For whom is this blog:
For founders and managers in software development companies with teams from 3 to 30 people
For service companies that want to specialise.
You will find here:
What is niche marketing?
Explained the top 5 reasons why to specialise.
Dear friend, you need no “superficial powers” of business insight to see that, like never before, business owners face stormy times, especially if you own a business sitting at the smaller end of the scale. The evident and understandable reaction to any season like this is to maximize marketing gaps at the earliest opportunity. As part of strategies in marketing, it is widely known that when you reach more people with your message, you stand a better chance of getting a bite of the large lump. Carving a niche is one way to get the best out of your marketing efforts.
What is Niche Marketing?
Niche marketing is a strategy in which your company focuses on a specific industry and the unique target market that is the most profitable to your software development company.
What does this mean to your business? This infers that your company focuses on an exclusive group (your niche market) instead of deploying your marketing techniques to everyone.
In a niche market, many potential customers are most likely to directly benefit from your company's services. They see you as a go-to company for all their challenges because you have positioned yourself as an expert in that niche. They won’t hesitate to go far and wide to bring more challenges as you solve the basic ones and earn their trust.
It is essential to note that a specialized market differs from your conventional market in terms of geographical location, lifestyle, profession, style, culture, activities, behavior, demographics, and/or needs. A niche market is generally a minor part of a bigger market marked by traits.
For example, your tech firm might only be targeting Fintech, delivering software products to the challenger banking sector in CEE Region, or perhaps your company offers Enterprise Resource Planning software mainly to oil and gas firms worldwide.
The values you derive from a specialized marketing strategy are remarkable!
During his specialization podcast, Alastair McDermott, a Marketing Consultant, and Business Coach discussed a few things you might be missing without specializing:
If you are not focused, you could lose credibility and authority.
The possibility of charging a premium for services.
Because of your ability to charge higher fees, your company has better cash flow, thus you reduce financial problems.
There will be reduced autonomy (the ability to choose what project you want to work on).
There will be a loss of relationships with people who are offering complementary services, i.e., people who are offering similar services as yours will not be able to align with you and open up a partnership.
To give it a better context, let’s talk about the reasons your start-up needs to niche down.
Reasons you need to niche down the marketing strategy for your software development company
1. Lower competition:
Research has shown that general terms are less effective because they are used in other fields of work.
Using niche marketing for your software development company allows your firm to stand out among your competitors. This helps create marketing strategies that make your target audience resonate at the same frequency.
This also helps in retaining your existing clients while attracting new clients at the same time.
By specializing in your marketing strategy, you will automatically differentiate your software company from numerous others seeking the mass market. You will rarely need to compete with big names. Instead, your focus will be on delivering an exceptional product and service to your target audience.
Specialization makes your company stand out and reduces your worry about your competitors.
2. Specialization helps you establish a loyal customer base
Customers quickly find companies involved in specialized marketing because of their less competitive marketing.
Generic terms are undefined and only prolong the user’s journey. A niche market helps to project to your specific customers the values of your business and what they will lose not buying from you.
A niche enables prospective customers to identify your brand and product, speaking loudly to them that your service is best for their needs.
Your customers enjoy quality service because you can focus on a tailored audience and build a long-lasting relationship.
3. Organic Ranking on Google:
To rank well on Google and other search engines, software companies must consider search and buying intent and customer journey stage and characteristics.
As you can see in the example above, general keywords have higher volumes, but they are more difficult to position on and they might serve as a search for users who are far from being your clients. Doing deeper with your keywords research you can find sweet spots that might better, cheaper, and faster serve the needs of your business.
According to Ahrefs, niche keywords have proven more cost-effective than generic keywords. (source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/content-marketing-statistics/)
The Google robot quickly finds your software company and ranks it high because you have optimized your keywords by prioritizing the intent of your customers through specialization (source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-intent/)
When your clients google generic keywords, they are instead doing initial research on the topic and might be a long way ahead of making a decision. It is excellent when you capture your clients at that moment but remember it is expensive to keep them throughout the customer journey from educating internet users to closing a client. This is perfect once you have a chunky budget. Opposite are niche terms or long-tail keywords which are characteristics of educated users at advanced research and almost at the decision-making stage.
In simple words, what I am saying is that niching down helps you automate your ranking because you become an authority in the space you have specialized. Your growth then makes many websites begin to point to what you do.
You don’t have to compete with established companies that are in a position to communicate to a broad audience. Instead, it would be best to focus on leveraging the opportunities and immaculate grounds you have found as a specialized software company.
What will this do for you? You become a force to be reckoned with, because your offering is unique, not a hundred and first python company in the city.
As a niched software company, you automatically set yourself apart from the mass market and begin to rank on the first page on google. Imagine what transformation that will bring to your business!
4. Cost-effective marketing and more appealing advertisement:
Imagine cutting your marketing budget by 50%; what will that do to your business?
As your product or service fits a niche, your marketing efforts should also be focused. Niel Patel, an Online Marketing Guru, running a couple of marketing companies including SaaS and add agency, claim that niche paid campaigns are often cheaper and more effective than general ones. Your campaigns might be super personalized when utilizing high-intent keywords.
Specialization helps you to identify your specific customer group and help you get outstanding results with a small budget.
Niching down helps to run paid ads that are targeted and campaign that is specific to the needs of your audience instead of casting your resources on diverse promotional strategies.
It could be a waste of resources when there’s no precision as to consumers of your software services and discouraging when you do not get an equivalent result for your advertising budget
5. Niche Marketing Increases profit:
The type of specialization you have decided to opt for depends on you. You can check the different kinds of specialization.
As you go from swimming in an ocean to swimming in a small pool, you will observe that not only will niche marketing help you become an authority; you will begin to attract quality clients who are willing to reward your expertise and be able to charge premium fees.
In agreement with this, Matt Woodley, an Online Entrepreneur and the founder of Moverfocus, a company that caters to the international moving niche, mentioned that creating a business in a niche market can lead to higher rates for products or services. The supply and demand ratio can become highly lucrative, especially for a lifestyle company.
Generalist marketing is not specific or targeted; it is much more expensive and less effective. When your software company carves a niche, you can reduce marketing costs because of a precise approach.
By using niche marketing, you build rapport with your audience, reduce waste, and intelligently reduce your costs, allowing you to increase profit.
In the graphics above, I have gathered examples of brand claims and divided them into two groups. They are all from a broad category of custom software development. Which group is more targeted and descriptive? Which one is about big words but no detail? … agree, it's all subjective, but still…
A niche marketing strategy is designed specifically to attract a specific subset of customers.
Instead of targeting the general market, specialization focuses on a targeted group of buyers. Your business will stand out from the competition, attract loyal customers, and increase profitability. Halborn (blockchain cybersecurity developers) Pantheon Lab (Digital humans for videos), Lunar Strategy (marketing for Web3 and Crypto) are examples of niche businesses making waves worldwide.
CONCLUSION
When you position your brand for a broad public, you spend more since the competition is denser, your conversation rate, in general, is lower, the process is longer, and the creative process is much more difficult, so when you run a small software development company and try to add it all up ... it cannot work well.
On the other side of the universe, you have building up a specialisation and niche marketing…
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Book a meeting with GrowMy.Tech, to check how you can scale up and get new clients globally by niching down your marketing.