Today’s episode of the podcast is one of our Q&A episodes, and I have a brilliant question from Nicole, who’s asking for help on what to do with her existing audience when she wants to pivot and refine her niche.
Here for the links referenced in the show notes?
Nail Your Niche free training: tashcorbin.com/niche
Ask a Question: tashcorbin.com/question
If you’re doing any adjustments to your niche or messaging, this is going to be a great episode for you to read or listen along to.
Let’s dive in!
This brilliant question comes from the fabulous Nicole Moorey, and you can find out more about Nicole at nicolemoorey.com.
Nicole asks:
“Hi Tash, I’m excited to be narrowing my niche to wellness entrepreneurs, etc. as per your recommendations. This new niche represents only a small portion of my existing vaguely niched email community. How do you recommend I pivot my messaging and marketing in a way that gently and kindly lets my existing community realise I’m pursuing a new direction – whilst also helping my new niche? Some of them have been loyal friends and followers for a few years, so I want to be sure to make this change in the best way possible for everyone.”
First and foremost, I want to say to Nicole that that is so beautiful.
I think for most women entrepreneurs, our desire not to exclude anyone and our struggles with niching can sometimes come back to our feelings and experiences on the playground where we didn’t get picked for something or we were excluded.
We really don’t want to create that feeling in someone else.
I think it’s such a beautiful thing that you are thinking of your audience at this time, and you’re wanting to bring them along on the journey with you if it’s the right fit, or let them go gently if it’s not the right fit for them once you refine your niche.
I’ve got some ideas for you, Nicole, on how you can really make this transition as easy and gentle for your audience as possible, bringing along the right people and gently letting go of the people who may not be a fit anymore.
Before I jump into my advice and tips, I want to quickly clarify for anyone who hasn’t heard my training about niching before, your niche is the specific group of people you focus on when you are marketing your business.
Your niche is not everyone you could help, your niche is everyone you want to help. Your niche is not even everyone you could market to, your niche is the specific group of people you focus on when you are marketing your products and services – when you are marketing in your business.
With that in mind, I’ve got five tips for you, Nicole, on how you can start to refine that niche and bring your audience with you.
1. You don’t need to tell people what your niche is
Those niche decisions that you make are behind the scenes decisions in your business.
You don’t ever have to say to your audience, “I’m no longer working with everyone else, I’m only working with wellness entrepreneurs.”
But as your business moves forward and you express examples and share content that’s specifically tailored for wellness entrepreneurs, then that’s going to deeply resonate with those wellness entrepreneurs. For some people, they may realise that that doesn’t resonate for them, but for others, it may still be helpful.
Let’s say you’ve got someone who has a photography business, and they’ve been on your list for years and they absolutely love and adore who you are and the work that you do. Just because your content is now targeted towards wellness entrepreneurs, doesn’t mean that that person doesn’t eventually want to work with you. It’s totally up to you about whether you choose to work with that person or not.
It’s not about who you serve, it’s about who you focus on with your marketing activities.
You never need to come out of the closet and say that you’re specifically working with a certain niche now, but because you incorporate those niching decisions into the way that you message and the way that you market, you are naturally going to start attracting more wellness entrepreneurs into your work.
2. You don’t ever have to reject anyone
Your messaging content and offers will simply move the right people closer and not move the wrong people any closer.
You don’t need to ever reject anyone when you decide to refine your niche.
All you’re going to do is know that you have a content ecosystem that is consistently moving people more and more towards the centre and getting warmer and warmer in your audience. The wellness entrepreneurs in your audience are going to move faster than the non-wellness entrepreneurs because your content isn’t designed to move them any closer.
Without ever having to reject anyone, through your messaging, content and offers, you will naturally magnetise those people who fit within your niche, and you’ll be less likely to magnetise those people who don’t.
You don’t ever have to reject anyone.
3. Don’t make the decision for them
While someone might not fit that rigid niching once you refine your niche (because I do recommend that you make that niching very tight, specific and clear), that doesn’t mean that they decide that they can never get any value out of being on your mailing list, following you or even one day working with you.
I’ve got a great example of this to share with you. I specialise in helping women entrepreneurs who are wanting to start and scale their online business.
I do teach leveraging and launching in my Accelerator, and I teach startup in the Take Off program.
Recently I had a lady reach out to me who’s been following me for two years and has a product-based business – she doesn’t sell services.
I specifically share content and have courses that help people with that one-to-one service-based type business, and going into one-to-many service type business – selling digital products but not physical products.
But I had this lady reach out to me because she’s got to the point in her business where she really wants to start scaling her marketing. Even though she sells high-end products, she reached out to me and asked if she could buy a VIP session with me – despite the fact that she knew I usually work with service-based businesses – so that I could have a look at her online messaging, marketing and channels, and to see if there’s any advice that I have.
I had a look at her website, I had a look at what she was doing, and I told her that we should book in a VIP half day so that I could go through and give her product-based business all the help that I could.
When she reached out, I could have made the decision to say yes or say no.
If I had looked at her website and thought that I couldn’t get her the return on investment because it wasn’t where I specialised, I could have referred her on to someone else.
But based on what I saw of her business, I said yes and she’s booked in to do a VIP day with me in a few weeks time, and we get to work together even though she doesn’t specifically fit my niche.
You don’t have to make the decision for people.
They get to make the decision, you just want to empower them with all of the information that they need to make that decision.
If someone doesn’t specifically fit your niche and they decide they still want to work with you in some way, or they want to pay you for your services, or they still want to be on your mailing list because they’re getting little dribs and drabs of great information here and there – that’s totally their decision.
I know that I have a lot of people on my mailing list and who listen to my podcast every single week who do not fit my niche. They made the decision that it was worth their time, energy and sometimes money to invest in learning from me because they got so much value out of it, even though maybe they don’t necessarily fit my specific niche.
That’s their decision.
That’s not my decision to make for them.
4. Make sure you’re looking at this in a positive way
Shift your mindset when you refine your niche to view everyone as a winner.
You could decide to just keep staying un-niched for the next two years and continue going round and round in circles and not really resonating with anyone with your messaging. But you’ve made a decision that by getting specific, you are going to be able to sell more effectively and deliver more effectively for your clients.
I just wanted to do one tip in here to check-in and make sure you’re viewing this as a positive thing, not only for you but also for your audience.
At the end of the day, your decision to refine your niche is actually a decision to accelerate the growth of your business, but also be able to serve the people you do want to work with, much more deeply and much more effectively.
Because of that, it means that really at the end of the day, everyone is a winner.
If they are within your new refined niche, they’re going to get much deeper, much more specific and much clearer support from you, as well as much higher quality content.
If they aren’t in your niche, they get to make the decision of whether they stay for the content that you are delivering, or if they should unsubscribe and unfollow to save themselves some headspace.
It doesn’t need to be a harsh decision, it doesn’t need to be a big piece of rejection for people, it doesn’t need to be a hair tossing storm on their way out, it can actually be a really beautiful thing and a positive move.
I want you to view this positively because I see it as a very positive move for you to refine your niche for your business.
5. Remember the gold nugget analogy
Nicole, I know you’ve been to my niche training and know what I’m talking about when I say remember your golden nuggets.
I’ve got a resource for you below so you can go and watch it, but in summary, what I mean by gold nuggets is think about yourself when you’re niching as really focusing on a very specific tunnel.
You’re tunnelling really, really tightly with the smallest tunnel you can choose because that means you’re going to move through that tunnel faster.
What happens when you’re tunnelling and you’ve got a very specific niche, is that if you have someone who doesn’t fit that niche ask to work with you (like my beautiful product based lady), that is like having a gold nugget fall out of the ceiling of your tunnel.
You’re tunnelling through with this very specific niche, and a gold nugget falls from the ceiling and into your lap when someone who’s not in the tunnel comes to you.
At that point in time, you get to decide: Am I going to keep this gold nugget? Am I going to say yes to this client and work with them? Or am I going to hand this golden nugget over to someone else?
Sometimes I have people who come to me who don’t fit my niche and they ask me to help them, and I tell them that I don’t think that I’m the best person for the job and I point them in the right direction of someone who could help them much better. I hand that golden nugget over to someone else and I keep tunnelling with my very specific niche.
If that tunnelling analogy has piqued your interest, I have a great free resource for you.
I’d love for you to check out my Nail Your Niche training.
In this training, I:
- Go into that analogy a little deeper
- Talk about what to do when those gold nuggets arrive
- Share how to tell if someone is a gold nugget
- Go through a very thorough structured niching process, to help you make the five most important decisions that you need to make about your niche if you are marketing your business online
You can find that beautiful Nail Your Niche training here: tashcorbin.com/niche
Nicole, thank you so much for your question, good job on your intentions to refine your niche and thank you to everyone for reading along. I hope you found this episode really helpful as well.
If you’d like to submit a question for these Q&A podcast episodes, simply go to tashcorbin.com/question, pop all your details and your question in there and I will answer it on the podcast in coming episodes.
Please come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, share your aha moments, any questions that you have about this episode of the podcast and if you now think that you may need to refine your niche! Let me know you’ve been reading podcast episode 231 and we can talk about this further over there.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
