Brand Foundation: How to Hone in on Your Brand Niche
I spent most of December 2020 working on a personal brand audit. In short, I went over every aspect of my brand with a fine tooth comb, cutting things out, adding things in and then refining, refining, refining so I have a clear idea of who I am, what I do and how I help people going into 2021.
This process was so helpful and eye opening for me that I wanted to pay it forward by sharing the process and our biggest takeaways. My goal is to empower you to complete your own brand audit so you can develop a strong brand foundation and grab this year by the horns.
Defining my niche was the first step I tackled in my brand audit. This gave me a clear focus and reference point when I moved on to refining my Unique Value Proposition, mission statement, elevator pitch etc.
Your business wouldn't be a business without your customers and clients so it makes sense that we start with defining exactly who those customers are.
What is a Niche?
Your niche is not your ideal customer. Although it does include your ideal customer.
Niche: The broader market segment you can best serve with your products and/or services.
Ideal Customer Avatar: An individual persona within your niche that you create to make your messaging and marketing feel personal.
In short terms, a niche is a group, an ideal customer is an individual.
Reminders:
Now that we know what a niche is, keep these things in mind as you hone in on yours.
Progress over perfect.
You do you, take what serves and leave the rest. There isn't a business police running around, enforcing the "right" way of doing business.
You can't be everything to everyone. I have to repeat this one, multiple times because it's so easy to fall into (I myself have fallen prey).
Let's get started!
We looked at 3 key pieces of information when honing in on our niche - current clients - dream clients - competitors clients.
Current Clients: Do you notice any similarities or patterns within your current and past client roster? Are they all local? From the same industry? At the same phase in life or business? Are there any clients you worked with that you wouldn't work with again?
Dream Clients: Are there brands or businesses you would kill to work with? Customers that light you up whenever you think about them buying your products or services? What characteristics do these dream clients share?
Competitors Clients: Who is your competition serving? Is there a market in your industry that is not being served by anyone else? There's a piece of the pie for everyone but you don't want to be going for the exact same piece.
Take some time going through these questions. I personally like to rapid fire answers the first go, then set it down for a bit and come back to do a more in depth pass.
Writing your niche statement
Now that you've answered the questions, it's time to distill that information into a simple statement that you can reference and remember easily.
Step 1: Look at your answers and list out any commonalities you see.
What characteristics do your dream clients share with your current clients? What separates your clients from your competitions clients? Are there clients or customers you didn't enjoy serving?
When we looked at our current and past clients we noticed that almost all were in the wellness industry in some form or another. We'd worked with a CBD brand, a doctor, a corporate wellness provider, a yoga studio, a massage studio etc. and we didn't see this trend in our competition.
Step 2: What are the most important factors to you?
Look at all the commonalities and decide which ones are important to include in your niche statement. Your niche doesn't need to encompass every similarity you find. In addition, the factors you choose to include don't need to be standard demographics like location, industry, age or gender.
We chose to set the wellness trend we identified in our current client roster aside, opting to focus on a businesses mission and their visual style as our defining niche factors.
As a creative agency, our design style is a big factor in potential clients decision to hire us thus it becomes an integral part of our niche and the brand we put out into the world. Just as important is a businesses mission. We looked at the projects we absolutely loved working on and they all shared one thing - a clear why behind their brand. They were in business to have a positive impact on their communities, big or small.
Step 3: Write it out
Now it's time to take what you've learned and distill it down into a single statement. This statement is mostly for internal use, something you can easily reference when making decisions and creating marketing materials so you stay on brand (it goes in your Brand Book), but it can be adapted for external applications, like your instagram profile.
When it was all said and done this is what I came up with...
Funny how much thought, effort and energy can go into a single sentence! Once you have your niche statement you'll be able to focus your messaging and your visual brand to speak to your specific audience. You can also dive deeper into the habits of your niche so you know which marketing channels are worth your time and which ones you can let go.
Getting stuck? Take a break. Working on your own brand is HARD. No if's, and's or but's about it. Even us professionals avoid the task like the plague. So give your subconscious some time to chew and digest the information and come back to it with fresh eyes.