If you saw my last blog ‘Why handbags were our biggest mistake’, you’ll know why we feel so strongly about the importance of being clear on your agency’s niche.

What is your niche?

If you can answer these 3 questions, you’ll probably have just defined your niche:

1. What do you do?
2. Who do you do it for?
3. How do you do it?

A niche doesn’t have to be an industry. It could be a particular service that you deliver or it could be a specific demographic that you choose to work with. It might even be how you do the work that you do.

The more specific you can be when defining your niche the better.

How to choose your niche

It can be difficult to know where to start with when choosing a niche so here are a few questions to ask yourself to get started:

• Which of your existing clients do you work well with? What is it about them that you like?

• Is there a particular client that you have delivered great results for? How have you been able to do that?

• Is there a particular client type that you have ready access to. For example, because of your location or because of your existing network?

• What do you consider your key strengths are as an agency? And which problems can you solve for your clients?

• Is the niche you are considering is a profitable one and is it likely to be profitable in the long-term?

• How does the niche you are considering align with your overall company purpose? For example, if you have a passion for being an ethical company then it’s important your niche is aligned with this.

It’s worth knowing – and I’ll say it here in case you’ve not heard it before – just because you have decided to focus on a particular niche and advertise that fact, it doesn’t mean that behind the scenes you don’t do other stuff. You just don’t need to talk about it.

You can also have more than one niche or even change your mind down the line. The decision to niche is important but it doesn’t have to be permanent. Like everything else, it can and will evolve.

The trouble with not being clear on who you work with and what you do for them is that it’s easy to be distracted by every opportunity that turns up. Ultimately you waste time and money on work that doesn’t lead anywhere.

The most successful agencies we work with are those who are clear on what they do and who they do it for. The ones trying to be everything to everyone always struggle.

Want to explore the idea a little more?

If you are still unsure about niching and want to explore the idea some more, then sign up to our newsletter and look out for our upcoming blogs in this series about vision and purpose where we’ll be looking more at how knowing your niche, and your purpose, can make your whole business more successful.