The growing number of digital marketing agencies worldwide has created fierce competition in the industry, with agencies often battling for the same market.
Because of this hyper saturation in the digital marketing industry, it is now more important than ever for a digital marketing agency to pick a niche where they can focus their efforts, and remain competitive.
But for starters, what is a niche? A niche is a smaller segmented portion of the whole population. Niches usually have their own set of preferences and expectations, and for digital marketing agencies, a niche could be in the form of the healthcare or non-profit industry, or even a fitness influencer to name a few. Niches such as these each require a different form of digital marketing, ranging from the type of content to the platforms that the marketing is conducted on.
With each niche being so different from each other, let’s take a look at why selecting a niche for your digital marketing agency is so important.
Why Do You Need A Niche?
1. Providing Solutions
Focusing the efforts of your digital marketing agency towards a predefined and singular niche allows for the agency to maximize the value they give that niche.
With a singular niche to focus on, agencies are able to tailor the experience they give their clients in that niche so that it addresses the specific needs of the niche. They are able to do this by creating a unique selling point as a solution to the niche’s marketing problem.
2. Streamline Processes
Focusing on one industry or a subset of an industry to create a niche allows for agencies to streamline their internal processes by making their marketing efforts repeatable. To elaborate on this, if an agency is providing a service to the same type of client consistently, they are able to create processes and tasks that can be easily applied to each new client so that they can effectively and efficiently deliver a great service.
This is contrary to an agency that caters to many different industries and constantly needs to change strategies in order to provide solutions to multitudes of clients all seeking different results.
3. Competitive Advantage
Focusing on a niche allows for agencies to provide a service to an industry where they are able to be a market leader, or at least competitive in their offering to the niche market.
Simply put, by focusing on a niche, there will be fewer competitors battling for the specific audience’s attention and therefore the agency has a better chance of being the agency of choice available to that niche.
How To Select A Niche
Now that you know exactly why targeting a niche is a good idea for your digital marketing agency, let’s take a look at how you would select a niche:
1. Digitally Friendly
First of all, it is incredibly important to make sure that any potential niche you look at infiltrating is digitally friendly and works within the context of your agency ie. digital marketing.
2. Competitor Analysis
Once a potential niche has been identified, analyzing the competitors that are already serving that niche, or has the potential to serve that niche is important because it affects the profitability and success of your agency within that niche.
3. Highlight A Target Audience
Analyzing the potential clients that your agency will be selling to is a crucial next step in the process. Figuring out what the needs of your target audience is, and if you are able to meet these expectations is key to what makes the niche an opportunity or a complete no!
This step also draws slightly onto the competitor analysis point as you should also be searching for ways to offer something that the competitors who are present in the niche are not currently offering. To create an example of this, if an agency identifies a client who wishes to market the sale of T-shirts on Instagram, the agency could offer to create an e-commerce store for the client in addition to the digital marketing services they would be commissioned to do. Creating an offering that works as a one-stop-shop in this scenario, is an example of how an agency can look for “gaps” in the niche that they could use to create a unique selling point, and attain competitive advantage over the competitors in the niche.
4. Is The Niche Scalable?
If the niche has ticked all the boxes so far and is looking promising for your agency to make a success in, you need to evaluate if the niche and profitability of the niche is able to grow.
It is not in the best interest of your agency to target a niche that is going to keep your agency in a steady-state, and prevent it from growing into the market leader that it has the potential for.
5. Chat To An Expert
If you have made it to this step, the niche and target audience has been identified, the competitors have been evaluated, as well as the gaps and potential unique selling points. And most importantly, your agency has the potential to grow in the niche, and increase its profitability.
With all this in mind, it is a good idea to place your research and findings in front of an expert who understands the context of your agency, in order to get their expert opinion.
The value of involving other great minds in your evaluation and decision-making is that they can either give you sound advice, raise concerns that you may have overlooked, or even give you their vote of confidence.
Which all these boxes ticked, your digital marketing agency is set up for success!
Uncharted Territory
So, do you have the confidence to go where no digital marketing agency has gone before? Are you ready to capitalize on an open niche that is just waiting for a digital marketing agency like yours to come along? The time to act is now!
With COVID-19 rattling most industries around the world, digital marketing is one industry that appears to be thriving. So jump on the next opportunity and let us know about the success you have seen in your company, in our Facebook Community Group.
