creative biz | 3 questions to help you find your niche

meagan visser of MeaganVisser.com has a fantistic five part series for us this week on running a successful creative or handmade business. this is part 2... (part 1)

In my last post, I asked you if you were considering starting or getting serious about having an online handmade business. If you answered 'yes' then pay attention because today I'm going to tell you one thing you must do in order to help your shop become memorable to potential customers.

Let's start off with a little story about my first online shop.

I started selling online 3 years ago. I was the type of person that liked to dabble in a lot of different types of crafts so I decided to set up an Etsy shop to see if I could make some money off of what I had fun doing...crafting. So I jumped in, came up with a name, made several different types of products such as ceramic soap dishes, skirts, knitting needle cases, jewelry, etc. I snapped some photos of my products on my living room floor, put them in my shop all on the same day, & then I waited to see if anything sold. Slowly but surely some things started to sell. A few of my skirts & a necklace or two. But then it all stopped. I went for months not selling anything. Talk about being discouraged! I was! I remember being so excited to tell my husband that I'd gotten my first sale. I thought this was the start of a fun new opportunity for me. Boy was I wrong!

My first mistake...

My first mistake was that I wasn't specific enough with my products! I didn't know what would sell. I just wanted to put some products out there & make money. I wanted to have something for everyone & I didn't want to limit myself. Do you know what my shop ended up looking like? One of those side of the road, hodge-podge yard sales. Don't know what one of those looks like? Well come visit me here in East Tennessee & you'll find out real quick! People take a bunch of their old junk & set it out on the side of the road with a for sale sign next to it & think that they're going to make some money & get rid of some junk at the same time. Do you think it works? Absolutely not! First of all, people don't want junk & secondly they don't want to dig through all of your junk to find what they're looking for!

Here are some reasons why starting a shop where you offer a lot of different types of products doesn't always work out so well.

1. Customers don't remember a shop that sales a little bit of everything like they remember a shop that's devoted to one type of product or craft.
2. It's harder to make a name for yourself & brand your business when you're all over the place.
3. It's harder to market your products because you have so many different target markets.
4. You're giving people too many choices which ends up being confusing & overwhelming to them.

I'm sure I could continue on, but I think you get my point.

3 questions

Here are some very basic questions for you to ask yourself before you jump the gun & open a shop that doesn't do much for you. Don't make my mistake! Plus, I have a fun little worksheet that you can print out to use to help narrow your choices down. Click here to get it!

1. What do you love? It's pretty simple really. What types of crafting do you really enjoy? What are you passionate about? What type of project makes you excited to get started? Maybe you love sewing quilts? Could you do it day in & day out, every single day? Would you still love it if you had to make 8 or more in one month or would you grow tired of it & get burnt out? What if you weren't getting any sales? Would you still love making them?

2. What are you good at? You may really enjoy making & decorating cakes, but are you any good at it? Do people rave about what a natural talent you have for it? Do people ask you to make cakes for them when they need one? Could your products compete with others that you've seen being sold? If you want to really do your best & give your handmade business a great start you have to offer unique, quality products. Your shop isn't an East TN junk sale. You have something that people want & need. You've given them something that they're proud to show off & promote to their friends. You have something you're proud to put your name on.

3. What's the competition like? I'll be honest with you. Selling online can be tough. Have you gone onto Google & typed in your product idea to see what comes up? Have you checked out the various handmade marketplaces to see what other shops are there selling the same thing you want to sell? If you haven't yet, you should! It's always smart to be aware of the competition around you. So here's what I suggest doing if you've narrowed your craft down to one thing you love doing that you do well, but the market is saturated. Study your competition & figure out how your business & your product stands out from them. How are you different? That will be your ticket to dealing with the competition.

Share with me in the comments below...

What do you love to do & what are you good at?

further reading:

• what are you really selling?
• what do you do when you are selling the same thing as everyone else?

Meagan Visser is a wife, mother, & creative entrepreneur living in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee. She inspires moms to pursue their creative business dreams on her coaching websiteMeaganVisser.com & she offers fashionable & eco-friendly products for babies & toddlers in her Etsy shop,Baby Swank. Connect with her on Twitter & Facebook!

what do you do when you are selling the same thing everyone else is selling?

if you are like most little biz builders your product idea was the catalyst for your business. you had an idea for a product or some sort of expertise you wanted to share, and built your business around that product.

now the hard work begins.

now you have to figure out how to stand out amongst your competition, to market and sell your thing.

if your product (be it a physical product, a service you provide or information that you share) is innovative in some way – if it fills a gap in the marketplace, is something people really needed that no one was offering, if it different in and of itself – then it is easier to focus on the benefits of your thing and the target who needs it.

but, as is more often the case, your product is probably pretty darn similar to a lot of other products, and you are probably finding it hard to stand out amongst the competition.

my little biz is photography, so let’s use that as an example. while i can make every effort to have my own unique style, to target my own audience of right people, and to offer an experience or packages that are a bit different from others, when it comes down to it my product is basically the same as any other photographer: images.

the people who are looking to get professional photography will generally make their decision based on some combination of the price and what you get for it, the style of the photographs, and the expertise/skill of the photographer. and as a pool, all of us photographers are competing with each other to stand out and get those people to choose us. we are all trying to get a little piece of the same pie.

i can do a search for local photographers and have a look at what everyone else is offering and try to find some sort of gap in the marketplace. i can say my photographs are ‘candid’, my prints are ‘high quality’, my studio is ‘child-friendly’, or whatever i want to try to stand out. but in the end the other photographers are doing the same thing. the differences between us are quite small.

so what do you do when your product doesn’t have an obvious point of difference?

you go back to the marketplace and target people who are different. you find out what people need that no one else is addressing and frame the benefits of what you offer differently. your product doesn’t become different, the way you frame it and who you target it to becomes different.

instead of trying to grab a piece of that pie of people who are looking for professional photographers (or whatever it is you sell) look at all the rest of people. why aren’t they hiring professional photographers? 

have a look at the objections that exist in the marketplace about the thing you sell. objections are the fears/misconceptions/stereotypes/concerns/questions people have surrounding your product.

if you can find an objection that is not being addressed by any of your competition, and you can figure out a way to address it effectively, then you have just found

• a point of difference for your business, a real benefit that you can market and sell
• a target audience, a little niche that you can directly target with your marketing and selling strategies
• a basis for your brand message, something you can shout out loud about your little biz that will stand out

maybe it is time to stop looking at your product and your business as it fits in to the niche that already exists. instead look at it with a fresh set of eyes – change the way you view what you do so that you can sell your thing in a new way to new people. make your own pie!

need help with your target audience? the benefits of what you sell? your point of difference? your brand message? consider purchasing the blueprints to build a framework and build a brand. step by step workbooks to help you rock these aspects of biz!

further reading:

• what do you really sell?
• who are your right people?
• why would someone buy your thing?
• how to handle customer objections

why would someone buy your thing?

do you ever have a day or a week when you keep seeing the same message over and over? like the universe is trying to tell you something? 

that keeps happening to me. one day i kept reading things and seeing messages that made me think of one thing: why would someone buy my thing when everyone else seems to be selling the same thing?

naomi at itty biz wrote a killer post about finding a niche. in it she said:

When I was in England, everybody and their mother was starting a children’s clothing business. They called themselves mumpreneurs and they set up shops in their garden shed offices and put a shiny new website on their credit card and Voila! They were in the children’s clothing business.

I read about this phenomenon — although it was never called a phenomenon, and every writer treated each individual mum as if she was scandalously unique — in psychology magazines, business magazines and, repeatedly, home decorating magazines. Apparently there’s money in kids’ clothes.

When asked why they started these businesses, the answer was categorically the same. They were good at it and they really liked to sew.

i read that and thought: “gah! that is exactly how photography seems to be. everyone and their dog is doing it!” (by the way, naomi followed up with "Being good at something and liking it is not a sufficient business plan".)

then Jodi at mcp wrote a great post about competition between photography businesses. it was just what i was stressing about! (by the way, even for non-photographers i think her advice is worth reading.)

then at the virtual photography studio i read a post called how to stop justifying your low, low prices. and here was a piece of advice:

Stop being average. If you do what everyone else does, you’ll get the same results they get. The only way to be better than average is to quit striving for average. Ask yourself questions like, “What can I do to be the best photographer in my niche?” Take what someone else is doing and add more to it. That doesn’t mean give them more photographs at a cheaper price. It means give them more service to make them appreciate what you do. The problem we’re facing now is we have a whole lot of average, so we don’t even know how to find the WOW. Give a little bit more, and you’ll soon be the talk of the town.

i know i am not the only one thinking about the competition and how to stand out among the rest. the question is what are you going to do about it?

what is your unique selling position (USP)?

this is the thing that makes your thing different from all the other similar things out there. ie: why should someone buy your thing instead of someone else’s. and here is a tip: your USP should not be your price. someone else can always start selling their thing for less than yours. and if you need or want to change your price you need a reason for people to follow you. that reason is your USP. (i will pause here in my list to tell you to go sign up for naomi’s free course at itty biz.com. it rocks and you will be able to figure out your USP with her awesome advice.) 

can you create a niche for your thing?

if you really rock at doing your thing for a specific group of people, especially if you are the ONLY person who really rocks, you will become the go-to person in that niche. can you focus your efforts to one smaller portion of your market? can you branch into an area that no one else seems to be doing? can you think of an area that is outside of, but related to, your regular market that you can tap into? if you have a lot of competition because everyone and their dog is selling handmade cards to mums maybe you could start selling handmade gift tags & gift bags to someone who is selling knitted booties and wants some really cool packaging. 

can you expand your product list?

alternatively, instead of focusing on a smaller niche, maybe you need to branch out and offer some new products and expand your niche. if you have great clients who love buying your baby bibs and blankies can you start making some book bags and pencil cases for school kids? maybe some funky hats and scarves for teens? if you can find out what your clients might want next from you as their needs change (ie their kids grow, or they go back to work, or become grandparents or whatever) then start offering that to them.

who is your ideal customer?

picture your perfect customer in your head. now make your thing, market your thing and sell your thing to that person. you don’t have to win over the entire facebook universe, just your ideal customer and her friends. other people might go buy someone else’s thing and that’s okay! they might not have been right for you anyways, and aren’t going to be the ones who buy everything you sell and pass your name on to everyone they know (your ideal customer will). focus on your ideal customer every time you do anything for your biz.

make sure your brand fits

so if you decided to branch out and make hair clips for teens because no one else was doing it, and your new niche is teens who wear school uniforms, and your USP is that you make hairclips for teens that match their school uniform and aren’t butt ugly, and your ideal customer is a mom of 3 teens who wear school uniforms and are willing to pay the big bucks so their kids have funky hair accessories that don’t suck, then your brand better not look like you are selling hair accessories for 3 year olds. 

while we are at it, make sure your brand stands out

if everyone else ‘looks’ cutsey and sweet then make your biz the only one that is punk rock. if everyone else ‘looks’ traditional and timeless then you be modern and funky. if everyone else is using a cute little bird on a tree for their logo then make yours a lion with razor sharp teeth. i am just sayin' if you want people to remember you the next time they are shopping for your thing, then you better start being memorable. 

ok, go work on being being awesome and let us know how it is going. share this post with others, add your comments, ask a question... please, i would love to hear from you =)