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View Full Version : Want More Clients? Narrow Your Focus



vangogh
06-24-2009, 03:39 PM
Last week I started a thread about answering the question Why should someone choose you over your competition (http://www.small-business-forum.net/managing-your-business/1570-why-should-someone-choose-you-over-competition.html). The thread generated some interesting discussion, but I'm not sure it got across the main point I was hoping it would make.

That's where this thread comes in. I found an article that perhaps makes the point better than the last one I linked to does.

Increase Your Freelancing Income by Narrowing Your Focus (http://freelancefolder.com/narrowing-your-focus/), might seem specifically geared toward freelancers only, but know the post is from the site Freelance Folder, hence the word freelancing in the title. I think it applies to any service based business and the idea of narrowing your focus can equally apply to product based business as well.

To me the whole idea is that when you try to appeal to everyone you ultimately appeal to no one. Your net is cast so wide that it's hard to stand out as doing anything well. That's not to say you can't do more than one thing well, but rather that as your net gets wider you have to spend a lot more time working on the net itself, fixing tears, making sure you cast it where you really wanted.

In narrowing your focus you reduce the size of your potential market, but you also have a much better chance of appealing to that smaller market. You can more easily advertise, react to the needs and wants of your market, stand apart from your competition that may not cater as well to the market, etc.

In addition, by specializing in one area of your overall niche you become so much better serving that area that you have a greater chance of becoming the market leader, perhaps even dominating that market as one of the few main players.

Once you've done well in the smaller market you can then start expanding to related markets and begin to cast your net a little wider.

Agree? Disagree?

Dan Furman
06-24-2009, 06:35 PM
I struggle with this often. I write website sales copy, I write all kinds of marketing materials, and I even write such things as letters, either business or personal (in fact, today I wrote a letter for a military officer recommending someone for a promotion.) Plus I write manuals, white papers, etc etc.

It's kind of hard to get all of that across - they are different audiences. Do I appeal to the web copy people (generally the biggest paying work) or the letter guy? I think I've succeeded here (http://www.clear-writing.com) (my main index page), but it never fails to bug me when someone searched google for a "web content writer" or a "letter writer", landed on my index page, and immediatly left... I want to say "wait... how could you NOT see that's what I do, or not be interested enough to hang around more than 2 seconds??"

Now admittedly, usually one searching for what I do clicks at least a little, but still...

This is why adwords can be so handy. I target the web copy people to my website copy page (and turn it into a landing page), letter people to that page, and general "professional writing" / "business writing" to my main page. The problem is now my rankings are going well - my index page is very high (and some days, #1) for "web content writing services". So now I need to make sure that page addresses both general people AND web content people.

Advice... don't read your web logs if you want to stay sane :)

vangogh
06-24-2009, 07:59 PM
It's interesting, because a natural way you would narrow your focus is to say eliminate everything but the marketing and sales copy. That would certainly refine your services. Of course you might never have written that letter today.

The question you have to ask yourself is would you pick up more sales copy gigs than you would lose letter writing gigs. Or better would you make more money ignoring the letter writing if you focus everything on the sales copy. You would be able to eliminate a good portion of your AdWords spend and reinvest some of it or all of it into expanding the set of keywords related to sales and marketing writing. It's possble for the same AdWords spend you'd get more traffic overall and because your name showed up more for more similar phrases your brand would be stronger in the minds of people looking for sales and marketing writing.

You'd also need to decide if you wanted to limit what you write about. Maybe writing would begin to lose some of its appeal if you were always writing about the same topic. It would be easy to see how writing about diverse subjects also helps you write better in general.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but I'll repeat it here. When I started I offered general web design/development, seo, and hosting services. I was competing with everyone. I dropped the hosting, limited the seo services I offer to mostly consulting and site development. Then I started moving more towards WordPress as a platform for development. Each of the above narrowed the focus of what I do and my business started to increase.

It's helped me better target my marketing efforts and become more of an expert in that narrower focus, which helps me stand out more. For a very simple example imagine you have a question about web design and development and you wanted to ask someone here. There are a number of people here on the forum you could ask. Now imagine you have a question about WordPress development. Who here would you ask? I could be wrong, but I think other than me Bryan (rezzy) is the only web person here who works consistently with WordPress.

Admittedly less people will have WordPress questions than general website questions, but it's much easier to stand out to those who do have WordPress needs.

The whole idea of narrowing your focus depends a lot on what your current focus is an how well you've branded yourself in that space. If you're already the top web designer there's no need to narrow your focus to a particular CMS, but if you're one among many and not so well known by any group why not pick a CMS to get to know and work with and specialize in?

Dan in your case I know you like microsites in certain situations. Narrowing your focus really applies to the microsite concept. As you know you could build one site specifically tailored to letter writing and another to sales copy and another to writing marketing materials. They could all look similar to reinforce your brand, but be better targeted to smaller markets. Alternatively you could create a section of your site for each and drive all your marketing toward your top level section pages instead of your home page.

Not that I'm telling you anything you don't already know. :)

Dan Furman
06-24-2009, 08:57 PM
Dan in your case I know you like microsites in certain situations.

Clear-Websites (http://www.clear-websites.com)

One of these days I'll get around to finishing it :)

I'm also basically trying to differentiate myself by using "me" as the focus. Not just writing, but a specific, Plain English slant by Dan.

Dan Furman
06-24-2009, 09:28 PM
The question you have to ask yourself is would you pick up more sales copy gigs than you would lose letter writing gigs. Or better would you make more money ignoring the letter writing if you focus everything on the sales copy.

This is also my dilemma - I do juuuust enough of each to justify them. And yes, to address a part I didn't quote, the "different" projects definitely keeps things fresh. I'm not sure I want to give up, say, press releases or letters to focus just on web copy (for example).

billbenson
06-24-2009, 09:54 PM
I'd say specialization comes with the Internet. In days gone by if you wanted a service or product, you pretty much had to use what was available locally. That forced businesses to offer a broader range. Today, much of the time you can pick and choose what you want from around the country or world. That drives specialization. Advertising your business (getting people to your web site) is far easier in a small niche. I'd think that would go for most services as well as products.

vangogh
06-25-2009, 02:40 AM
This is also my dilemma

I hear you. I like variety too in my work so it would be hard to give up some things even if it would help my business financially. I think the angle of you does in many ways answer the question why you over the competition. The competition could never be you any more than you could be them. It differentiates you by default. Not everyone can do that though. I think you have to have the right personality in order for you to be a selling point.

Your particular writing style does in a sense narrow your focus. Some people won't care for it, but for those who do you stand out.


I'd say specialization comes with the Internet.

I think there's always been business that were more generalist and business that were specialists. I wouldn't say it's an internet thing. For example most towns and cities have their fair share of bookstores and assuming the town is big enough there's likely one or two chain stores that are the generalists. Still you may find several used bookstores and even new and used bookstores who's main focus is on one or two genres of books.

Here in Boulder we have a bookstore devoted exclusively to mysteries and a couple devoted specifically to art. If you're looking for a mystery book there's a better chance you'll find it and the mystery bookstore than the chain. The mystery bookstore will never have as many people in the doors as the chains and they won't sell as many books overall, but they will corner the market on all mystery fans in town. That store could never compete trying to carry everything since they wouldn't be able to carry the same amount of stock.

If a town isn't large enough then sure there's not going to be room for chain bookstores and specialty bookstores. You may not even have a bookstore, but rather a store that carries books among the many other things it carries. But once the generalist stores are there specializing becomes a great way to compete, sometimes the only way.

KristineS
06-25-2009, 12:38 PM
I think there's something to be said for specializing, particularly if you have expertise in a particular area, or if the audience for which you're competing is too broad.

Take the Outdoor Bloggers Summit (http://outdoorbloggerssummit.com/) for instance. Bloggers, as a whole, are a huge audience. By limiting it to people who blog about one specific subject, which is still a large audience, I am better able to target content and information. If and when I decide to do advertising, I'll be better able to target that as well.

Coach Morse
08-05-2009, 10:45 AM
less is more... be the best at one thing so whenever someone needs that one thing done, you are the go to guy (or gal). :cool:

Took me awhile to get my mind wrapped around that concept. It feels right, I'm moving forward quicker and before the year's up, I should have some results to prove it works.

vangogh
08-05-2009, 01:19 PM
It took me awhile to see it too, but once I began to narrow my focus my business grew. After a time and you're doing well in your narrower market you'll have built a brand and you can expand your offering. But it's going to be much easier to build a brand with less competition and a smaller market.

cbscreative
08-05-2009, 01:36 PM
Having been temporarily absent from the forum when this thread originally appeared, I missed it the first time. Great topic though.

I'm in the I agree, but it's hard to practice group. I do web, graphics, and writing. I believe I do very well in all these areas, and I enjoy the diversity of doing all of them. My life experience is quite varied too, so I can write about many, many things. Narrowing down too much would be boring, but trying to offer all of these is a marketing challenge for sure.

At times, I think I should have separate web sites for each, then I struggle with how well they all flow together. Stay tuned to see the sequel where I somehow work this all out.

vangogh
08-05-2009, 06:07 PM
There are other ways to narrow your focus than cutting services though. You could server a local community or you could offer your services to a specific industry. In my case I did cut down on some services, but it doesn't have to be that way.