The first step to designing a niche for your agency is to answer the most important question in marketing: “What problem do you solve?” and plant your flag in it.
Think of this as your declaration of authority and ambition in your pursuit of harnessing what makes you different. It means boldly taking your place in the world and your public rejection of “what everyone else is doing.”
Because problems are what inspire people to take action and spend money.
Not solutions.
In fact, the problem is what gives your solution context.
Counter to what conventional marketing wisdom would have many believe, your solution (and the benefits of it) is useless to people if they don't believe they have a massive, urgent problem that needs solving.
Yet, the majority of agencies strictly rely on solution-first communication and claim they are better/faster/smarter/cheaper than all the other agencies that offer the same solutions.
(Never even considering the most important question in marketing...)
Unfortunately, this solution-first communication is what creates the vast majority of the meaningless marketing babble we see.
I’m sure you’ve seen headlines like this before:
"We create experiences"
“We help you scale better”
“We drive revenue growth”
"We help companies grow"
"We build revenue engines"
"We drive better outcomes"
"We build revenue systems"
"We implement your software"
"We solve business challenges"
"We help large companies grow"
"We build websites for companies"
"We help you overcome challenges"
No one I know would pay for worse outcomes, or to be defeated by their challenge. So why do we insist on communicating this way?
Because we have been led to believe that this is what buyers want to see. As if this is how you stand out and prove to buyers your company is capable and competent.
Conventional marketing wisdom taught us that the more general your expertise, the broader the range of businesses you can help.
The hope was that generalized expertise, language, and solutions would open us up to mass appeal so more people would say “THIS IS FOR ME.”
The truth is that generalization is for no one because doesn’t resonate or connect with anyone.
At best, communicating in generalizations reduces the urgency to buy from your agency.
At worst, it kills your credibility.