Ep 131 Niching Down for Speaking Success

We've heard it over & over again, from experts and gurus, that we need to niche down as much as possible. But sometimes, the thought of getting that specific with who our audience is, and who we serve, can be a little scary. We're afraid of eliminating audience members or ruling out events where we really want to speak. So today, we're gonna dive deep into what success can actually look like by niching down, and how that impacts your speaking strategy, both in person and online.

Our guest today is Connie Holen, the owner of web design agency Pixality Design, that builds websites for fitness and wellness studios - How’s that for a niche? Today, Connie shares her story, how she decided to approach niching down, what that did for her business, and how we integrated that into her speaking strategy.

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How it all started. Why not cast a wider net?

Connie started as a freelance web designer, working with anyone she ran across in a variety of businesses, but quickly realized that was not going to work for her in the long term. She felt price-shopped and for every new project, she had to do an enormous amount of research to understand not just that individual business, but also the entire industry. So she intentionally set out to work on her brand positioning and to find a niche for her business, eventually focusing exclusively on the boutique fitness and wellness industry.

When Connie realized she needed to make some changes to her business, she reflected on past projects, and asked herself which were her favorites and why. It came down to a yoga studio and a hair salon, with the only common denominator being that they were both brick and mortar businesses. And she realized she really liked working with business owners who had face to face interactions with their clients.

To validate, she went out and interviewed business owners in other industries to explore what these industries could be like for her if he chose to niche down on them.

What are some of the benefits of niching down?

You get to know your audience really well

Connie shares that “you get to know your audience inside and out. Like you know everything about them, exactly what they're struggling with, you know exactly how to get them the result they need. It’s like, when you specialize in an industry, it gives you that space or that margin to kind of have your brains on autopilot, because you already know the basics of the industry. So you can then focus on listening to the nuances of their specific business, and asking the questions. And then, get to the fun stuff: what makes their brand unique.”

You’ve got the examples and the stories to back you up

And this translates so well to speaking, when you got the experience, the case studies and the examples. Audience loves stories, right? And when they have questions or there is something that needs an extra illustration point, you got those examples handy, not because you saw it happened once but because you’ve seen it across a variety of businesses within that industry. And that makes the speaking that much more powerful.

Niching down simplifies your marketing efforts

Niching down can significantly simplify your marketing overwhelm. For Connie, it made it very clear what to say “yes” to and what to say “no, thanks, that's not for me.”

When you're trying to build a business and you've got all these different marketing channels to consider, like should I blog, should I do a podcast? Should I speak? Should I run ads? Faced with so many choices but niching down to where her clients are, opened up Connie’s path clearly. It’s all about relationships and she needed to be face to face with her clients. So she found herself partnering with some of the big software companies that service the client group that she wanted to serve. That made a lot of sense, particularly as a web designer. And these companies have their own events. And so that was a very clear path for these other events.

Thinking back “I want to be on that stage, how do I back that out? And how do I get there? And so for me that looks like certifications by those companies and looks like showing up at events not being a speaker, just to walk around and meet people, and making connections years or within the year before I actually applied to become a speaker. And now I'm a regular speaker.

So identifying that early on, when I knew that these were the type of clients I wanted to work with and looking at what events they went to, and then backing out what my speaking journey needed to be to get there. And on those stages.”

Connie is focused on bringing in more clients to her business and making this a conversion strategy .Speaking is now pretty much the only marketing activity Connie does regularly, “That's all I've needed to fill my client pipeline for the year.”

Working one on one with clients, it takes less clients to meet her annual sales goals. Going to live events and virtual events where her clients are is just enough to get her the visibility and connection that she needs.

When your marketing strategy is speaking and there’s a pandemic…Navigating speaking in times of Covid

Yes, all those large live events have been non-existent since March. But the companies that were putting on those events, and most did virtual events before as well, they ended up doing more virtual events this year versus the fewer, larger ones. And they started doing more virtual events that were open to the public or free. With no ticket to attend or travel to get there, the audience got a little bigger. Connie has kept busy with webinars, probably averaging one a month since March, and more in some months. And those have continued to fill her client spots on her calendar.

“Niching down was the best decision I've made in my business so far. Everything has grown from there. It's simplified everything. It's just made my marketing that much more simple and led me to speaking. I don't think I would have been speaking if I didn't feel this kind of void in the industry that I felt like I could stand up because I knew that I could help people in that path. It just makes connections and relationships all that more powerful.” - Connie Holen