Guest post from Wayne Butcher.
Stuey!
I ride with a bloke called Stuey. He’s a good bloke.
The other day Stuey invited me around to his place for beers. He’s just renovated a lovely place in Bondi.
Anyway, Stuey recently received my email about books and business and things. So Stuey is talking about that while him, me and some of his mates are sitting around drinking beer. I get talking about my previous work with the law firm, what I think about business these days and then one of Stuey’s mates starts telling us about his business.
I’m a landscaper I don’t know much about landscaping but I’m interested. I asked a few questions and, for the sake of this quick letter, here’s what
unfolded: What’s your niche?
This guy was a landscaper. Great. But there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of landscapers in Sydney
so I asked him where he works. It turns out that he works all over Sydney.
I asked him why. He said “Well, cos I advertise on Google, I get calls from all over the
joint.” It turns out that the most profitable work that this guy performs
is decking jobs within about a 5-10km radius of where he lives.
So, I said – mate, why don’t you just jump on Google Maps for 4 hours and look in the backyard of every
house within your neighbourhood and work out whether they need a deck. Then you could afford another 4 hours
to write each one of them a personal letter offering to come and install a deck. You could even afford to give
every client a holiday to Bali for 7 days while you build their deck.
The point is …
Until you’re working in a market so tight that it can be measured and
defined by where its people live, what they do, how old they are, how much
they earn, where they typically spend their money and what they care about,
the world is just too big and loud for you to ever get noticed.
Or, more simply, find a ridiculously small niche and service the heck out
of it.
It seems scary to turn your back on the mass market because of its
size and potential but, until you do, it’s going to be awfully tough for you to
get known.
Benefits
Here are some benefits from
finding a niche no wider than your
nose:
1. SEO becomes super cheap
2. Customer acquisition costs halve
3. You get market-monopoly style margins
4. You can integrate vertically to grow (ie you can sell your
customers things beyond your original product because they trust
you because you’re THE expert in your field)
If you ever want to chat about this
sort of stuff, I’m always up for it. Call
me.