This is a tricky question because there’s no single best way to approach this.
But if you feel like:
a) you’re just not into the niche you’re serving or
b) it’s just not the most compelling option for you
…it’s worth considering a change.
Because here’s the thing… your niche isn’t your personality. It’s not your identity. It’s not your life sentence.
Your niche is a strategic business decision.
It’s a thing outside of you. One you can replace any time you want.
The way I see it, you can be a mercenary or a missionary (or better yet, follow your curiosity).
If you’re taking the missionary approach, you pick a niche because it makes money and you’re good at it—even if you’re not really in love with that particular vertical.
If you’re taking the missionary approach, it means you’re in it for the love of the game. And while this approach is ideal, it only works if it’s also profitable.
So how do you change your niche one way or another?
Your mileage may vary, but I can tell you what I did personally in case a similar path makes sense for you.
1. Keep your current niche going
Don’t throw away all your clients. These folks will help fund your new venture.
You still market this business, but you do it in different ways.
It becomes more focused on direct channels like email newsletters, webinars, relationship-driven tactics, and Golden Goose.
It’s under the radar but still high-leverage business development.
You become quieter on social media to avoid confusing your new ideal customer. More on that in #3 below.
You slowly phase out of marketing this business and begin talking about your new thing more often.
By the way, it’s super hard to market two niches, so try to focus on promoting one niche at a time to avoid confusing the market and overwhelming yourself.
2. Start your new thing
This is where you begin to dabble in your new thing.
You create your website, clarify your value proposition, and keep your offers fairly loose while you learn and validate what people want.
You create some content on your blog. Fire up a newsletter. Research where your audience hangs out and begin showing up there.
Ideally, you look for people with audiences and begin to build contact. It’s a long game, but if your content and ideas are strong, they might be willing to let you share your expertise with their audience.
Slowly, you’ll build momentum with your marketing. When I started Everspaces (coworking consulting business) I wrote daily for several months.
Doing this forces you to think deeply about your ideas and contextualize them deeply for your target market. It’s proof you have value to offer.
3. Have a general, catch-all website (optional)
You don’t need to do this, but it’s worked so well for me as a background asset that I’d be remiss not to tell you.
My general consulting website is KVNW.com (my old agency website) and it works fine to build trust with leads who are not in any particular niche.
I don’t market it. I don’t talk about it. I only show it to prospects outside of my niche who come along via word of mouth.
You might put this under your own name since it would describe you as a marketer and how you help companies.
It doesn’t even need to look like a business website. It can be more like your horizontal identity (marketer) and calling card.
I picked a brand name (KVNW) because I already had a business with it and it just made sense.
But do what works for you. Again, this is optional.
4. Commit to the new thing
Eventually, you need to cut ties with the old thing. Doing too many things is a recipe for failure if you’re trying to build something new.
By this point, you ideally have some clients and are building credibility in the new niche.
By going all-in, you get momentum and traction much faster.
At least, in theory.
None of this is certain
You could do it this way. It worked for me because:
a) niching takes time, and
b) I didn’t want to go out of business in the process.
If you can go all-in earlier, all the better.
But just know that even with the best positioning efforts it still takes time to build affinity, trust, and authority in the space.
The key thing here is keeping the old thing running long enough to stay in business so you can keep slowly pivoting your business.
It’s one thing to pick a niche, it’s another to be seen as credible in it. That’s why I generally recommend taking this overlap approach to some people.
It’s the survivalist approach. You wouldn’t give up eating berries in the wild if you were still learning how to fish, right?
This is what worked for me, so take what you like and run it based on your own constraints.
Until next time,
—kevin
P.S. Here’s what’s been happening in the membership this week:
- The benefits of done-for-you services (private Audiolog)
- Should you try to convince prospects to use your approach if they seem set on their own way? (#community)
- Jessie shared a potential lead for anyone interested in taking it (#community)
- Guest Workshop: How to Create Clean, Clear, and Convincing Website Copy and Messaging with Billy Broas
- Feedback requests for announcing a new membership and a revamped offering (#group-coaching)
- Should you use cold outreach/appointment setters to attract clients? (1:1 + Group Call)
- How to convert free event attendees into paid members (1:1 + Group Call)
- How to handle client pressure for large and immediate results (Group Call)
- How to price deliverables that don’t match your desired core offering (1:1)
- What to do when you’re considering a new niche (#community)
- The benefits of sharing your backstory in your marketing (Group Call)
- How to de-risk performance-based compensation for consulting (Group Call)
- What to do if you need to change your compensation structure (Group Call)
- How to use free webinars as lead gen for consulting + training business (Group Call)
- Welcome to the group, Ryanne!
Join us to explore topics like these, get your questions answered, unlock new resources (see the library here), and be among peers of other driven marketers trying to grow their business around their expertise—not just their hands: https://howtoselladvice.com/membership