Moving from a Do Everything to a Niche Business Model

Everything changes when you switch to a niche business model.

I’ve heard this time and time again, but recently I’ve had the opportunity to experience it for myself. My only regret is that it should have happened sooner.

Making the Case for a Niche Business Model

Matt About Business has always had a stable group of clientele ranging from Fortune 500 clients to 1-person solopreneurs.  I found most of my clients through referrals and among my group of friends and family.

To grow however, I needed to figure out how to add additional clients in a more organic way – I wanted folks to find me online and contact me about their projects.

The problem was, I’m one of those people who can do just about anything online including:

• Designing and building a regular, e-commerce or membership website or blog;
• Creating online content that drives traffic via SEO, e-mail marketing and more;
• Using social media to grow an audience;
• Authoring information products such as e-books and courses;
• Learning, configuring and using online software and tools; and
• Coding back-end systems and databases.

Basically, if you need to figure out how to get something done online, I can do it.

That’s great from a personal standpoint, however, when it came to selling my services to businesses, this wide array of skills got in the way.

The truth of the matter is: when you offer everything, people will not be clear on what you offer.

Think of it this way: I am a printer-fax-scanner in a world where most folks only want a printer or a fax or a scanner.

It Was Time to Focus

Thanks to my skills in content marketing and social media, plenty of people have found me and I have a large community of followers, likes, e-mail subscribers, etc.

The area where I fell short was was in the wide-range of services that I offered. By offering to help businesses get anything done online, I failed to appeal to those businesses that needed a specific thing done.

It was time to focus.

Making the Switch to a Niche Business Model

Recently, I began working with a business development consultant, my friend Nicole Fende (I highly recommend Nicole – she’s been trying to get me focused for over a year and since I started working with her late last year, things have really started to move!).

Nicole’s first order of business was to focus on defining my service offerings. After working thorough her questionnaires and analyses, I’ve decided to focus on online content marketing and creation, something that I love doing and that is highly in demand.

From that decision, everything began to flow:

• Nicole and I are hard at work defining my specific service offerings, a fascinating process that has made me take a deep look at what I do, how I do it and who needs what I do.
• Since launching the blog over at my new site, I’ve seen a marked increase in the number of contacts from interested businesses.
• I am currently writing a book on content marketing, “1000+ Online Content Ideas for Your Business”.

Now people know exactly what I do and are contacting me to do it.

It’s still early in this process, but I have high hopes that Matt About Business is moving in the right direction.

Nicole, I admit it – you told me so. 😉

How About You?

Have you found that moving to a niche business model has helped your business grow?

I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below!

Weekly Link Roundup

Each time I write a post, I collect the 10 best reads from around the web and share them with you here.

These posts focus on web-based solutions, online resources and up-to-date news for small businesses.

Enjoy!

This Is Why Your Kickstarter Project Is Late: Wow – one of the unexpected, but potentially huge, downsides of crowdfunding!

How Social Media Put a Tiny Yarn Shop on the Map: An inspiring social media success story!

Taking Control of Your Online Reputation Part I: Internal Steps: Reputation management is key these days – you’ll find some actionable tips in this post.

Coming Soon to Yahoo: Ads From Google: Interesting developments in pay-per-click search marketing…

Responsive web design: Restaurants’ No. 1 competitive advantage: Own a restaurant and want to draw people in via mobile devices? Here’s the #1 step you can take.

Is Quora worth a business’ time?: Here are some thoughts on whether one of my favorite little “time sucks”, Quora, is worth your time.

9 Consumer Social Media Trends That Could Impact Marketers: Real-world numbers that tell an interesting story…

B2B Social Media requires a team effort between marketing and sales: Useful tips for making your B2B social media efforts more effective.

Debunking 5 Myths of PPC Advertising:Very insightful article on PPC “reality”.

Small business takes on big data: Using big data, the hot trend for enterprise-sized marketers, can be remarkably useful to small-sized marketers as well (and more accessible than you thought).