Finding your niche

As I left a previous job, (during one of the many times I’d announced to everyone “I’m going freelance!” before freaking out and changing my mind) my manager said to me, “You can’t be too niche as a freelancer. You’ll have to take whatever work comes your way.”

I thought this was bollocks, but didn’t say anything as they’d just given me a nice leaving gift. However, now I will say something because I’ve drank the leaving gift and I’m no longer freaking out. 98% of my moderate success has come as a result of being fairly niche, and the other 2% was a happy accident.

Here I’ll tell you how I found my niche, how you can find yours, and why it’s so damn important that you do.

But first, a shameless plug.

What is my niche and why should you pay me for it?

My niche has never been about what I write; I’ll do words for anything, me. Websites, ad campaigns, scripts, PR, tone of voice guidelines, OOH, the list goes on. I’ve done pretty much anything, and you simply can’t stop me from doing more.

Instead my niche is all about how I write. My tone of voice can stretch from energetic and fun to totally insane and at risk of a lawsuit. That’s the realm I’m comfortable in, and with that comfort comes quality. If you want copy that delights, excites, titillate and tantalises, I’m your man. If you want words that make people stop and stare in pure surprise, there’s a reason why I’m the best copywriter in the world with my given name. Here, take a look at some of the words I’ve tickled into existence.

Why is a niche so damn important?

If you replace the word ‘niche’ with the acronym ‘USP’, anyone who works in marketing will understand why you need it. It’s the thing that makes you different from the competition, the reason why potential customers and clients should choose you over someone else.

For me as a freelance copywriter, this matters. If you do a quick LinkedIn search for that job title, you find everyone and their gran claims to be a freelance copywriter, with many offering dirt cheap rates to try and secure new business. But I’ve got a mortgage to pay and two cats to spoil, so dirt cheap won’t do for me. Instead I stand out with flare and irreverent quips about the world around me, showing any prospective clients exactly what they’ll get if we work together.

This is just as important no matter what you do. You can guarantee someone else does something similar, so your niche product or approach allows you to stand out.

How can you find your niche?

Sadly the only way to truly find that one thing you’re really good at, is to first try lots of things you’re not so good at. Unless you’re born knowing you’re a shit hot juggler or something, you’ll probably have to spend a lot of time not juggling before you discover it. I wrote in plenty of ways that weren’t really my bag before finding out that my bag was actually made entirely of cat hair, making it highly impractical for most uses but perfect for that special occasion. I’ve written white papers (eugh), written huge banks of FAQs, been the voice of an IT support chatbot and plenty more things that I just didn’t click with. However, doing all the stuff that wasn’t right helped me find what was, and now I’m excellent at a very select few things. It only took a decade of trying.

If you haven’t got a decade to spare, it’s probably best just to think about what you want to be known for and do that instead.

Can you help me find my niche, you generous soul?

Yes! I can! Whenever I start working with a new client, I ask them loads of questions about what they want people to think of them. This helps me NAIL their brand like a solid hammer, and feeds into everything I write for them. I don’t need to know a brand’s full life story - just what they want to be known for, what they’d be proud to shout about, and how they want to go about shouting.

Every new client gets a simple questionnaire to fill in, and armed with the answers, I have all the tools I need to build a brand with a clear, succinct USP. That means their customers know what they’re about, their staff know what they stand for, and the world is left in no doubt that this is the brand for x, y or z.

Can you have more than one niche, or is that a total misnomer?

First, to be totally honest with you, I spent a good 20 minutes trying to remember what the word ‘misnomer’ was. I searched for ‘mistronomer’, ending up looking at pictures of a certain kind of soup, and found a man called ‘Mr Nomer’ on LinkedIn. It wasn’t easy, and now I can see it I’m not sure it was worth it.

But in short, yeah, you can have more than one niche, just so long as you can back them all up with ability. Let’s take Cristiano Ronaldo as an example. His niches are being really good at football, having good abs and tax fraud. He maintains all of these niches by constantly reinforcing his brand, reminding all of his followers what he stands for. If you’re good at a few things and want to be known for that, let’s get you known for that.

Get nichey with me

Want your brand to stand out for something sexy? Holler at me. I’ll use my niche to make your niche unmissable.