Niche vs. Expertise & How They Impact Your Marketing | 111
I bet you’ve heard people talk about niche quite a lot if you are a business owner. People might ask you what your niche is, and marketing gurus love to talk about niching down. But what exactly is a niche and do you really need one?
Let’s talk about the pros and cons of having a niche and how to develop your niche marketing strategy.
Niche vs. Expertise
Something I see a lot of entrepreneurs confuse is niche and expertise.
Niche: the group of people you typically work with and who you sell to
Expertise: is what you do for people
For example, my niche is typically teacher business owners. These are either current classroom teachers or former teachers who have businesses. As far as my expertise, I help them with Facebook Ads and marketing strategy.
Do You Really Need a Niche?
There is a reason so many marketing experts talk about niching down: having a niche marketing strategy is typically easier than speaking to a wide audience. As they say, when you're speaking to everyone - you’re speaking to no one.
However, what most people don’t tell you is that a niche marketing strategy isn’t created overnight. There are a couple of paths most business owners take to nail down their niche (and usually, there are pivots along the way).
Path #1: Start Big and End Small
Some entrepreneurs start by doing a bit of everything. They may begin working as a general VA or picking up odd jobs. Over time, they find a niche and/or expertise that they really like. For example, they may find they love working with wedding planners and loathe working with real estate agents (nothing against real estate agents, but I personally would just have no idea how to help).
What’s great about this path is you can test out several niches and expertises, and find what you enjoy the most. However, it can be stressful taking on so many different jobs and trying to figure them out. Plus, you may get stuck completing tasks you hate.
However, in the end, you ideally find exactly what you want to do and create a specific niche marketing strategy that you never expected or even knew was an option.
Path #2: Start Somewhere and Get Specific
If you’re just starting out as a business owner, this is the path I recommend taking! For this path, you have a niche or expertise in mind, but you don’t know both. For example, you might know you want to work with online course creators, but you aren’t exactly sure how you want to serve them yet.
Having a group of people in mind helps you develop a niche marketing strategy, which makes it easier to attract the people you want to work with. Knowing your expertise will allow you to develop some solid offerings and even charge more for those services - since you are specialized in this area.
The big takeaway is that you don’t need a niche or expertise to start your business, but you should work on developing those areas over time, so you can get specific with your marketing and attract the kind of people you want to work with.
Struggling to nail down your niche or expertise? Want help developing a niche marketing strategy? Let’s meet for a 1:1 strategy call to talk through your challenges and create an action plan to reach your goals.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Hello and welcome to another Saturday strategy session. I am super excited to be recording this one. We are gonna be talking about niching down, and we're gonna be talking about your expertise, and then we're also gonna be relating it back to Facebook ads. So this is going to be a really great episode spilling in a whole bunch of things.
Before we really dive into what we're gonna talk about, I would just like to address the elephant in the room or the tea in the room. Is it “neesh” or “nitch”? Not really sure, but I tend to say, what's your “nitch” and “neeshing” down. So when it is a noun, I say “nitch” and when it is a verb, I say “neeshing”. I don't know why. But just know that they are the same thing and nobody knows how to pronounce it right!
So in this episode we're gonna talk about what the difference between a niche and an expertise, and then do you actually need both of these things? Then we're gonna talk about the typical process of niching down and some different variations. Then the last thing that we'll do is chat about how this all relates to Facebook ad marketing.
So niche vs expertise. A niche is the group of people that you're typically gonna work with. So some examples are teachers, upper elementary teachers, fitness lovers, moms entrepreneurs, coaches, and math teachers. So it's the group of people.
Your expertise is what you do for people. For example, Pinterest, generalized VA services, maybe you create math resources, or social media management, bookkeeping, Facebook ad services, business coaching.
The difference between niche and expertise is who you do it for versus what you actually. The reason that this is important to differentiate is because you can have a niche, you can have an expertise, or you can have both. And so for me personally, my niche is teacher business owners. That's who I work with typically. I have expanded out of it, but typically I'm working with teacher business owners.
My expertise is Facebook ads management and marketing strategy. And so I personally have both. Now I know a lot of people that only have one, or sometimes you'll smoosh them together. I found this to be especially true in the T P T world where you're creating math resources for upper elementary, and you call that your niche.
Why do you actually need this? So I personally recommend that you start with one, but again, it doesn't really matter. There's benefits to starting with one or the other, or starting with both or neither. But to me, if you start with nothing, then you're gonna be really, really broad. It seems insane to me where you're just like…I'm doing things.
Your expertise, like I said, could be something as vague as generalized virtual assistant work. That's an expertise. And as you do more generalized work, you might find that there's some things that you are more attracted to. Like maybe you start doing Pinterest for a client and you're like, oh, I love this. And so then the next client, if you loved it, you might be like, I'll do more of that. And if you don't like Pinterest, then you're gonna have the exact opposite reaction. But at least you started somewhere.
Let's go back to that T P T example of math resources for upper elementary. You just have your niche of upper elementary and you're just creating resources for that. Whereas if you didn't have a niche or a specialty for your T P T resource, you would just be creating all kinds of things. Like that's a little bit crazy to me.
So having something to start makes it a little bit easier. And with that T P T example, you could start with an expertise too. You could say, I'm doing math resources, and you get really well known for math resources, but you don't necessarily have that niche yet where you are only doing upper elementary.
You could have some math resources for younger grades and older. So without determining a niche or an expertise, you're gonna be like super, super generalized doing all the different things. And so that's why I personally recommend that you start with at least one of them so that you have an idea of where you're doing.
The typical process of niching down is people tend to start broad and get more specific over time. That gives you the ability to find the types of people and the type of work that you enjoy doing. So you could start with those generalized VA services, like I said before, and then, specialize into Pinterest or Facebook ads or director of operations, whatever it might be.
You could also start with the generalized VA and you work with a teacher business owner, and then you work with someone who has an MLM, and then you work with somebody who's like a sleep consultant. You work with all these different people. You don't really have a niche, but you have that service that you're providing.
Then you start to realize, okay, I really, really love working with moms who are creating their own businesses and doing their own thing. And so then you start to focus more on like mompreneurs, and that starts to become your niche and you don't really have that specific specialty, but you do start to get more specific with your niche.
A big con to this is that you may be doing things that you really, really don't like, or working with people that you don't enjoy working with, or you can't understand they're world because you're not part of it. Like if I was to work with a dentist, I don't know very much about terminology or the intricacies of any local business dentists, chiropractors, or realtors. They can be really successful but I've never done it. And so I don't know the intricacies of running localized Facebook ads. And I could learn, but it's just not my specialty.
Whereas teacher business owners, I am one. I'm still in the classroom one day a week. I've been a teacher for 10 years, so I know so much. I've been selling on T P T coming up 10 years in March. So I'm very, very familiar with the world and what's going on in the insanity that is T P D these days. And as a teacher business owner, I understand the intricacies and the delicacy that is marketing a teacher business.
When you start to find that niche that you really like, you start to understand the very small, delicate pieces of it. And same with your expertise. When you really decide what you're gonna be getting good at, then you take more training and you do it on a regular basis. So it becomes easier and you start to learn the ropes and you really can dive deep into all of the different pieces, the strategy, the procedures, the systems, everything that you need for that unique expertise.
The pros though, is that you might find something that you love, that you had no idea existed or that you thought you might not like. But you end up loving and hopefully you'll start to attract a group of people. So maybe you had no idea who you wanna work with, and so you're kind of open. And like I said before, you just start to naturally attract those entrepreneurs or teacher business owners or bookkeepers or whatever it is that you start to attract, and then you find that niche because it's what you enjoy.
And then variation number two is that you know exactly who or what you wanna do, but you don't know both. And this is kind of where I recommend that you start having a general idea of either who you wanna work with or what you wanna do. Like I was saying before, this makes the marketing easier. It also makes creating the product or the service easier, because if you're just kind of like, I'll do anything for anyone…you're just like speaking to no one.
And so having that one piece in place helps you to be more specific and you already have a little bit of clarity, but you're not boxed in. And I'm just pausing for a second on this. You're never boxed in. You can always pivot your business. You can always choose to add a new service or get rid of a service or take your business in a different direction, and you don't have to keep doing something that you absolutely hate just because you've been doing it.
It might mean that you have to have a hard conversation with a client. It might mean that you have to start over. But you’re never actually boxed in. I just want you to know that having either a niche or an expertise gives you that flexibility when you're first starting, and then as you evolve and you become more aware, you can start to zero in a little bit quicker because you already have that idea.
Or you could go with version three, which actually isn't the one that I would recommend for most people, but it is the one that I did. And that is knowing exactly who you wanna work with and what you want to do.
It's very, very easy to market because you know exactly who your people are and who your pool of clients is likely gonna be. But a downside is because you have a very specific service or product for a very specific group of people, your pool of clients is probably gonna be much smaller. It might be harder to find somebody who fits perfectly, especially at first when you're not really well known.
Having that niche and the expertise will likely allow you to charge higher prices because you are kind of…this unique little flower blooming! I don't really know where that came from, but you're like a unicorn. You have this group of people that you work with and you know their exact challenges, the problems that they're facing. You can really go deep in your marketing messaging. Foreshadowing here again. With the expertise, you can speak to those services that you're providing or that product that you're creating, and then as your confidence and expertise grows, those prices can continue to increase and you'll get known as an expert in your zone of genius a lot quicker if you have that niche and expertise right off the bat.
Now, the reason that I don't necessarily recommend this is because it does limit you in those ways. It can be harder to find those first clients if you are only offering a certain service. Like I was only offering Facebook ads for teacher business owners, so there's only one Facebook group that's really dedicated to VA support for T P T sellers or teacher business owners. There are some really, really, really big names in the Facebook ads industry, and to jump into some of the bigger groups that are more open to course creators would've been more challenging for me.
And so it's a delicate balance. I've been able to, over the past two or three years, really build relationships, get to know people, and inside of the teaching world, get to know people and build those relationships, which has really, really helped. And so if you're gonna start with a specific niche and expertise, then relationship building becomes even more important. It'll be harder to get clients, and so the more relationships you build, the easier that client getting process will be.
You're creating that really strong network. Then your client base is a little bit bigger, and so you don't really need to build up that brand name awareness as much. You'll be able to hopefully find clients a little bit quicker. Then as your business grows, as your confidence grows, you'll be able to zone in on that expertise that you're looking for.
I recommend that everyone is working towards niching down and to have an expertise. Because again, it's just gonna make your marketing a lot easier. And while you can definitely change, having the two of them is just gonna make your messaging so much clearer and targeting so much clearer and really gonna help provide that clarity of when someone finds you on social media or your website or wherever it might be, Then they'll know exactly who you are and what you do. And people will start to be able to recommend you if they know exactly what you do.
Now, to be clear, you absolutely do not need a niche. You do not need an expertise to be successful. I just think that from a marketing perspective, it's so much easier. And that's where the Facebook ad piece comes in. When you know exactly who you're talking to, what their problems are, what their biggest obstacles are, what their hopes and dreams are. Not even surface level; like really deep level.You can express it better than they can express it themselves. That's when you can evoke an emotion from somebody. And being able to evoke emotions is how you get people to buy from you.
It's very like a psychological piece, and you wanna be able to speak directly to your target audience when you're speaking directly to them. It just makes your job so much easier. Your marketing becomes way, way more seamless and more streamlined if your Facebook ads are really talking directly to those people who need the service from you, or they need that product from you. They immediately relate to you because you're speaking to their soul. That is how marketing really, really works.
So having the niche, having the expertise really allows you to go deeper in your messaging and speak more effectively to your ideal client. And that's another reason why I think it's really important. I don't think you need to start there, but getting there, figuring out what you enjoy doing, who you enjoy doing it for or with, that is really where I think that your business will skyrocket and bloom and blossom.
I hope that you found this episode really helpful. Just a little bit of homework if you want. I encourage you to journal on this and just to write out…currently, do you have a niche? Do you have an expertise? What are you working towards? Like where do you need clarity on these so that you can start to really figure it out and to really gain clarity in your business so that you can get that deeper messaging so that your marketing can be more effective.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!