A Casestudy in How to Niche

Courtesy of @tomrossmedia

I always want my content to be actionable, rather than just vague concepts that make sense, but you can’t picture how they’d apply in the real world.

So I took yesterday’s exercise and crafted it into an example.

Imagine a hypothetical illustrator called Kelly. Kelly represents a lot of folk in my community. She loves illustrating, but currently, her feed bounces around quite a lot in terms of style and subject matter. If you ask her whom she’s trying to sell to she’ll reply ‘anyone who will pay’, and surprise surprise, she’s not seeing much traction!

Now, imagine for a second that Kelly decides to niche. She picks dog owners/lovers, as she herself loves dogs. She thinks it will be fun illustrating dogs each day and recognizes a big market out there.

?

Suddenly, she goes from targeting everyone (ie: no one!) to knowing whom she is serving: dog lovers. She now has her WHO part of the equation.

She must follow this with the WHAT. What illustration work will appeal to the most? What might they be willing to buy? After some brainstorming, she decides to combine her illustrations of dogs with cute captions that should resonate with this niche market. She does pieces about unconditional love, furry friends, and how your dog is always there for you after a bad day.

She now must define WHERE these dog lovers hangout. She easily finds hundreds of Facebook groups for dog lovers, and hundreds of hashtags on Instagram with people crazy about dogs. She can easily identify people who have just purchased a new puppy, or even people with different breeds of dog.

Now onto the HOW. She joins every Facebook group she can and becomes a positive, active part of the community. When she occasionally shares her work in the group she makes it super relevant and doesn’t try to sell. She posts an adorable illustration of a sausage dog in a group of sausage dog lovers and people immediately love it.

In my last post I showed how to market using this framework:

What: The work you create

Who: The potential customers

Where: where can you find them?

How: How will you reach them

Case study: the generic illustrator

Imagine an illustrator called Kelly. She loves illustrating, but currently illustrates'everything' and targets'everyone'. She isn't seeing much traction :(

Kelly tries niching

Sick of seeing no traction, Kelly thinks about how to niche. She decides to combine her love of illustrating with her love of dogs.

Let's look at her what, who, where, how now!

Who: dog owners/lovers

Kelly now has complete clarity on whom to produce work. She is no longer targeting 'anyone happy to pay' and is excited to sell her illustrations to people who love dogs as much as she does!

What: dog illustrations

Suddenly Kelly's Instagram feed becomes laser focused! Each piece is crafted to resonate with dog lovers. She even combines her illustrations with cute wording that they will love.

Where: do they hang out?

lt was overwhelming to figure out where 'everyone' spent their time, but targeting dog lovers made this easier. Kelly soon found hundreds of dog-friendly Facebook groups, millions of active, hashtags, popular communities, etc…

How: to reach them?

Kelly jumped right in. She immersed herself in every Facebook group, and folk in there loved her work! She built relationships with hundreds of dog lovers on Instagram one by one. She used relevant hashtags in her work, drawing more attention.

Bonus — useful tools for everyday usage:

Crello - the simplest online image editor. A simple but powerful tool to create awesome designs for any social media format — posts, covers, graphics, and posters using the best software on the web. It’s easy! A lot of animated designs.

HypeAuditor - empowers users to analyze any Instagram account for insights on audience quality and authenticity of engagement.

Postmypost - scheduled posting tool for Instagram, Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Set up team work and discuss posts with colleagues and clients.

Proxy Market - qualitative proxy for IPv6 and IPv4 for social networking, parsing and any other tasks.

LetyShops - this service allows you to get a cashback of the amount spent on the purchase – up to 30%.

Let's Talk

Be free to send me any feedback by reply or reach me in DM on Instagram

Do you want to receive insights using FB Messenger or Telegram or Email? ?? Subscribe now.

Wanna skyrocket your business via converting marketing funnels and Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn/Snapchat/TikTok ads? Or get a growth consultation? ?? 

Book a quick call with me ??