Let me guess, you want to pick a niche. Everybody around you is telling you that you need to pick a niche. Bloggers on YouTube say: “Pick a niche, pick a niche, pick a niche”, but somewhere deep inside, you feel you don’t want to pick a niche.
Bad feelings with picking a niche
You think you don’t want to limit yourself by choosing only one audience and you want to work with different people in different areas to provide them different services. So, you have that bad feeling like you have to pick a niche, but you truly don’t want to. I understand you. The truth is most bloggers don’t know anything about picking a niche, because they don’t have their own business except their YouTube channel (which is only one YouTube channel). They don’t have a common knowledge to speak about this topic of “picking a niche”.
I worked as self-employed for the previous 10 years providing marketing services for entrepreneurs from different areas. I worked with thousands of entrepreneurs in different niches. I launched hundreds of marketing campaigns in different markets. I worked in the real estate, beauty industry, education market, etc.. I launch a ton of online courses about teaching English, teaching marketing and other things. Today I want to share my experience with you and I’ll do my best to explain to you how to pick a niche in simple words.
Niche is a slice of the market
It’s hard to understand what your niche is, because niche is only a small part of the market. If you look around you’ll find out that people work in different markets such as: real estate, beauty industry, auto industry, marketing services, and so on. Sometimes it’s normal to find yourself as a part of different markets. If you are stuck on that, you can’t figure out what the market you’re working in, because you might be a part of different ones. If you look around you’ll find out that such famous people as Ilon Musk have different businesses. The Twitter company (X) is a part of the software industry, Tesla is a part of the auto industry. This example shows that it’s normal to be presented in different markets. Take a look at some famous actors, their job to be an actor and it’s a part of the film industry. However they have their own clothing brands and perfumes, so these products are parts from different markets. In my case, I offered different services to my customers. I have books and educational online courses on marketing. I offered services on content creation and video production, management of educational projects. These are different services for different people from different markets.
So, to not lose yourself just remember the rule: “On company or product or services better be a part of one market or niche.”
Let’s forget for a minute about my services and focus on my books, consultations and online courses. You may find that my market is educational. I hope this is clear. Next question is: “What markets consist of?” Answers for that question will help you to find your place in the market.
What markets consist of?
Markets consist of: buyers, sellers and products. Products could be on different topics and in different formats. For example, if we take an educational market (online education), you could find different audiences and products here. Talking about audiences you may find here: teachers, students, private schools, universities, coaches, personal trainers and so on.Talking about products you might find here: books, courses, consultations, live training programs, masterclasses, etc. These products (books for example) could be on different topics, such as: marketing or beauty. Thus, these are parts of the market.
In case you want to teach English online – this is called a market segment. Educational market is a big market, so if you want to teach English – that will be a part of the market (market segment). It’s a smaller part of the market. I hope you take it.
Next thing, if you don’t want to limit yourself by picking a niche you could work with anyone teaching English online. So this is your market segment – teaching English online.
However, if you want to pick a niche and narrow it down, now I’ll explain to you what the niche is.
When we talk about the niche we mean the topic and the audience. So, you can narrow down your niche by the audience or by the topic.
If we talk about teaching English you could teach English anyone, but if you want to narrow down the audience you have different choices. You could teach English only to kids, or only adults, or only IT specialists, or teachers. This way you can narrow down your niche by the audience. On the other hand you can narrow down your niche by the topic. You could choose to teach the whole language, or only the grammar, or only pronunciation, or maybe you’re the best at teaching vocabulary. This is an example of narrowing down the niche by the topic.
So, let’s summarise! Teaching – Educational Market. Teaching English Online – is a Market Segment. Teaching English Online (only adults on grammar) – is a Niche.
So to pick a niche and to find your place in the market you have to narrow down the audience or the topic. These are 2 ways to narrow your niche and pick it up. I hope that’s clear.
Your audience have to choose you
When it comes to finding your audience and picking your niche it isn’t about picking a niche and choosing the audience on your own. Your audience also needs to choose you. This is important to understand.
5 years ago I launched my online courses on marketing. My thoughts were: “If this is a program on marketing maybe I should try marketers as my audience.” I did it, I had created and launched an online course for marketers about marketing. I had a lot of registrations, but almost no one from marketers bought anything. That was a bad experience. Later I found out that my audience is entrepreneurs, they have a lot more problems with marketing, they have no idea on marketing. I found that my main audience was entrepreneurs running a small business on their own or with a small team. After I figured it out I recreated my marketing course thinking of that audience, of their problems and I tried to focus on them. After I relaunched that course it was more successful. Learning from my case I could say: “You’ll pick your niche and find your audience only after you’ll make 100 steps towards them.” You have to try first and afterwards figure out what your niche and your audience is. Launch your products and present them to different people on your market, then get some feedback and pay attention to the market. You have to listen to the market. Only after that you’ll find out what your niche and audience are. Not you only have to choose your audience, your audience also has to choose you.
Take 100 steps and don’t look back
If you still can’t figure out what your niche is, maybe it’s not the time right now. I’m sure after you make some steps towards your goals, your audience at some point you’ll find out what your niche is.
For example, if you want to start a YouTube channel you have to try and create and upload 100 videos. After doing that you’ll find out what your niche is. Your niche will find you itself. Your audience will find you itself.
The same is about creating a new business. Just start providing your services and after the first 100 clients you’ll figure it out.
This is the way I think it works. I hope it helps. If you can’t choose your niche (or audience) right now, take some steps forward and your audience will choose you itself.
I hope this article was helpful for you to read. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel (link down below). See you, bye!
