Ep 50. Niching for Introverts: Different ways to get the right clients

I wanted to share my honest take as to why having a clear niche has been one of the best things, not only for my business, but for my clients as well…when we eventually get past the, “I can work with anyone” thing.

It’s the piece of work I spend the most time with when it comes to working with clients, because once you’ve nailed this, everything becomes so much easier.

So in this episode, I’m going to give you some ideas as to how you can niche if that’s where you’re at right now.

If you’re new here, hello and a very warm welcome to Quiet Confidence with myself, Anita Popat. I work with introverted business owners who want to update your marketing identity, so that your content sounds like the client-facing version of you and starts attracting people you love to work with.

So I guess that’s an example of how clear I am with my niche. This is the person I show up for on this podcast, and who I always think about when I sit down to write any piece of content.

I really think this specific clarity is one of the main reasons for getting consistent clients, because when you know exactly who you’re talking to, the content will flow, and your client conversations are going to feel really natural and have less of that convincing energy because they should already be sold by the time contact you.

The way you describe what you do will just land, and it’s also easy for others to refer people to you when it’s really clear who it is you help.

But I also completely understand the fear around it. When I first started out, like seven years ago now, I thought, “Oh, I’ve got over a decade of marketing experience. I can help loads of businesses, so why would I want to limit myself?” And I see that same thinking with almost every client I work with.

When we first start this piece of work and I’ll ask someone who they want to work with, nine times out of ten, the answer is some version of, ” Oh, I can work with anyone”, like female entrepreneurs, small business owners, people who want to grow online, anyone who helps with marketing really.” If I said that, it’s not as clear as the line that I said in my intro, right?

I do get why people do that because it feels like you’re being flexible, like you’re keeping your options wide open so you don’t miss anyone. But if I’m being honest, that mindset is the thing that holds a lot of people back.

And I’m just going to say this with love –  “I can work with anyone” is almost always a hiding place because committing to one specific person feels scary, right?

What if you get it wrong? What if you put yourself out there for a particular type of client and then decide you’ve gone off them? Or what if you niche into something and it doesn’t work?

Well, what I’ll say to you is, it’s fine. It’s all an experiment, and you can change. You don’t have to stay in a particular niche all the time.

 To be honest, the people who stay vague are the ones who really care about getting it right or helping a lot of people, which as introverts is basically all of us, right?

As you work with more and more people and more and more clients, you’ll get to know the kind of people you love working with and the ones that you don’t. That pattern is usually where your niche is hiding.

Also, there are different ways to niche. Before I get into them I just want to say that just because you’ve niched down, it doesn’t mean you can’t work with other people outside it. It just means your marketing is really focused and it’s more likely to have an impact because you’re going deeper into your content.

Whereas when you try and resonate with a lot of people, you can only keep it surface level because you can’t really dig into things that might be coming up in their day-to-day.

There are actually a few different ways that you can niche down, and once you see them laid out, it might help you figure out where you fit.

• Some people niche by who they work with.
  • That’s personality or identity-based. So mine’s a good example of that (introverted business owners). It’s not an industry, it’s a type of person.
• You could also niche by situation.
  • So you could call out first-time managers, women returning to work after a career break, business owners who’ve just hit their first 100K and don’t know what to do next. See how specific they are?
• Some people niche by how they do a particular thing.
  • That could be someone like a Facebook ad specialist, a PR person, someone who only builds websites in Squarespace, a copywriter who only works on launch emails. So the method is the niche.
•  You can also niche by outcome
  • I’ll come onto that in a sec.

The point I want to make is that there’s no one right way to do it, but you do need to pick something because without it, your content’s trying to speak to everyone, and then ends up connecting to no one.

The reason I’m a big fan of niching is that when you try and stay open and speak to everyone, you can’t really go deep enough to paint a picture of the thoughts, fears, and desires of your sweet spot. That’s when your content starts to feel a bit wishy-washy and lands with no one, because it’s really hard to create that emotional connection when you’re speaking to everyone at the same time.

This is especially true if you’re offering something that’s hard to pin down. So if you work in a niche that’s really vague – mindset and spiritual coaches tend to fall into this category – or you might be selling things like confidence or clarity or alignment.

These are outcomes that genuinely matter to your clients, but they’re also the hardest to sell because people can’t picture themselves on the other side. This is why I say niching by outcome alone can be tricky because the same word e.g. “clarity” in two different worlds means two different things. For me, clarity in marketing would be knowing your unique point of view, your values, your mission, knowing who you’re talking to.

Whereas clarity in accounting would be knowing your numbers and things like that. So if you’re going to lead with an outcome, you need to ground it in a context first, otherwise it’s going nowhere.

People buy when they can see themselves in your content. So if a lot of your content is full of words like “confidence” and “clarity” and “showing up authentically”, even if that’s what you genuinely do and your clients would describe their results in those words, it might be working against you because the person reading it can’t quite visualize what that looks like in the life that they’re living at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re lovely words, my clients use them as well, but they’re not really specific enough to make someone stop and think, “Ah, that’s me. That’s exactly what I’m dealing with.”

So how can we get more specific?

This is again, is another place we spend a lot of time within Silent Storm to make sure we get it right.

1. Choose a context.

This is the bit that people skip, and it’s so important. Instead of trying to sell the whole transformation, just pick a specific area of life where that transformation shows up most clearly. That gives people somewhere to place themselves. So for example, instead of saying something like, “I help women build confidence in business,” you might say something like, “I work with women who’ve just been promoted into their first leadership role and have no idea how to manage people.”

So now there’s context, a situation, and recognition. Someone can read that and think, “Oh, that’s me,” or, “Oh, I know someone like that.”

Can you see without that context, it’s really hard for them to picture your outcome, but with it, they can see exactly that it’s for them.

 2. Find one external thing that leads to your promise.

Don’t try and sell the whole transformation in one piece of content because it’s probably layered and complex, and honestly, it’s going to be a bit overwhelming. So instead of leading with the full picture, find one visible thing that represents the shift most clearly. The bit people can actually picture themselves in. So instead of saying, “I help first-time managers build confidence and leadership presence,” you might say something like, “I help first-time managers learn how to have conversations they’ve been avoiding.”

See how we’ve gone even more micro? “Difficult conversations” is something specific they can picture themselves having.

Anyone who’s just been promoted and already dreading their first review with someone who’s not performing knows exactly what that is. The confidence piece is still there. It’s just implied. You don’t have to say it, but what you’re doing is creating what I like to call mind movies so that they can really picture themselves in that situation. That movie has so much more impact than just saying, “I’m going to give you confidence”.

3. Once you start thinking like this, you can go through their day and start thinking of so many different scenarios, and all of those become different types of messaging that you can test to see which ones your audience are reacting to.

Remember, you’re not narrowing down what you do, you’re just painting a mind movie of something that’s already happening or might happen in their life. And that builds trust because it shows you understand their world.

I know what some of you are thinking. I don’t want to lose people. I don’t wanna turn clients away.

Let me tell you what I’ve actually seen happen over and over again with my own clients…When they get specific, the right people find them faster and become clients because these people finally recognise themselves in the content, and then they get in touch.

And yes, you might not appeal to quite as many people on paper, but the ones you do attract will come in already warm because they’ll already feel understood, so you’re not spending your energy convincing or trying to make yourself sound relevant to their situation.

 They’ll land on your profile and just know you’re the one for them. And that’s the difference between casting a massive net and hoping something sticks, (which is exhausting by the way) and being really specific and magnetic to exactly the right people.

As introverts, we’re actually really well set up for this because we think in nuance, right? We understand that the surface level outcome isn’t the real reason – it’s the fear, the private worry, and the things they’re not quite saying out loud underneath all of that.

When you build your niche around that level of specificity, that’s when your content starts feeling like it’s just been written for them, which is what we want.

So if you’re sitting with a vague niche right now and wondering why the right clients aren’t finding you consistently, I just want you to get a bit braver about who you’re talking to. You don’t have to have it perfectly figured out. You just need to go maybe one or two layers deep then you are already.

Pick a context, find the one external thing that leads to your offer, then see what happens when you create that mind movie and write to a situation happening in that one person’s instead of writing for the whole internet.

Trust me, the relief of not trying to appeal to everyone is worth it.

And as always, if this episode shifted something for you and you wanna get really clear on your niche and who you’re talking to, Silent Storm is the place to do that.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen, share, and leave a review. I genuinely appreciate it. Keep building your quiet confidence so you can make that loud impact, and I shall see you next time.

Speak soon.