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How To Niche Down Your Design Business
Apart from the popularity, the hordes of followers, and money in the bank, what do all successful online businesses have in common? All successful business owners have established themselves in a niche. Targeting your niche makes it easier to develop designs that will resonate with your target audience. Establishing yourself in a niche will also define all the things you want to do, what you hope to achieve, and the kind of clients that you want to attract.
What is a Niche?
A niche is defined as a selected focus of industry, style, design category, etc. A niche doesn't always target a design format or a single type of business, but your efforts are focused on a specific area. Through niching, you can:
- Select the clients you want to work with
- Position yourself as a market leader
- Establish a better brand to your target audience
As a designer, there's nothing wrong with developing designs that attract different clients. Still, it will do your marketing efforts (and business) a lot of good if you can hone your skills portfolio into a specific area of design. Knowing your niche means having a clear understanding of what you want to do, what you want to specialise in, and what kinds of people you'd like to help. This way, you'll get projects that you genuinely enjoy working on.
Now that you know why targeting your niche is so crucial in your budding graphic design business, let's talk about the many ways of finding your niche as a designer:
Know Your Niche
Think about the values, type of service, and business model that you'd like to be known for. Is there a specific service that you specialise in? What are your core values and business goals? Are the services you offer in line with your business' core values? Is your brand connecting to the right people?
Specialisation: If you specialise in a specific type of design, then consider building your business and brand around it. For example, if you specialise in developing eCommerce website for weddings or musicians, then be sure that your business is marketed as such.
Values: How people see your brand affects your business. If for example, you'd like your business to be known for its creative designs and you'd like to work with people who love out-of-the-box ideas, then be sure that your business' core values reflect your business goals.
Service: Is there a specific type of service you'd like to adopt? If you want to be a market leader, you need to focus on a particular service. Our advice would be to provide services that truly make you happy.
Update Your Branding Message
After knowing your niche, the next step would be to update your marketing messages. It would be best if you answered the who, where, what, and why of your ideal clients:
- Who are your ideal clients?
- Where to find your ideal clients?
- What can you offer to your ideal clients?
- Why are you offering them your specific service?
Knowing who your ideal clients will involve in-depth market analysis. You need to identify your ideal clients by demographics (age, gender, geographical location, education level, marital status, household income, occupation, and hobbies, etc.). By evaluating your ideal customers by demographics, you'll get an idea of where to find them.
Once you've identified who to market your business to, you need to figure the kind of offer that will resonate with your ideal clients. This ensures that the branding message will attract the right people. For example, if your ideal customers are adults aged between 21 to 30 years old, it won't make sense to develop branding messages that are made for teens. Your branding message should be relatable, eye-catching, and most importantly, relevant to your target audience; otherwise, it won't stick.
To catch the attention of your ideal clients, you need to highlight the reason why they need your service. To do this, you'll have to change your website copy and social media content so that your branding message will attract the right people.
Your branding message should be consistent. Remove the website or social media content that is unrelated to the brand you are building. This will help keep your branding consistent and avoid confusion.
Market Away!
The last step in niching would be to promote your business. The good news is, it's much easier to market a niche-based business because you are only advertising to a specific group of people. Also, you can customise your promotions based on your chosen niche. For example, various marketing platforms – including Google MyBusiness and Facebook – lets you specify which people to send your marketing messages to.
Complement your online marketing efforts with brand-consistent marketing materials, such as brochures, business cards, etc. This helps set your brand apart from others while also making your brand easier to identify by your target audience.
The structure of your marketing content, including the visuals, format, and wording, should reflect your brand. Keeping everything consistent helps your brand stand out while also making it easier for potential clients to recognise your brand.
Developing a brand that potential clients could relate to is one of the most important parts of marketing a niche business. Through niching, you can customise your business to reflect your brand and core values. This way, you can attract the right people to your business and make promotions so much easier!
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