of your research. Understand the results and benefits that you’d be delivering and understand who would benefit the most from those services.

If you can’t think of industries or customers or markets that would benefit, think about the types of products that you could help with your services.

Do you marketing funnel skills in email marketing suit information products, or physical products? We can keep it broad at the moment, no need to get specific just yet.

Think about the products and services that people consume. Of those products and services, which ones would work BETTER with you behind them?

Understand your customer

Now that we’ve learnt and written down the types of products, services and industries that could benefit from your services. We must understand as much as we can about that customer.

The more we know about our customers, the easier it is to create content, target adverts and drive growth.

We don’t have any customers yet!

I know I know. Just bear with me.

Take your list of potential products, services and industries and list them along the top of a piece of paper. Underneath, you’re going to write everything you can about those products, services and industries.

What benefits or results do those customers want? What roadblocks and problems do they face? Who sells them? What types of industries sell those products/services?

What industry are they in? What industry magazines do they buy? How large are those businesses? Can you name any examples?

The big mistake people make when choosing and working on a niche, is that they spend hours wondering about different niche categories, rather than digging in and researching them.

One of those columns could well reveal a niche. It could be that you see all your ideas and potential customers sell printers. I could be that they all have SaaS software AND a course. It could be that you realise all the products that would benefit from your services, are sold by lighting manufacturers.

You have to research the fuck out of every idea that comes into your head. Because at some point, you’re going to choose a niche that looks right and COMMIT to it.

What links those customers?

So, what links those customers? What are the similarities between all those ideas? Usually there is a niche inside there somewhere.

Remind yourself that success in niches is created from COMMITTING to a niche, not jumping from idea to idea.

Look, this post is high level and frankly, I could delve deeper. I’ve mentioned the two other posts that could help (below), but if you want MORE training and insight on niches for funnel builders, let me know in the comments below.

Choosing a marketing funnel niche and why you’re afraid to do it

108 niches that marketing funnel businesses could become kings in

 

Mike Killen

Mike is the world's #1 sales coach for marketing funnel builders. He helps funnel builders sell marketing funnels to their customers. He is the author of From Single To Scale; How single-person, small and micro-businesses can scale their business to profit. You can find him on Twitter @mike_killen.