For years, I've taught the power of having an architecture business niche … but I had one major problem (which I’ll come to in a moment).
First, what is a niche?
Having a niche simply means separating your marketing information into focused sub-markets and having a separate marketing approach for each one.
This is also known as target marketing. Very important!
Let’s say that you are an architect with a niche in historic homes.
You are searching for help implementing a marketing system that gets appointments, so you look in the paper for help.
Which advertisement would best get your attention?
- I help business owners get clients (too broad – easy to ignore)
- I help professionals get clients (better, as you identify as a professional)
- I help architects get high paying clients (now you are getting more specific)
- I help local architects get high paying clients (a little better as you continue to drill down)
- I help architects specializing in historic homes get high paying clients (this is an ad you cannot ignore)
The attention increases as we go down the list. Each title creates a stronger itch that the reader needs scratched. After seeing these ads, you would consider #5 to be the best person to help you, right? The reason this works so well is because it's highly specific and calls the target audience out by name.
I'll repeat this because it's so important.
You cannot always target your ideal client by name in advertising (although sometimes you can), but the more specific you are to the audience (through a niche) and what they want, the greater your chance of getting the attention of your target market.
Discovering my niche
Back to my ‘one major problem’.
As a marketing expert, I would preach niche to my clients, but I had not yet discovered my own specific business niche. No one mentioned it, but I was getting a little self-conscious of it.
It turned out I was right!
Now, most of my business comes from architects. Occasionally, I do an odd job for someone else, but that’s pretty much a good representation of my clients.
Life is simpler, delivery of services is easier and demand is higher – all because I discovered my niche.
Very few people niche their offerings or messages because they fear that it will cause them to lose business. By picking a niche, you'll be at an immediate advantage.
Consider this. One of my former clients, a private investigator, made the decision to only target women looking for a specific service (cheating spouses). Due to creating a niche, she became known as an expert in this service and was able to quickly triple her fees and increase inquiries. It works!
Marketing your architecture business niche
Apply this architecture business niche principle in your marketing and let me know how well it works for you.
For more information, visit our post on The Diamond Strategy to learn more about architecture business niche and positioning.