If you are a business owner, I think you can agree that the market is saturated with businesses that are selling similar products or services, no matter the industry. Because of this, you may find your business struggling to compete against the many peers in your industry.

You may struggle to reach customers, increase sales, rank in search terms, or just struggle to get your name out there.

This is a tremendous headache to passionate and driven business owners as it may seem like no matter how much money, time, and attention they put into their sales or marketing, they are not seeing a return on their efforts.

If this sounds like you, you should consider defining or redefining your niche. This will make all the difference you need to outsell your competition. This is especially important for small businesses who want to increase their stream of income and build customer loyalty.

What is a Niche?

A niche is defined as a specialized segment of the market for a particular product or service. In the business sphere, a niche is “a specialized or focused area of a broader market that businesses can differentiate themselves from the competition.” (Business News Daily).

Niche is the second step of the ActionCOACH “6 Steps to Building a Better Business”. We define it to mean no price competition. This is because many owners are tempted to differentiate their business by offering “the lowest prices in the market.”

What they are doing is setting themselves up for bankruptcy because anyone can undercut them on price. If they continue to strive to offer the lowest prices, they put themselves into a competition on price that leads them to no profits.

The key is to distinguish yourself against the competition by offering something unique. You can do this by defining your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.

Defining Your Unique Selling Proposition

Rosser Reeves coined the term Unique Selling Proposition in his 1961 book, Reality Advertising, In his book, he details that the proposition has to be something that only your company can offer.

You may say, “I offer the same products or services as my competition. How can I create a USP?”

This will require a bit of research on your part. We suggest looking at your competition’s website, marketing, social media, etc. Then ask yourself these questions:

What do you offer that they don’t? What processes are better than your competitors? Is your customer service unique or better? Do you have a better delivery process or maintenance, etc.

Once you list these things, you can then incorporate them into your sales and marketing process. You can develop new sales pitches, flyers, emails, or materials that will reflect your USP.

If you want to explore USP even more, we detail tips to help you define yours in this article.

Consider Your Audience

A strong USP is one that cuts through the clutter of our everyday lives. It is reaching the right people and catching their attention. It’s not broad and attempting to reach everyone.

To reach your audience, you need to define your niche. But to define your niche, you have to look at your audience.

Research your customer base to discover their interests, frustrations, desires, communication style, and everything else that will help you learn more about them. It is also helpful to know things such as age, gender, location, education level, and socio-economic level.

Here’s what you should consider:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. What are their needs?
3. Are their needs being met?
4. How can your product or service meet their needs?
5. What are their values?
6. How can you appeal to their values in your messaging?

You may have done this at the start of your business, but it’s good to check in on this regularly to detect any changes in interests that you should be mindful of.

If you’d like to learn more about our “6 Steps to a Better Business” in which we discuss niche further, register for our free event, which we host on a monthly basis. You can learn more about that here.