Why Excluding Will Get You More

byJohnVB

525 followers

Updated 9 years ago

When we are in the process of creating a niche - selecting the topic we want to talk about and the audience we want to reach, we all fall into the same trap of covering as much as possible of the topic and trying to include as many people as possible in our audience. We are too afraid of excluding someone who might want what we have to offer. And we all look for ideas on the website of our competition and imitate what they do well.

I'm going to tell you something radically different. You're going to shake your head and say "no no that can't be right." But I want you to keep reading to the end because it will all make sense in the end.

Don't go broad, both in your topic and audience, go narrow and as specific as possible. This is what I suggest you do. Make a profile of the ideal person you want to reach. Kind of like a profile you'd make on a dating site describing your ideal partner, but instead you do this for your ideal client. Then go out and find a real person that fits your profile. Don't make up a person, this won't work with a persona that you've invented.

When you have found him (or her) invite him out for coffee and you interview this person. You ask them about your topic (or product) and you find out what the most important thing is that would be the absolute deal breaker if that wasn't included.

Once you know what that is you focus your whole marketing message on this person and this thing they value most. Use their exact words. "But I can't base my marketing on just one person!?!?" is probably what you're thinking right about now. But yes you can and you should. When you aim a bow and arrow at a target, what do you aim at? The very center of the rose right? And if you miss it you still hit the target. And that's what your doing by selecting one person and what they value most.

And here is what will happen. When that person reads what you write they feel you understand them better than anyone else. They feel you identify with them. And there are tens of thousands, maybe millions of people on the internet who are just like that one person. And they will all feel this way and what you offer will be custom made for them.

Competition? You don't have any! Because nobody focuses on something so unique.

When you go broad you run into the following problems;

• heavy competition because there are 100 others doing the same thing.
• You have a hard time knowing what to write about because there are so many points to cover
• You spend a lot of time and effort on people who were never seriously interested in the first place

The word "niche" is the French word for nest. Like a birds nest in a tree. A nest is very very small compared to the whole tree. Your topic is like the tree and when you pick (or create) a niche, you're focusing on a very very tiny part of the topic that you are (or become) expert about.

People will pick up on this and since you know something so detailed about this topic they will consider you an expert about the whole topic. They will come to you.

Yes you will exclude a lot of people. You will exclude everyone who's not interested in what you have to say. But every person you include will say yes.

I guarantee you that if you apply this to what you're doing, your conversion rate will sky rocket. Worse case scenario you'll double what you're doing now.

I will be writing more posts that combined will form a very effective niche marketing strategy, so please stay tuned.

As always I want to hear what you think and being fairly new here I have no idea how many people read this. So please like my post if you've read it and write a comment to tell me what you think.

- John