# How to Pick a Profitable Niche for Your Creative Agency ## Метаданные - **Канал:** The Futur - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4 - **Дата:** 19.01.2024 - **Длительность:** 28:08 - **Просмотры:** 18,453 ## Описание Struggling to find the right niche for your creative agency? Matt Essam reveals key strategies to select a fun, profitable niche in less than 30 minutes. Discover how to maintain variety while focusing your services, overcome burnout, and stand out from the competition. This guide is essential for agency founders who want to make a real impact with their clients and enjoy the process. 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Thank you. ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4) Intro if you've ever tried to Niche your creative agency but struggled either because it didn't feel right or you just couldn't decide which Niche to focus on or exactly how to position your agency then this video is for you I'm going to show you how to pick a fun profitable Niche where you can actually have real impact with your clients in less than 30 minutes so I remember when I was running my agency I really struggled with this we were always trying to be everything to everybody we didn't really have a particular uh Target we didn't have a particular service offering we did lots of different things and it meant that for several years I really felt like we were Treading Water we were always super busy we had lots of clients but our Revenue never really seemed to increase or if it did our profit never increased at the same time and in general our team kind of felt pretty burnt out as Founders we weren't really enjoying the process everything felt quite stressful and we kept telling ourselves the longer we run this business the better it's going to get when we just have a bigger portfolio a better client base etc and that never really changed until we decided to Niche down and I remember going through the process of niching and I found it really difficult because I think intrinsically as creative we love variety right we want to try different things we want to have days that are different we don't want to create this kind of cookie cutter Factory where every project is the same and every client so I think one of the biggest barriers that I had was that I didn't want to lose that variety and I found it very difficult to decide like who I should work with because I liked lots of different clients now I'm not going to use this video to convince you to Niche down because there's lots of videos out there about the pros and the cons of niching this is more for you if you kind of know that you should Niche or you want to position your agency in a way that helps you to stand out from the competition but you're not quite sure exactly how to do that and maybe you've been going round and round in circles in your head or with your team a little bit so before we kind of jump into the strategy of the howto I want to just quickly talk a little bit about niching and the ### [2:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4&t=150s) Types of Niche two different types of Niche that we typically see so when I was learning this in business school they used to talk about two types of Niche horizontal and vertical niches it all got a little bit Technical and complicated the way I like to think about it is that there's kind of two ways that you can Niche you can either Niche um along this horizontal line which typically is related to the output that you create and I'll tell you more about this in a minute or you can go horizontally and you can Niche related to the industry so if you imagine um when we're thinking about output on the right hand side we're thinking very Broad and on the left narrow so let's just take the output as an example if you were very broad which meant you weren't really niching because Niche is really about kind of being specific it's about finding a gap in the market you might say the output or the result that you help people get is to grow their business right or increase revenue or something like that it's quite Broad and it's quite generic and in the industry if you were staying super broad down here so this is um let's use it high so broad is up here and narrow is down here so if you being really broad grow business you help you know a lot of people I hear them say they work with small business owners well actually if you look at the classification of a small business um they're typically about 90% of the economy small businesses make up about 85 to 90% of the economy at least in the UK okay right so small businesses is basically everyone so that's really broad right we help small businesses grow um when you think about niching if we're going to get really specific if we got specific on the industry we might say something like um really specific might be like personal trainers um that earn over seven figures might be really specific on the industry front and really specific I'm going to say I'm use the same ter terminology specific and narrow mean the same things um when we're being specific on the output front we might say something like um what we actually do is we help uh people to increase their uh um or let's do it the other way around let's say we help them lower their cost per click in paid ads right so super specific so if you were going to do if you going to be really specific in who you Target in the industry and the output this is often referred to as a Micro Niche right so it's very specific within the output and in the industry up here where we're very broad this side I would kind of argue this is no is no Niche and um the other ways that we can Niche and that's why I said there's kind of two types is we can be either or right so we could for example be very specific on who we help but we can be broader on the result or the outcome we get them um on the other end of the spectrum we can be quite broad about who we help so we could say small businesses and then we could get super specific on the output so again this is kind of Niche too in my experience it's good to be somewhere in one of these two zones these are kind of green zones right um around here if you can be fairly specific about who you help and fairly specific about what you help them with you have the best chance of success without the danger of that industry shifting or that thing that you help people with not existing anymore let's say for example you were helping personal trainers to grow their business well there's always going to be personal trainers right unless the world gets taken over by robots but in which case none of us have jobs so there's kind of always going to be personal trainers and they're always going to want to do better have better clients more money etc so to me those niches feel fairly safe um if you had an output that was quite specific then you need to be a little bit more careful because it might be that people stop wanting that thing um but if for example your specific output is you help people with high ticket sales most people are always going to want to increase the average value of a sale for example right so I think it's important just to talk about these two types of Niche because I think when I talk about niching often people get confused about this they think like web design is a niche web design isn't the niche web design is the output right and so web design is actually as an output still quite broad we want to get more specific than that so you might then say um usability design or you might say design Sprints right for example you're getting a little bit more specific um let me just change the pen you're getting a little bit more specific when it comes to the output right um so that's kind of for context and then I just want to share with you three key ideas three things that I think are going to really help when we come to nailing down this Niche and actually finding one that isn't just profitable because that's only one part of it we actually want to find one that we enjoy working in with clients that we can have impact with people that we can actually build meaningful connections and meaningful relationships with Okay so there's kind of three big ideas that I want to share with you the first one is ### [9:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4&t=573s) Zone of Genius that you're actually in a unique position to solve a problem for somebody so what I mean by that is the value that you can bring to someone isn't created equally now I always think it's good to use examples outside of the creative Industries when I'm talking about these kind of Concepts because they're slightly easier to grasp so let's imagine you make pizzas right your output is pizzas you could have broad which is food and then pizzas which is quite specific now you could go and take that pizza and it could be the best pizza in the world right it could be the most unique sauce the most unique flavoring could have all these incredible ingredients on it right on a basic level if you went and tried to sell that pizza to someone who is gluten intolerant or someone who's on like a low carb diet right now they're not going to want to buy it it's not of value to them however if you went to sell that pizza to somebody who is a foodie and their favorite food is Italian and on that pizza is all of their favorite toppings they're going to pay way more for that pizza it's going to be valuable to them right so from a creative perspective and from a business perspective what we need to understand is that what we offer our output is not as valuable for everybody and so one of the key ideas that we work with our clients on is that they're in a unique position to solve a problem for someone and when you find that problem that's when everything changes and I've just got um a couple of kind of case studies here that I'll tell you about but we refer to this as your zone of Genius is all of the things that have happened to you in your life all of the themes all of the skills all of the network that you have that puts you in a unique position to solve a problem for someone so at the center of this circle uh sits this problem that you're in a unique position to solve and around the outside sit all of these themes and skills so I'll give you a really quick example just so that you understand this concept um and it doesn't just stay as like a nebulous thing which I just talk about and then brush over in my life when I went through this process and went through the process of finding my Niche one of the things I struggled with was just like who should I help right who should I choose um and why them and so I went through this process that we do with our clients um called the River of Life where we actually go through our life and we find all of the themes kind of consistent uh value points that may make up the kind of toppings on that pizza right um and so for example I just take one of these p pieces this is actually quite a good analogy cuz these kind of look like slices of pizza right um if I just take one of these ideas when I was younger when I was in my 20s I was going through a very stressful time at University I had broken up with my girlfriend my car got stolen I didn't like my course I was really struggling and I started to have panic attacks I didn't know what panic attacks were but I started to have panic attacks I started to become really anxious all the time started to have all of these crazy things happen and it led me on a journey of kind of two or 3 years of really un a deep understanding of psychology and how the brain works um so in my kind of zone of Genius is psychology right because I've had those experiences personally firsthand and I've had to learn a lot about how the brain works and how to overcome a lot of things like stress and panic attacks and anxiety and all sorts of kind of like mental health conditions really um and so that's kind of one of the uh pieces of my pie and I won't tell you a story about each one of these but another one is business right always had a passion for it always been in my life another one is creativity um and I can put all of these in place right um but what we start to see is when we look at these different themes they're actually all of these categories are positioning us to solve a unique problem for someone now I'm not expecting you to figure this out on this video um this is a kind of different well not different but this is like a longer conversation um so this isn't something that we need you to figure out right now but the exercise that I'm going to share with you in a minute will actually help you get to this a lot quicker okay so this is the concept this is what we call our zon genius I've got some case ### [14:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4&t=875s) Case Studies studies here because I just love when people find their zone of genius and I love the impact that it has on their life and on their business and it truly is remarkable it gives you this sense of purpose gives you the sense of meaning you understand why you're in a unique position or why you can help these people better than other people so it helps when it comes to kind of competition um I like Rachel's one cuz she felt a little bit underc confident when it came to winning new work and working with new clients and this gave her a whole new lease of life um I love seeing people that win clients just through Linkedin Outreach or sending emails because they' figured out what this problem is that they're in a unique position to solve and why it so that's the first big idea that I really want to embed um in this kind of niching video is that you're actually in a unique position to solve a problem for someone and when you figure out who that is that kind of is your Niche and it makes life and business so much easier ### [15:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4&t=934s) Your Target isnt Your Market the second thing is that your target isn't your market so what I see a lot of people worried about and this is definitely something that I was worried about is if I just focus on working with these people I'm going to lose all of this variety and what's interesting is that the more I focused the more I really honed in on that problem and who I could solve that problem for the more variety I got because I was able to get creative with all of the different ways that I could solve that problem and that was the fun part but the reason I'm talking about this your target is in your Market is because just because you then say you're going to work with personal trainers for example doesn't mean that if someone comes along and they own a yoga studio and they're like hey we love what you do can you work with us you have to say NOP we can't work with you we only specifically work with um personal trainers it's about when you Market yourself it's about being as clear as possible so that you stand out from the competition but also so that when you're talking to those people they feel like you just understand them and that's one of the keys to marketing and niching is that your prospects will start to feel like you understand them better than anybody else and that's why they will trust you to solve that problem for them so your target is in ### [16:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4&t=1015s) A Dartboard your market and just kind of going back to metaphors and analogies I like to think of a dartboard right we are as in our marketing we are aiming for Bullseye now every time you throw a dart you're not going to hit Bullseye okay so you're aiming this direction you're throwing dots you're telling the world who you help and who you work with but sometimes those dots Miss and sometimes people misinterpret that or they read between the lines or another thing that we found is that potenti clients are very aspirational so we often say quite clearly in our marketing and when people apply to work with us we work with small agencies and really you have to be doing um kind of north of about 250,000 you have to have a small team for us to really help and get impact um but we often get people wanting to work with us below that now we have actually created a program recently um which does help people who are less than that which we're kind of triing out at the moment but for the last 2 or 3 years that's what we've been marketing and yet despite that people still come to us saying they want to work with us when they're not in that category so just remember that just because you're targeting those people doesn't mean that the only people that you can work with ### [18:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4&t=1096s) Date First and Marry the final principle I want to share with you before we actually get down into the exercise of how to do this is that you want to date first and then marry this isn't just about saying right I know who my Niche is now I'm going to go and I'm going to change everything my website branding I'm going to change this that and the other in fact we've had clients do that or we've had client people do that before they've come to us and they've said oh I just spent x amount on branding and I just did all this stuff on my website and it didn't really work it wasn't the right Niche or I changed my mind or whatever and so they just wasted essentially all of this money um so we don't encourage our clients to do that we date and what I mean by that is test this out so when you have a theory about who this Niche is going to what be who you're going to help um what them with go out and do some kind of test projects go out and have lots of conversations with those sorts of people and make sure that the problem that you want to solve is the problem they actually have make sure you actually enjoy working with them make sure you feel like they're your kind of people um and date first before you actually commit to that Niche ### [19:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4&t=1164s) How to Pick a Niche um and that often helps people as well with this process so then the question comes how do we do it once we understand these principles and once we're kind of committed to finding the niche what do we do well the first thing is we really just want to list out as many people that we can think of that we may want to work with as possible right so if we go back to this um diagram here what tends to happen is people get these themes and then we think well who are the sorts of people um that are at the intersection of these themes who lives at the intersection just for example of these three things of creativity psychology and business while you know um maybe artists uh maybe Freelancers uh maybe um Creative Tech companies you know there's a bunch of people that may be or a bunch of industries that may be sit in the intersection here so what we would do is we would just go and actually just start writing them here so I'm going to change something different going to say um something like personal trainers right um and just to be very clear on this exercise I might choose something that is um quite different so for example I might say artists and then the final one say tech companies okay so now here's what we're going to do and this is where it becomes a bit more logical and a bit less emotional okay so the first thing um each one of these sections here is going to have a score out of 10 and this is going to be for each I haven't done this in here cuz it's just a little bit messy but what we're going to do is we're going to score each one of these categories out of 10 so I'll talk you through each one and then you can do this for yourself and on your own business so the first thing is you look at this type of client and you think how much would I enjoy actually working with them now the way that I think about this is I think um would I kind of like to hang out with them would I like to spend time with them if I had a totally free day would I choose to go and spend a day with these people would I find that interesting would I find it motivating exciting now for me you know I've had personal trainers and know personal trainers um they're great people but the idea of spending a day and talking about Fitness doesn't particularly uh interest me I would probably be bored after a few hours so really I'm probably a four or maybe a five out of 10 in terms of how much I'd enjoy working with them now what problems do they have that I think I could solve well some of the stuff that I teach probably would be relevant to them um and probably would help them grow their personal training business so how big of a problem is that if 10 is like this is the biggest problem they have right now and one is it's not really a problem for them where is that on a scale them growing their personal training business well for some personal trainers it's probably quite big right so let's think about the personal trainers that it's a big problem for right it's an eight um how much money are those personal trainers likely to have to invest in getting help and solving that problem well if their biggest problem is getting clients or growing their business then maybe they haven't got a huge amount of cash to invest because that's what they're trying to get right more money so maybe that's about a six out of 10 and then the final thing is how easy would it be for me to start a conversation with them like how many personal trainers do I actually know where I could go and pitch and offer to them say hey by the way do you need help with this thing well for me that's probably like a four out of 10 I know a few in my network but my network isn't absolutely huge it's not like all of my network are personal trainers right so what I would do now is I just go along and I'm what I'm doing is I'm adding up this section here okay these numbers here so I would just go along and I'd do uh 4 + 8 + 6 + 4 is 22 right so 22 is the score for that and I just do it again and I would say right how much would I enjoy working with artists well I actually really love artists right how big is the problem that they could that they've got right now or they it's actually massive for them they love doing their work um and they are good at it but they're not typically very good at the business side of things so that's probably a big it's probably bigger than personal training it's probably nine out of 10 how much money do they have well in my experience artists don't have a lot of money unless they're selling really high-end art and they're working with galleries so maybe there is you know that what I will say with the money part is it is just a kind of guide because there's always a section of the industry that has money so for example there might be some artists that are quite well known they're in some big galleries they're earning good money but the Galler is taking like 50% commission well if I could show them how to get people buying that art directly then they've got money because they're selling it but they're just not making as much money as they'd like to make think right for example so I could think about those so maybe that's like a seven or eight out of 10 um and then how easy would it be for me to start conversations well I know a few artists I do have a network of artists but I'm not surrounded by them I maybe could have a conversation with five or 10 um and then at that point I might start to struggle now you might have something so for example you might have someone you know that works with lots of artists or you might be friends with someone who has a platform that has lots of artists on so if that's the case when we say conversation what we're really talking about what we're really looking at here is roote to Market how easy would it be for us to get in front of these people ask them questions about their problems and challenges get to know them better maybe do some test projects and things like that that's what we're really looking at here so just think about how easy is it for you to actually start conversations with these people so if we add these up 8 9 7 6 I think that's 30 if I've done the maskk correct um and then I do that right so it would go through and if there's more than three people that you've come up with then just keep adding these and it's actually really simple the person the kind of Niche that you're going to focus on first is the one with the highest score now typically if it's over 30 I would say it's probably got some legs uh if it's under 30 probably one of these is isn't really a good match okay so that's all we're going to do we're going to use it in a very numerical way to take the kind of emotion and the stress and the confusion out of it and we're just going to pick the highest number and we're going to go with that first out and start conversations with those people like I said date not marry and really find out like what is that core problem that they've got and what in my history in my network in my skills in the experiences I've had might enable me to solve that problem in a unique way better than somebody else could um that's really what we want to find out I ### [27:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKpmV9uFx4&t=1623s) The Agency Road Map hope you found that video valuable now if you're anything like me you might still be feeling a little bit overwhelmed there is so much information out there it's quite difficult to know what things apply to us and more importantly what things to implement first that's why I've 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