I’m so excited to be posting the very first installment of my new blog series - Answering Your Questions. If you have a question, please do feel free to e-mail it to me. I’ll answer it right here on the blog.

For this first installment, we are addressing a question about niching.

Sylvia Asks:
“My name is Sylvia Hill, and I am The Queen of Las Vegas at http://www.sylviaslasvegassecrets.com     I’m having some trouble focusing on a specific interest group or niche for my business.  Since Las Vegas is a huge subject to cover, am not sure what to present myself as and who to present to.”

Ahhhh the niche question - this remains one of the more challenging things for us to choose as we strive toward building a thriving business. Some people feel very resistant to choosing a niche because it feels like you might be excluding people - or putting up a barrier that says “Nope, sorry, I can’t help you” when really, you feel like you can help anyone.

And there is truth to that. Truly - any business CAN help anyone. But, as Sylvia has eluded to, there comes a time when you realize that trying to serve everyone is quite difficult. Trying to reach and connect with everyone makes your marketing more difficult, and really, as a human, you don’t have time or mental and emotional capacity to serve absolutely everyone.

This is where niche comes in.  A niche makes your marketing efforts easier because you can create targeted advertising, and you can use language in your ads that really helps connect you to the people you want to serve.

And niche is also good for helping you create a community-like feeling in your business. People really understand that they belong in your business because they can see that other people just like themselves are hanging out within the walls of your business.

Now, let’s talk about Sylvia’s specific question - how to choose a niche. I agree - in her business, Las Vegas has enormous potential as far as choosing a niche is concerned.

The first place to look is in you (you knew I was going to say that didn’t you?? ). Who is it that you absolutely LOVE to work with? Who are the people that just make your heart sing when you work with them? And what is it that you love helping people with? Sure, there’s a lot you can do in Vegas - but what is it that you just love to do for clients?

Next, look at your current client-base. Who are the majority of the people that are already attracted to your work? Can you see commonalities between your clients?

These questions will help get you started with the honing process. Once you’ve narrowed it down a bit, and have begun working with the people you love to serve, chances are good your niche will continue to evlove. My niche still evolves in my business to this day… I’m convinced I’ll never be done evolving…

Sylvia - if you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me, or post your comments here at the blog. Also - if any of you savvy readers have anything to add - please do share!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Marketing, Networking, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.