I admit it, I’m a nicheaholic. I love it when businesses focus on what they’re really good at. Both their customers and the business benefit.
One of the challenges that I see in developing a message about your niche is being able to define it. Here’s a possible new term for you, persona. A well developed will help you define your niche and make it easier for clients to find you.
A persona is who your best customer is.
I want you to take out a pen and paper. Write down what your best customer looks like. When you’re having a conversation with them what are the worries that they have. Write down how you help them solve those worries.
A persona is a complete picture of who your best customers are. For me, my best customers are Registered Investment Advisors who do over $2,000,000 in revenue. The owners are over fifty years old and have owned and run their companies for twenty years or more. This is not a persona, it’s only a description.
The persona would add what kind of problems do they face? What would make their life better? The answer to those questions helps you fill out who your best customer is and narrows who you really should be working with. In my case they want to significantly grow their firm, have a serious need to provide service to their clients and want to become experts as business owners.
It’s all about putting together a story.
I think that developing a persona you work with helps if you write a story about these people. The story doesn’t have to be very long, but it does need descriptions. My story might start about understanding what it takes to get a firm started and become successful. What are the struggles that my best customers went through in establishing their firm?
If I can prove to you that I understand your issues, you’re likely to build trust with me. Developing a story to go with our personas is a tool to help me build trust more quickly with a group of people who don’t give trust easily.
Start marketing to the personas you develop.
Once you develop the right personas for you to work with start marketing to them. This means develop offers that will delight the group of people you’ve decided are your best customers. This should not be an incredibly difficult process. You’ve already done a complete job of writing a story of who your best customer is complete with problems and dreams they have. All you need to do is put together products and services that fill those needs.
Design and deliver products and services for your personas.
Designing products and services is a nice start. For my customers it’s more important that I have delivery systems that allow those I work with to consistently receive solutions that help them solve problems or achieve dreams they have. The better I do this, the more loyal and valuable my customers see me.
If you haven’t tried developing personas I want you to give it a try. It might help you figure out what niche you should serve. For me understanding and focusing on a niche is what it’s all about. What about you?
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