To Niche or Not to Niche: The Pitfalls of Over-Specialization

0:13Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz and no guest today. I'm going to do a solo show, so it's just me. Well, I guess it's just me and you, right? All right, so here's what I'm going to talk about. The evolution of niche marketing, or is it niche? I don't know. I mean, it depends on who you're talking to, right? So you've probably heard this countless times. The riches are in the niches. So I think this is rung true. This idea is rung true, I don't know, probably like a decade or so. And I think a lot of businesses have found success narrowing their focus to a specific industry.

0:53And I think there are a lot of pros to this. I think some of the pros are undeniable. I mean, if you imagine if you're a marketing agency and you have developed Google ad campaigns for dentists in Cleveland, I'm pretty sure those same campaigns and keywords and ads even will be successful in, I don't know, Detroit. Right. And so there's a lot of efficiencies, frankly, in this model. And ironic thing is you can, it's a lot cheaper for you once you get all these efficiencies down. You've got content, you've got campaigns, you've got emails, all working in various markets. You don't have to write them over and over again.

1:32So it's a lot cheaper for you to provide that service. And the flip side of that is typically people will pay more because, well, my industry, you You specialize in working with my industry. So there's a belief, at least, that you can provide more value for doing that. So, I mean, the pros are obvious, I think, for a lot of people that have gone down that road. But I believe that there are some negatives that are evolving that I think present actually a great opportunity. I mean, if you are niche down in that industry or you're thinking about trying to go after a specific industry, I think the market's flooded.

2:08I think that you might have some real competitive challenges. But personally, just as a side note, probably, this is probably a topic for another day, but I'll cram it in here. I've always found that the idea of narrowing down to a single industry was a tad limiting and maybe even potentially boring, at least for me. Again, this is maybe my personal opinion. But to me, it's never really been about an industry, but about an ideal client. So I've always enjoyed a focus on client behavior, their problems, the way they invest in solving those problems. To me, that is a greater driver of fit. So you can actually have a narrow focus.

2:48It doesn't have to necessarily be on an industry. It can be on who you like to serve, a type of client you like to serve. I mean, we lead with strategy before tactics. You've certainly heard me say that before. And frankly, that is actually limiting by itself because there are a lot of people that just want tactics. They just want this thing they heard about this week from somebody. So there are lots of ways to think about narrowing. It doesn't just have to be on a niche. But let me just say this idea about the niche landscape. I think it's really changing. Service providers flooded niches. I think competition intensified.

3:22I mean, if you go looking right now, if you're thinking to yourself, I'm an SEO firm, and I'm going to specialize in working with HVAC contractors, for example. I hate to tell you, but there are not just one, there are many, many SEO firms that are really trying to tackle that industry. And in a lot of cases, they've really mastered it. I mean, there are SEO agencies that can get an AAC firm in most cities on page one. Now, I would suggest there's some other limiting factors. I would suggest that in many cases, it's very expensive. but what I think a lot of people kind of fell prey to in a way was the easy button.

4:01I think another example I used SEO but website designers I mean they're almost every industry has some sort of template driven website builder that can push your site live in 48 hours for$199 a month. So really as a marketing agency particularly I mean how do you compete with that? Here are the drawbacks, of course, that I think people are starting to realize, and in a way, bear with me, what presents, I think, the opportunity. There are horror stories that certainly maybe you've heard, I've heard, maybe if you're a business owner, maybe you've experienced. A lot of these niche providers took advantage of the efficiencies, if you will, of serving one market.

4:41And now all the content that they're producing is just duplicate. The campaigns are identical. There's, in many cases, a lack of ownership over the content or even the strategies. I can't tell you how many times we've had people come to us and say, I'm not getting any results for my current provider, but I'm locked into this contract or I'm locked into their proprietary tools. And they're telling me that if I went out, I lose everything. My website, my content, my campaigns, all gone. I don't even own any of those. And I understand how people got into this situation. I mean, It was cheap. It was the easy button.

5:16They promised the moon. A lot of business owners don't really want to pay attention to marketing. So it was very easy to abdicate, if you will, of their marketing. But I think I'm finally getting to the point. Six minutes in, herein lies the opportunity, I think, that as a marketer, as a consultant, as an agency, as a fractional CMO, as a fractional marketing department, as a fractional marketing director, whatever terminology or positioning you want to use, I think businesses are starting to slowly grasp that marketing is not just a bunch of tactics. And so the opportunity is to become the orchestrator.

5:59I mean, competing on tactics alone is a race to the bottom price-wise. And so I think you're kind of dooming your business as a consultant if you're just providing tactics. I'm not saying those tactics aren't needed and that there aren't people that won't pay for them. but it's a race to the bottom price-wise. So if you're the orchestrator, if you're the strategic provider, if you're the person that is actually building the plan, then you can use all of those providers. I think businesses need someone who can weave together the tactical strengths. So if you want to focus on a very specific industry, focus as that industry's fractional CMO, then take advantage of the fact that there are great content producers and website producers and SEOs folks and paid ad campaign folks that specialize in that industry.

6:49Use them. Use the fact that they have built a robust platform that you can actually use very cheaply, but then you can pass on your strategy and be the orchestrator for that industry. And that's, again, because so many people have been burned, I think that they are looking for that trusted advisor who can actually make sense of the various parts, the fact that everybody's selling a piece of the pie. So somebody who can come in and say, look, I'm going to run this for you. I'm going to actually direct the people in your organization. Be your niche's fractional CMO or marketing director. I mean, start with strategic vision.

7:29Assemble the dream team, right, of experts that are out there. And just embrace the pool of skilled tacticians. Guide them. Leverage your skills for maximum. That's, I think, the future. I think that's the opportunity. In fact, it might be the only thing left. I mean, AI is making the tactics even cheaper, right? So I think being the person that is pulling the strings, whatever metaphors we want to use, is really the opportunity. So the riches may indeed be in the niches, but I think it's more about driving the niche strategy than ever before. So my recommendation, dive deep to the fractional niche marketing.

8:09Become the trusted orchestrator. Discover one of the most profitable ways to position your business against the price-driven tactics providers. So I'm curious your thoughts on niche marketing. I'd love to hear from you, as I always do. But I also want to remind you, in case you forgot, didn't know, first-time listener, that for the last decade or so, I've actually been training marketing agencies on this idea of fractional CMO, of being a strategist. We license our methodology and our system for creating strategy first, which we've done now thousands of times. We've just, it is fall of 2023 when I'm recording this.

8:48We've run about 60 agencies through our licensing program just this year alone. I think more and more people are waking up to this idea that they have to have a differentiator to compete today. And certainly tactics is a tough way to compete. So if you want to know more about our fractional CMO system that we will gladly license to you, just check out dtm.world slash CMO. So it's just dtm.world slash CMO. And you can find lots of amazing information about our system and how you might acquire this approach to drive your business, to scale your business. I mean, we certainly license our system, but we've also been training agencies so long that we also teach on lead generation, lead conversion, fulfillment, bringing in account managers.

9:39We have a network of over 100 agencies that collaborate actively. So tons and tons to really either get you started or to really kind of reposition your business. I would say about a third of the people that join us are just starting a business. I see this as the fast track to really get going. And probably the rest of folks that join us are often either web designers or somebody that has really realized that selling tactics is tough and they need to sell strategy. And then other businesses that are consultants, they've just been kind of doing it all, making it up with every new client that see this as really the fast track to significantly improve their billings as well as their profits.

10:19So at any rate, thanks for listening. Take care. We love those reviews. Hopefully we'll see you one of these days out there on the road.