How to Find Your Niche in Digital Marketing: Guide for Marketing Agencies
Are you struggling to see results in your digital marketing agency? Would you like to maximize profits and streamline your growth? Or are you looking for a way to start your digital marketing agency on the right foot?
If so, developing a niche could be a transformative solution.
In digital marketing, a niche is the specific type of business to which you cater your services. A few popular digital marketing agency niches include plumbing, optometry, pest control, painting, cosmetic surgery, and many more.
Instead of generalizing your marketing services for every business type, you can narrow your efforts, develop effective, systemized processes, and deliver even better results for your niche-specific client base.
However, choosing the right niche for your digital marketing agency is essential to your success. Read on to learn our comprehensive guide on how to find your niche in digital marketing.
Why Choose a Niche for Your Digital Marketing Agency?
Our agency members often wonder: why is choosing a niche so important? Doesn’t it make more sense to broaden your services and reach the most clients possible?
However, while choosing a specific niche may limit the number of clients you can approach with your services, it will actually expand your options within your agency. Within a niche, you’ll be able to create even more effective strategies for your clients, develop a competitive advantage, and grow a lot faster.
Choosing a niche and sticking to it can be highly beneficial for your agency’s long-term success. Here are a few essential reasons to select a specific niche for your digital marketing agency:
Everyone wants to work with an expert in their type of business
Imagine you own a local HVAC business and are searching for a digital marketing agency to work with.
Would you rather hire the generalist agency with dozens of different industries in its repertoire? Or the niche-specific agency that works solely with HVAC businesses like yours?
You’d probably choose the niche-specific agency, of course. Selecting a niche for your digital marketing agency can give you a competitive advantage that leads potential clients to choose your agency over generalists.
Easier to sell and close business
Because most businesses would rather work with an agency within their industry, choosing a niche can make it easier to sell your services and close business with those companies in your niche.
You’ll be able to show potential clients specific, powerful results that you have delivered for companies like theirs, reducing your sales resistance. Then, every client you land can further evidence your success for future clients, allowing you to stack your results and social proof to attract new business.
Your clients will know you’re the expert in their space, making it easier for them to go through with your services.
Ability to build and systemize your process
Aside from helping you attract more business, choosing a niche can also make your job a lot easier.
Instead of needing to reinvent the wheel for every lawyer, HVAC business, veterinarian, and auto dealer who works with your agency, you’ll be able to use systemized processes for each client, saving you and your team time.
Once you choose your niche, you can map out a program, set up a timeline, and develop a client experience that you’ll stick to for every client. Then, you can hand this repeatable process off to your team and focus on higher-level tasks to grow and scale.
Give you the ability to focus and continuously obtain great results
Delivering effective results for your clients isn’t always easy. Whether you stick to a niche or not, your clients will have a lot of competition in their industry, and helping them stand out amongst their competitors is a challenging task.
However, choosing a specific niche can give you the ability and time to focus on becoming extremely good at what you do. You’ll be able to identify the specific keywords, selling propositions, and strategies that work for your clients.
Your potential clients will be able to see tangible evidence of your successful processes, leading them to choose your agency over others. Eventually, you’ll stand out as one of the best agencies in your niche.
Fast and easy way to accelerate the growth of your agency
Without a niche, you’ll have trouble developing an effective strategy to grow and scale. You’ll need to rework your processes for every new client, hindering your success and keeping you in the “average” tier amongst other agencies.
However, selecting a niche gives you the potential to become much better than the generalist competition. Once you get good at your niche, you’ll be on the fast track to becoming a seven-figure agency.
How to Choose the Best Digital Marketing Niche for Your Agency
There’s no doubt about it — choosing a niche for your agency is highly advantageous for your agency’s growth, reputation, and long-term success. However, choosing the right niche is even more critical than simply focusing on a specific industry.
If your agency has worked with a wide range of clients in numerous industries, you may have trouble identifying a practical niche to narrow your efforts within. First, we recommend brainstorming a few types of businesses you’ve produced the best results for in the past.
Once you’ve identified a potential niche, follow these steps to determine if it could be successful for your agency:
Step 1: Consider if they clump together
You’ll want to choose a niche with which your potential clients could self-identify. All of your clients within this niche should be able to clump together, so to speak, and feel confident naming their companies under your niche category. As a result, your niche will need to be relatively specific.
For example, if you make your niche “dentists,” every dental office will know that you provide the specific marketing services they need to grow their practice. Your dental clients can clump together into this overarching “dentist” niche without wondering whether you have the expertise and processes necessary for their specific industry.
However, if you made your niche a broader category, such as “healthcare,” your potential clients may be unsure whether they fit into your niche or not. Dentists may not describe their services as “healthcare.” The same goes for chiropractors, urgent care clinics, or other more specific health-related practices.
“Healthcare” is not a good niche. While you may be able to use similar strategies between healthcare industries, your clients will not feel as confident working with a broader-niched marketing agency as they would with an agency that targets their specific type of practice.
Instead, homing in your efforts on a smaller niche that your clients could self-identify with will allow you to attract more clients with confidence.
Step 2: Find out if they have the propensity to invest
You should also identify a type of business that has the tendency to invest in digital marketing. If the businesses in the industry typically spend between $1,000 and $5,000 on marketing services, you’ll know that they will be willing to spend money on your niche-focused marketing efforts as well.
Some businesses tend to invest in marketing more than others. For example, hair salons are typically more location-based and advertise through word of mouth rather than print ads or social media marketing. Trying to convince these industries that they need digital marketing, then persuading them to hire your agency, will ultimately waste your time in money.
Instead, we recommend choosing an industry where the marketing money is already flowing and showing businesses in that sector how to spend their marketing budget more wisely through your services.
Step 3: Find out if there are enough of them
You’ll also want to choose an industry with enough businesses to make your efforts worthwhile.
We recommend selecting a niche with at least a few thousand businesses that make over $1 million per year in revenue. You can use the InfoUSA website to discover how many businesses are in a particular niche, then sort your results by revenue.
You should avoid selling your services to businesses that are just starting out. These businesses may not have the budgets to invest in your services long-term or even to remain profitable for more than a few years.
Instead, we always recommend selling to businesses at the top end of the vertical. Searching for a niche with several thousand companies that are already hitting the $1 million mark can make it easier to find clients willing to purchase your services long-term.
Step 4: Consider whether there are industry associations within your particular niche
One of the quickest ways to break into a niche is to join its association or national organization.
For example, the dental industry has the National Dental Association. Plumbers can join the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association. Lawyers can be part of the Bar Association.
Once you join an industry’s association, you can participate in its events, speak at conferences, and get to know its members. Over time, your presence in the association can help you develop leads and gain new clients in your niche.
You’d probably be surprised to learn how many industries have their own associations. However, you’ll want to double-check that a niche you’re considering has one before proceeding. Just perform a quick Google search for “(industry) association” to discover this information.
Step 5: Find out if they have periodic events in which they come together
Along with identifying a niche’s associations, you should also learn about the industry’s recurring events and gatherings that you could attend to get to know potential clients. You can typically find these events by heading to the association’s website and looking for an advanced calendar.
Most associations have annual events, but many also have quarterly events and local chapter gatherings. Speaking at these events can give you an excellent opportunity to present to your top prospects and grow your client base.
You can also search for events outside your industry’s association. Any gathering that allows you to network with businesses in your industry can act as an effective lead generation tool.
If a specific niche does not tend to have periodic events, you may have trouble gaining leads. Consider these gatherings strategically as you develop your niche focus.
Step 6: Have a background and affinity in the niche
Finally, along with considering the logistics of choosing a practical niche, you should also select an industry in which you have a background and affinity.
If you have background experience in a specific industry, you’ll be able to use this knowledge to tailor your marketing strategies and grow your agency faster. You may also have a few contacts that you can use to break into the industry.
Along with considering your background experience, you should also think about whether you have an affinity for a specific industry. For example, maybe you enjoy working within the pool-building industry because pools remind you of summer, your favorite season. Or perhaps you find the cosmetic industry interesting and want to learn more about its processes.
Selecting a niche that you enjoy can make your job easier. You’ll become incredibly enmeshed in the industry over time as you join its associations and develop custom strategies to grow its businesses, so you may as well select one that interests you.
Top Digital Marketing Niches to Consider
We’ve found 5 niches that should be avoided at all cost! On this video we’ll go deep and help you brainstorm your niche options, give you some guidance on the ones to avoid and share some of the niches that we’ve seen other agencies have the most success with.
We’ve spent years helping digital marketing agencies like yours achieve seven-figure annual profits. Throughout our experience, we’ve identified several digital marketing niches that tend to be more profitable and successful than others.
Here is our list of the top industries to target for digital marketing:
Home services:
- Kitchen remodeling
- AC repair
- Plumbing
- Landscaping
- Roofing
- Electricians
- Pest control
- Locksmiths
- Painting
- Flooring installation
- Damage restoration
- Garage door installation & repair
Legal:
- Bankruptcy
- Personal injury
- Divorce
- Criminal
- Traffic
Healthcare:
- Dentists (orthodontist, dental implants, cosmetic dentistry)
- Chiropractors
- Cosmetic surgery
- Weight loss centers
- Eye doctors
- Day spas
- Veterinarians
- Fitness centers / personal trainers
Automotive:
- Auto repair shops
- Auto body shops
- Auto dealers
Business to business:
- Sign companies
- Printing companies
- Document imaging companies
- Document management
These niches have proven successful for other digital marketing agencies because they meet the criteria above. Each of these industries:
- Is specific and narrow
- Tends to invest in marketing
- Has an extensive presence throughout the U.S.
- Has its own associations and events
Reviewing this list of industries that benefit most from digital marketing can help you brainstorm niches that may make sense for your agency. However, you don’t have to choose a niche on this list — perhaps stepping outside these options could allow you to dive into an untapped niche that could be highly profitable.
No matter which niche you choose, it will probably feel oversaturated when you first begin targeting clients and developing strategies within it. You’ll need to establish a competitive advantage to set your agency apart from the dozens or hundreds of other marketing agencies in that niche.
However, choosing a niche that meets the above criteria can give you a leg-up as you break into that industry and begin growing and scaling your digital marketing agency.
Contact Seven Figure Agency Now!
Choosing a niche to shape your digital marketing services around can be highly beneficial as you enhance your agency. However, once you select your niche, you’ll need to put in the work to develop effective strategies that produce real results for your clients.
If you’re serious about turning your business into a seven-figure agency, we can help. Contact Seven Figure Agency now to join our community and learn the strategies you need to grow your agency to the seven-figure mark and beyond.
If you watch these videos & go through the exercises you should have no problem deciding on & committing to a niche that has the highest probability for success. Now go out there, start prospecting, positioning yourself as the expert in that niche & take your agency to the next level!
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