Businesses that educate, dominate
Yesterday I told you I’d give you my niche marketing plan. I also told you it’s not available on YouTube, my blog or anywhere else. And I’m keeping my promise. I only give this niche domination plan in THIS email. You can’t get it anywhere else.
- You’ve got your niche. Now we need to dominate it.
- Fuck branding and SEO – ignore them
- Give away the farm
- Lean into Marketing Continuum
- Outreach to your network
- Don’t chase keywords – create them
You’ve got your niche. Now we need to dominate it.
You’ve followed my advice and now you’re clear (or at least clearer) on your niche. Maybe you’ve got an idea or maybe you’ve got a few. The good news is that this niche domination strategy works when you’re ready. If you want to read through this entire guide you can do, and come back to it when you’ve decided your niche.
The fastest way to become #1 in a market, is to create that #1 space. When I went after “sales training for funnel builders” it didn’t exist. I knew I couldn’t compete in the funnel builder space talking about how to build funnels. I couldn’t even focus on just email or paid ads.
Instead, I created the niche of sales training, specifically for funnel builders. I knew I wanted to work in the marketing funnel space. I could have focused on tools and training for building funnels. I could have focused on building funnels with specific page builders. I’ll admit, these are all areas that I dabbled in. buil
But once I defined “sales training”, specifically helping funnel builders sell marketing funnels for five figures and how to define a niche, I found so much depth that it would keep me busy for years. I knew I needed to absolutely flood the market with my information, products and clearly demonstrate that I was the #1 player in that market.
Most funnel builders didn’t even know they needed sales training. They weren’t even aware that “sales” and “selling” was their problem. It wasn’t until I activated that problem and agitated it that people started responding.
Fuck branding and SEO – ignore them
The FIRST thing all the internet marketing experts and entrepreneur influencers will tell you is that you need to create a brand. The first thing SEO and digital marketing experts will tell you is that you need to focus on ranking in search. Both are wrong and will put you out of business.
Let’s talk about SEO first.
First of all. no one is searching for your business. You’re unknown in the space. You CREATED your niche – no one is looking for a keyword that you’ve invented.
In 2017 when I committed to sales training for funnel builders, no one was searching for “how do I sell a marketing funnel?” or “how much should I charge for a marketing funnel?”.
Second. No one is searching for you by name or business name – yet. They will do. But right now, it’s not a priority.
Search will absolutely help you scale your business and drive THOUSANDS of visitors to your site eventually for free. But right now, we don’t want traffic (bear with me), we want sales.
Right, branding. Bane of my life.
Logo, website, colours, business name, slogan, domain name, social handles…literally none of that will help you land your first customer in your niche. Here’s the fundamental problem with branding. DESPITE every brand expert telling me that a brand is so much more than colours and logo and slogan, they still insist on charging thousands for just that.
It’s like your personal trainer telling you that there’s more to losing weight than just dieting. And then building a diet plan for you.
If you want a killer, concrete, rock solid and world famous brand that stands the test of time, you have to repeatedly deliver results to your customers. You have to build a reputation. Eventually there will be an expectation in your products and services. You can’t buy that.
When branding experts tell me that “wouldn’t it be better if all your content looked the same?” yes, I believe it would. Would adding two colours to my PDFs turn me from a six figure business into a seven and eight figure business? Maybe. Will it help me find my first customers in my niche? No. And that’s why branding is so expensive. You’re spending money on a beautiful aerodynamic car chassis when you haven’t even learned to drive yet. Ignore branding and SEO.
Give away the farm
The next thing we need to create is a piece of legacy content that positions you as the expert.
Imagine a topic so specific, but highly valuable, that people will pay for it because no one else wants to serve it. That’s your niche.
Heart surgery for women who have had breast augmentation so they don’t scar and can still post Instagram images
Specialised hydration for people who work in air conditioned offices to increase concentration during 3pm meetings
Book publishing for authors on their second book who want to turn it into a course
Above are some examples of non-funnel niches. Below are examples of funnel niches.
Converting course refunds into sales
Helping Mums leave work by 3pm so they can pick up their kids
Morning mail lead generation. Wake up every day to new leads in your inbox
Notice that first, they don’t talk about marketing funnels? (First law of selling marketing funnels: Don’t talk about marketing funnels).
Whatever your niche is, you need to create a scalable, authority positioning piece of content that demonstrates you know exactly what you’re doing. This needs to be a killer, cornerstone, flagship piece of content. I’m talking 10,000 words worth of content.
Surely ONLY an expert would have so much to say on a subject so specific? Surely only someone who cares so much about a market and customer, would be willing to give away so much for free. You’re going to tell everyone the 5-7 step process that helps people get the results, or solve the problem that they’re facing.
“But Mike, if I give it away. People won’t want to buy from me.”
I totally understand your initial thoughts about this. But it’s untrue. Gordon Ramsey has a TV show (several in fact), YouTube content, cook books and recipes online. Do people still eat at his restaurants? Yes. The more you give away, the more people will want to work with you.
Yes, there will always be people who will take your free stuff and never buy. But they’ll never become a customer. So don’t worry about it. Your job is to put enough expert and specific niche content out there that the right customer will want to buy from you.
Lean into Marketing Continuum
Now we need to commit and re-commit. Dig into your niche and do nothing BUT create content for that niche.
Marketing Continuum is a model that explains how niche businesses affect the market. On the market we have millions of types of customers. Mixtures of customer characteristics, problems, desired results, product types etc. When you begin to map out JUST want email marketing can affect, you’re looking at thousands of combinations.
For example, email marketing could affect some of the following combinations of niche.
- Lead nurturing for high ticket products
- Following up after purchasing a high ticket product
- Promoting live events
- Following up after a live event
- Customer support for SaaS products
- Customer support for high ticket products
This list could go on and on. The temptation is to create content across the Marketing Continuum, dipping your toe in lots of combinations.
Let’s take the niche “converting course refunds into sales” from above. We help businesses that sell courses turn refund requests into new sales. Pretty specific.
You’ve created your 10,000 word killer post. Now what? Now, you need to lean into that content and topic. Almost every business that defines a niche tries to then spread their content across many different combinations. This niche combination is courses as a product type, refunds as a problem and new sales as a result. Your combination might be two or three or eight factors.
What tends to happen is then that niche expert wants to hedge their bets and start creating content in other areas. Maybe looking at email marketing for course products. Or how to create an online course. Or how to sell your course the first time. Part of this is because they feel they’ve covered everything in their hyper-specific topic. So they’ve run out of content ideas.
The other reason is that they fail to find traction within their niche and no one seems interested. So they think about creating content in other areas in order to attract attention in other areas. But momentum is built with density. Just like how the Space/Time Continuum is affected by dense neutron stars and black holes, it’s the focus of matter in one area that creates attraction.
You need to delve DEEP into the topic of your niche. Go into detail for each stage. Create different media and content types for your killer post. Create a longer piece of content with a book. Do podcasts, examples, case studies, interviews, mistakes, myths, misconceptions, how to guides. Create products, find partners, promote suppliers and affiliates. Go deep and commit to the niche. Because something incredible will happen.
First, you’ll attract more and more perfect clients. People who are so desperate for your particular combination of niche that they’ll want to work with you no matter what. And then you’ll attract customers from OTHER markets and from niches that you never thought you’d work with.
Like a black hole, you’ll start attracting opportunities from other combinations and sectors on the Marketing Continuum. The fastest way for you to expand your market and reach, is to dig so deep into a niche that other businesses will ask “can you do the same for me?”
Outreach to your network
Now comes that hard part. Outreach.
Your network is there to help you. They want to promote you and they want to see you succeed. You just need to to do two things.
- Tell people who you work with
- Ask for their help
“Hey [name]. Hope you’re well. I was wondering if you could help me. I’ve started working in the [blank] niche and I was wondering if you knew anyone in that space? I’d love to send them my guide on [killer post topic/title]. Speak soon. [Your name]”
You could send that to your friends, family, colleagues, networking members, customers, leads, subscribers, Facebook group members, leaders, business founders, event organisers, LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers…the list is infinite.
Look how we word the email/message too. It’s not about taking someone’s time for a meeting and you’re not talking about some AMAZING OFFER THAT WILL CHANGE THEIR LIFE!!!!! You’re asking if they know a type of person – that’s it.
You’re also giving them something.
Here’s what’s going to happen.
80% of people you message will never get back to you/ they’ll ignore you.
20% will respond
Of that 20%
80% will say they’re not the person but they might know someone
20% will say they do know someone or they are that person
As soon as someone responds with a positive message, something like “that’s me!” or “I know Mark is in that sector” ask them for a referral. Ask for an introduction and just try to get on a call.
You just need one lead and one call and you can start selling. Get people on a call and start asking them about their problems and goals. Don’t “sell”. Don’t “pitch” or any of that stuff. Yes – I love to sell and pitch. I also love to sit around in my underwear watching Adventure Time. But there is a time and a place and if I sat around in my jocks watching Finn and Jake when my Mother-In-Law comes around – there’ll be trouble.
Pitch and sell like hell when the time is right. Right now, you just need to get on a call and start asking about problems and goals. Two reasons:
- You’ll get an idea of what people want help with and you can offer to help them (and then sell)
- You’re getting killer keyword ideas…
Finally, let’s look at some cheap and easy keyword traffic.
Don’t chase keywords – create them
As I mentioned above, people aren’t searching for your business – yet.
First of all, they’re not looking for your niche, even if they’re in your niche. Because you’ve just invented it.
Second, they’re not looking for your brand name because who the hell are you?
Here’s how I started getting 10,000 visitors a month just to my blog when I invented a new niche.
- I listened to all my clients, customers, leads, audience and anyone else I could talk to
- I got lists and lists and lists of their problems, goals, struggles, desires and working habits (actions)
- I started creating posts with those problems, goals and struggles in the title
- I HEAVILY SEO’d my posts for keywords focused around those titles
- I manually sent those posts to my list, clients, customers, leads, audience and anyone else I could
- I watched to see which ones got the most engagement
Simple? Yes. Fast? No.
Let me make something very very clear right now. Your content is NOT a lead generator for you. At least, not right away.
If you manually send content like posts, videos and podcasts to your audience, that WILL increase your authority and they will want to work with you.
But the myth that creating blogs and videos will magically creates leads and sales over night is nonsense. Instead, you need to get a bit meta and understand the value of free content.
Free content is your compass. It’s your identifier to where people are, what they’re interested in and it builds data for you.
From a literal standpoint, if you have Facebook and Google pixels on your posts, you know that anyone who reads that post can now be marketed to later.
From a more high level standpoint, over time your audience will tell you what they want to read more of. How? By more people visiting and reading certain posts. Your traffic will tell you what people want to learn more about. Your content will qualify out people who aren’t interested.
Think of it like this. Attract. Qualify. Action. Attract people with easy low hanging fruit keywords. Qualify them out with the content and if they are the niche that suits you. Then get them to take action.
Attract: Blog post title: 15 methods to drive more traffic to your site.
Qualify: Blog post content based on your niche i.e. here’s how new Mum’s can drive 15x more traffic to their website
Anyone who IS NOT a new Mum won’t continue to read.
Action: Lead magnet: if you are a new mum and want more traffic – click here.
I know this sounds long winded and convoluted – and it will work over time. Stick with it and you will at least always have content that you can give to people manually to increase your authority with them.
That it pretty much my niche marketing plan.
Have courage, commit, take action