Picking a client niche is one of the hardest things for the average marketer to do… but if you want to build a successful Funnel Agency, you need one.
If you are familiar with me or any of my trainings, you know that I firmly believe that if you don’t establish a niche for your Funnels as a Service Agency, you are setting yourself up to be stressed out, overworked and generally miserable.
It may seem harsh, but it’s true…
One of the most important things you can do when you are starting an Agency – or even working with funnel clients as a freelancer – is to establish a clear niche that defines what kind of clients and funnels your agency focuses on.
Yet I still hear the same question again and again from service-based marketers…
“But Mikael, do I REALLY need a niche? Isn’t that just me turning away perfectly good clients?”
Yes, you need a niche. You don’t have to only work in that niche forever, but if you don’t focus on trying to get just one kind of client who has one kind of business and one kind of funnel, you are not going to be able to successfully scale your business.
If you keep selling whatever to whoever, you are going to stay in the hamster wheel forever, constantly working way too hard for way too little.
So pick a niche, at least for now. Get really good at helping one specific kind of client. Get your agency running like an assembly line. Then, once you’ve scaled, you’re making good money and you have a team to support you…
That’s when you can branch out and work with some different people.
Anyway. You can skip this whole post if you already have a clear, defined niche.
But if you don’t (and if you’re reading this, you probably don’t), let’s talk about how to define your niche so you can grow your business.
You may want to get a pen and paper or print the Define Your Niche worksheet from my Funnel Client Attraction Cheatsheet before you dive into this (no optin required).
CLIENT NICHE STEP 1
What Businesses Have You Had Success With?
The first thing that you need to do is think about all the types of business that you’ve had success with.
- What funnels have you built that have made money?
- Have they made a little money or a lot of money?
- Do you think you could do it again with a similar client?
If the answer is yes, put them on your list.
By the way, this doesn’t just have to be client work. It can be funnels you’ve built for yourself, friends or family.
It doesn’t even necessarily have to be funnels – if you’ve found you’re very good at running Facebook Ads for a particular business type, put them on the list.
If you’re completely new to Funnels as a Service, you can also brainstorm what kind of businesses you think you’d be good at helping because you have a lot of personal experience or because you have a lead that could become your first funnel.
Then you’re going to have to either find your potential dream clients and offer to do the work for a steeply discounted rate or even for free just to get the case study.
Do excellent work and turn it into a case study and get a testimonial, and you’ll be able to leverage your first client into second, a third… and beyond!
CLIENT NICHE STEP 2
What Category Is Your Client’s Business In?
Next, note what category your client’s business fits in to.
There are really only seven categories of businesses, so your client will fit into one of the following:
LOCAL BUSINESSES / SERVICES: This is any local business that provides a service or requires someone to be local to use their services. Think local gyms, dentists, lawyers, small shops on main street, local restaurants.
SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE: A business where you sell technology and software on a subscription basis, like Funnelytics.
COURSES / DIGITAL CONTENT: Any kind of downloadable or online course or content that you download or pay for access to watch like ebooks, downloadable templates, or courses like FaaStrack that include video or online content.
ECOMMERCE / PHYSICAL PRODUCTS: Anything that someone buys online and has physically shipped to their house.
COACHING / CONSULTING: One-on-One or group coaching that you provide online.
ONLINE / GLOBAL SERVICES: Selling services that are executed online, like digital marketing or Funnels as a Service.
EVENTS: Any one-time event that has a set time and location, like Funnel Hacking Live or Austin City Limits.
CLIENT NICHE STEP 3
What Niche Does The Business Belong To?
Now you need to list what the niche and sub-niche are for each of the business types you know you can successfully market for.
It’s very important that you dive at least two layers deep.
For example, photographers are a niche. But photographers are a very, very broad niche, with a lot of sub-niches. You have wedding photographers, food photographers, sports photographers, product photographers, family photographers… and each one of these photography niches will need completely different targeting.
So when you’re choosing your niche it’s important you don’t just pick something broad and go with it, because that isn’t going to help streamline and automate your process.
You can’t just target photographers; you might as well not set a niche at all.
But if you know you have particular success with helping fashion photographers connect with local clothing businesses that need great photography of their products, now you’re on to something.
CLIENT NICHE STEP 4
What Core Objective Did You Help This Business Achieve?
Once you’ve defined your niche and sub-niche, you need to write down what core objective you helped your clients achieve with their funnel.
For example, if you helped the fashion photographer fill up their calendar with potential photo shoots with independent clothing companies in their city or state, your core objective was filling up their calendar with clients who want to work with them.
Other objectives would be to schedule a consultation, to fill out an order form and buy something, to get email leads, to reduce churn for a software company… that’s the kind of objective you need to define for each of your potential dream client types.
CLIENT NICHE STEP 5
Do You Have A Story Or A Reason For Wanting To Help This Type Of Business?
The last thing you need to define is whether or not you have a compelling reason or story for wanting to help this kind of business. If you’re going after fashion photographers, is there a reason why you want to help fashion photographers? Are you a fashion photographer yourself? Is there a story around how you fell into this niche?
The reason you need this is because it helps you not only connect with your potential photography clients; it also allows you to demonstrate that you really know the core pains and desires that your client has.
The better you are at showing that in your funnel, the more successful your funnel will be at attracting clients who want your funnel services.
While you’re doing this for every client you’ve had success with, you may also want to list the following:
1) What Funnel or Services did you provide for your client?
2) What results did you generate for your client?
These two questions will help you narrow down what kind of funnel you used and what your success metric (and possible testimonials!) will be.
I Have Some Niche Ideas… Now What?
Now that you’ve figured out what kind of clients you could work with, you just have to narrow it down to the one you are going to focus on for now.
If you only have one type of client you’re sure you can build a successful funnel for — great! You know what niche to focus on while you’re building out your own Agency Ignite Funnel to attract new clients.
If you have multiples, you’ll have to choose. Or even better… consider building a basic lead form, then running $100 or so of ads on the social media platform where your dream clients hang out that is split evenly between targeted ads for each audience.
I call this a Rapid Fire Test, and it’s a really fast way to find out who you are best to talking to in your ad copy. The winner — the one that gets the most leads for the lowest cost — is who resonates best with your message.
That way you know exactly who to target before you spend the time and money to build your funnel.
Next Steps
Are you ready to focus on a client niche and take your Funnels as a Service Agency to the next level?
If you are, you might want to check out my 100% Free Funnel Agency Masterclass.
It’s six videos and 5 PDF ebooks that are totally packed with value and actionable advice.
And if you’re already offering Funnels as a Service but you’re ready to make mapping, testing and reporting on your funnels a whole lot easier, you should check out Funnelytics.
Funnelytics is the first analytics and data tool built specifically for marketers, by marketers… because I built it to solve some of the problems from my own FaaS Agency.
I’ll see you on the inside.
