Master of many or niche expert -should you market many services or get good at one?

[Leif Hansen]

I've heard quite a diverse number of opinions on this topic, and as I'm about to go through a major branding/identity/partnering/marketing shift in the next few months, I was curious to hear your thoughts.

The basic positions I've heard are:

1. You should advertise as many services as you feel you can truly deliver on -team building, strategic planning, brainstorming, conflict rez, leadership dev, you name it -so that you can fit as many needs as possible.

2. You should become an expert in one particular service, as niche as possible, and make that service and the value it provides so clear on your first page of site that someone immediately knows what they can expect from you. (ie "If you're a tech company with staff who just can't seem to relate beyond their screens, we can help your staff communicate more effectively using our highly engaging activities and trust-enhancing games." etc.)

3. YES, make one focus clear on the front page of a site (ideally where you shine the most), AND go ahead and list all the other things you can do in your 'services'.

What do YOU THINK? What do YOU DO?

[Leif Hansen]

Good point Denzil. Maybe one solution is to have multiple simple sites (or points of entry, redirecting from different main websites) that focus on different niches. As for tarket markets as niches, I've never really been drawn to one group over another. A few makes sense because of my background and experience (tech, non-profit, spiritual groups, etc), but really I'll work with whoever I WANT to work with :)

[Gijs van Bilsen]

Wow, what an interesting discussion, even more so because it's a discussion that I and the other partners of my company are currently having. I'll try to give my ideas on it as well. I actually have two ideas, one as a business administration student and the other is the solution that me and my partners agreed upon.

1: Market Targeting as a BA student.
In the past, I've had the opportunity to 'advise' several start-op entrepreneurs on their business plans. I did this at a programme that had been set up by my university, in combination with experts such as the chamber of commerce, banks and business networks. What I learned here resembles Leif's third option. It is called Open Focus. For marketing, you act as though you have a niche strategy. Your website and other publications should only show what you are really good at and where your value added will be the greatest. In your personal communication however, you can deviate from this. If somebody offers you an assignment that lies outside your niche, you do not have to say no to this.

The opinion of the experts involved in the programme was (almost unanimously) that niche marketing was the best type of marketing, but becuase it is so hard for starting entrepreneurs to say no the potential clients, they advocated this strategy.

2: Market Targeting as an AI-business
In my own company, we belive very much in painting a consistent picture, so the Open Focus strategy doesn't really fit. We want to specialize, but we do not want to alienate potential clients. We therefore came up with the following (as yet untested) Marketing strategy.

We have a very clear way of doing things, where we will plan an assignment in detail. This takes a lot of time but we think it gives us a unique selling point (USP). So we use our USP as a niche, but still provide a wide range of services, from organizing seminars to teambuilding and creativity.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Leif Hansen]

Yes, it does help Gijs -thanks. It helps to have the 'third way' confirmed as being advised by the 'experts'. My only Q is you say "we therefore came up with the following Marketing strategy" but I'm not sure what the strategy is....was it in the following paragraph?

Cheers,
Leif

[Gijs van Bilsen]

Hmm, you're right, I didn't write it down very clearly. I'll try again.

Our strategy, for the moment, is not to distinguish ourselves on what we do, but how we do it.

The how is that we prepare a lot. Offcourse, we do not plan the actual improv, but everything around it, from the invitation to participants to the presentation of the location and extensive stage setting. We also offer to plan an event conceptually, if we are engaged early enough for this to be possible..

By doing this, we assure ourselves that we can give the entire event a consistent feel, rather than using improv as a seperate part of the event.

We allready used this marketing strategy in the draft version of our website (for dutch speakers: www.debovenburen.nl) and we know how we can use it in personal communication. But a limitation of this strategy is that you cannot start a conversation with 'how do we do it', but you have to focus on the 'what do we do' first.

Does this clarify our marketing strategy for you?

[Kathy Mallary]

Thanks for the link, Melissa!

Re niche/specialization --

Instead of specializing in a particular service, think about how you might specialize in a particular problem/solution.

Then you can take it a step further and aim your marketing at a particular target market that wants to solve the problem you specialize in.

Your solution to their problem could be delivered through a variety of services and products. There's no need to limit yourself to just one service -- in fact, the more options you give people, the more relevant and versatile you are, and the more revenue channels you have. (And when it comes to revenue, more IS better, yes?!)

When you're established with the first target market, you can look for other markets that also have that same problem.

This all goes back to the premise that customers don't buy services; they buy solutions.

[Leif Hansen]

That's a great angle Kathy, thanks. I'd be interested if you wanted to show an AI-ish example (perhaps from your own work?)...

[Kathy Mallary]

Hmmm... I know that AI = Applied Improvisation, but I guess I don't really know what Applied Improvisation is.

I mean, isn't LIFE "applied improvisation" - ?!

Sorry, I feel like I may have stumbled into the conversation without knowing what I'm getting in to. =O)

[Melissa Sandfort]

Leif, thanks for posing this question. By writing up this answer, I finally came up with the sentence I needed to define my Tao Life Coaching niche!

What do I think?
Kathy Mallary, who specializes in coaching coaches about how to market themselves, has convinced me that positioning myself as an expert (having a niche) will be more effective than trying to cover as many possible client needs as I can. She has interesting stuff to say at http://www.coachingbiztips.com.

This idea, from her blog, really struck me: if you don't specialize, then the only thing you differentiate yourself on is PRICE. If you specialize, you differentiate yourself based on EXPERTISE, which people are willing to pay more for.

She also had a link to this Time Magazine article, and I liked this quote from it:

No matter how narrow their niche, the experts insist that inspired insight or client demand dictated their particular angle. Targeting is also a good business practice. "You don't want buzzwords," says Jeff Sandefer, president of energy investment firm Sandefer Capital Partners and a founder of the Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship program. "Everyone wants to hire the expert and will pay a lot for very specific help." Some companies love the idea of bringing in an adviser to fix one narrowly defined problem.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1541293-3,00.html

What do I do?
Yes, and...!

Yes, I'm specializing, and I have to admit, I'm trying out two different niches! I still have that voice in me that says, "If I only have one niche, I'm putting all my eggs in one basket ..."

So, I'm developing two simultaneous niches to market my coaching. One is offering IFS (Internal Family Systems) life coaching at www.ifslife.com. Not much of a website yet, but the training page shows, yeah, I am obsessed with IFS! It makes sense as a niche for me because it's my life's passion, and I'm an expert at it.

The other niche is Tao Life Coaching at www.taolifecoach.com (coming soon), 'cuz I'm an expert at changing my life from the inside out so that I live a simpler, more sustainable, environmentally friendly life over time. I have to admit though, parts of me feel weird proclaiming that, which makes me wonder if I have some resistance to claiming a niche because parts of me feel uncomfortable claiming, "I'm an expert."

My new niche-explaining sentence about Tao Life Coaching, 100% inspired by this discussion: Tao Life Coaching offers a combination of spiritual and practical life coaching for successful people who want to contribute to social and environmental change, by helping them BE the change they seek in the world, from the inside out.

Thanks Leif!

[Adam StJohn Lawrence]

"This idea, from her blog, really struck me: if you don't specialize, then the only thing you differentiate yourself on is PRICE. If you specialize, you differentiate yourself based on EXPERTISE, which people are willing to pay more for."

You are right, but there is another important way to differentiate besides price and product: differentiation through the customer experience.

In other words, be the best one to work with, the most customer-oriented, the most flexible, the most authentic, the most fun etc etc etc.

The Geek Squad (www.geeksquad.com) are not the cheapest computer repair team, or the most expert. But they offer a unique customer experience...

(I'm not arguing against the importance of expertise here, just pointing out there are more than two paths up the mountain.)

Cheers

Adam

[Leif Hansen]

Your welcome, but really thank you for sharing so honestly about your process and where you're at now. I'm leaning in the same direction (niche-wise), but am still not sure about my own niche. Wisdom says inside "just choose SOMETHING" for now and you can refine/change later if you need to ;)

BTW Melissa, if you're not on Biznik.com yet, you really need to soon...I think you'll find a lot of good connections and support there. Theres a big coaching community there as well.

Cheers,
Leif

[Melissa Sandfort]

Leif,

Since I'm developing my coaching niche as I type, I really appreciate this discussion!

This weekend my coach reminded me that I've done this all before... with my tutoring business. Over 15 years of tutoring, I developed an insanely specialized niche-- fifth grade to college age writing & reading tutoring with either ADD/Behavior Disorder/school-hatin' kids, or working with honors/gifted/AP (or want to be) students. I ended up working with kids at the very extremes of the spectrum, never kids that just needed regular tutoring in a school subject. And never math! I brought coaching and psychotherapy training to my tutoring, and went way outside the lines of conventional tutoring to "help students shine from the inside out."

This developed over time as I honed each category: subject, age, type of student.... I eliminated math after a certain number of years-- perhaps it was my 12th percentile score on the math section of the GRE (vs. my 99th percentile on the verbal) that made this decision clear! I really dig teenagers, not so much younger kids, so I eliminated the elementary school students. I bring so much coaching to my tutoring, that I was a form of overkill for kids who just need regular, subject-based tutoring. So that's how I ended up with my niche... and it worked great. I might still end up continuing to offer college application essay coaching & tutoring into the future, because I think college application essays are a coaching exercise for teens -- they get a chance to champion themselves, who they are, who they've been, who they see themselves becoming-- in a story that can be polished into a mini work of art that captures them at that moment, eloquently and movingly, forever.

Huh, I'd been kicking around the idea of keeping the college application essays in my coaching practice, but until I just wrote what I wrote, it didn't occur to me that it could be 100% part of my coaching practice. I saw it as a separate outlier, a remnant of my tutoring practice. Now I realize that one of the areas of my coaching practice could be helping anyone-- not just teens but also adults-- write personal statements.

To keep pushing further into this, getting clarity for myself as I go-- I just did what I was doing and the niche evolved over time ... I think the difference now is that I don't want to take another 15 years to figure out where I'm going with coaching. Not that it won't naturally evolve over time, but I'd like to start out a little closer to where I'll be happiest. What-I-liked was the guide that created my tutoring niche. Writing this response has been really helpful, because as I develop my niche, I think a guiding question I can ask myself is, "Do I love that?" I could keep tutoring forever, I have a great niche and I'm awesome at it, but I don't love helping people learn school stuff anymore. I don't love helping kids deal with the school system. I don't love the tons of homework. What I've always loved is just people, kids, in the process of learning and stretching themselves as human beings; the school work was just the background, the format for the transformative process. What I love is self-transformation itself, the process of it, the methods for it; using the body, the heart, the parts of oneself, the systems in which we find ourselves-- to change over and over and over. I'm obsessed with the process of transformation, endlessly curious, zealous, obsessed!

So maybe I should go even further than asking myself, "Do I love this?" to "Am I obsessed about this? Am I on fire about this?" Like when Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet said that if you can live without writing, then ... perhaps it's not the right path. Maybe the way for me to find my niche is to do the thing I absolutely have to do, the thing that I can't live without doing.

The think I can't live without is IFS (Internal Family Systems) parts and systems work. So although when people see the name they may think-- "If Coaching? Ifs coaching? No Ifs, ands or Buts? Or what?" -- it doesn't matter. It's the thing I have to do-- I can't live without doing it. So, that's what I'm going to do!

Thanks again Leif, and everyone, for this discussion, it's really helping me hone my ideas about this! -Melissa

[Leif Hansen]

I like the idea of having the question of "what could I (currently at least) not live without doing" in mind...will play with that today.

Also, I really relate to your "I think the difference now is that I don't want to take another 15 years to figure out where I'm going with coaching. Not that it won't naturally evolve over time, but I'd like to start out a little closer to where I'll be happiest." That's where I'm at as well. Its either wisdom...or impatience ;)
Thanks Melissa,
Leif