How to design your offers to attract your ideal clients

I've spoken about niching a lot on this podcast—but here's the thing: Niching down is one of the simplest ways to shift who your business attracts. So if you're struggling to stand out and find that you're getting people shopping around for the cheapest option, rather than seeing the value in what you sell, then it could be time to switch up what you offer. So, in today's episode, I'm sharing some new ways to think about niching.

– How asking yourself some big questions will help you to shift who your business attracts, such as “how niche is too niche?” and “won't niching limit my business?”.
– How thinking about what your business sells (and to who) will help you to clarify your own niche.
– The 3 different ways to niche your business and the people this will attract.
– How niching can help you stand out in an otherwise crowded, oversaturated online world.

 

What you sell and how this can impact who your business attracts.

 

Now this blog is going to be a short and sweet one, but it's super relevant for you if you are struggling to stand out in a really saturated market.
Right now I know what it's like online. I'm in one of the most saturated markets, right where I'm talking to online business owners and so is everybody else. But if you're feeling like me right now where it's really noisy online, this blog is going to help you to stand out.

It's also relevant for you if you are noticing that you've had a lot of people shopping around for the cheapest option, and when they do choose you, they might be a little bit painful. They don't value what you do and they demand the world, right? You get those painful clients who just want you because you're the cheapest, or they're just looking for the cheapest option out there.
Now, I've spoken a lot about niching on this blog, but here's the thing. Niching down is one of the simplest ways to shift who your business attracts. It's one of the simplest ways to shift who your business attracts and when I spoke about it recently in the blog with some signs that you are in the wrong niche, that was a bit of a big shift on the way that we think about niching.
Because a lot of the time we think about niching as I only serve these people, I only work with course creators, I only sell to online business owners, I only work with professional women. That's what people think of as niching. And as soon as I talk about nicheing, the questions that come up are inevitably always, how do I niche down? How niche is too niche? Which niche should I choose? Won't I limit my business by niching down? And this is when we think about niching as a way of limiting our market rather than as a way of getting really clear about who we want to attract and who we want to work with.
When we think about niching as limiting our market, that's when we start to think about, oh, which niche should I choose? Will I limit my business? Am I going to have enough people to sell to? But when we think about niching as, who do I want to serve? Who do I want to attract, that becomes a very different game. That becomes, you're not just niching so that you can say that you've niched and ticked that box, but it becomes you're niching down to particular people that you really want to help, or you're niching down by particular things that you really want to do, particular outcomes you really want to deliver.
Let me put it in a really easy to understand way. Think of your business like a restaurant. Now in most major cities, there are hundreds or thousands of restaurants and they're all competing against each other for a certain number of people who are going out for dinner that night or lunch or whatever, and think about the last time that you chose a restaurant, what made you choose that particular restaurant?
You probably didn't just think, well, I'm hungry. Let me pick the first one that I see. Or maybe you didn't think I'm hungry. Let me just find a place that sells food. To be fair though, that is sometimes my approach, like if I'm in a shopping mall and I'm hungry, just give me the first thing. Because if I'm hungry and there are people around, I'm not a pleasant person.
But when you are picking that restaurant, you might have chosen it because you were craving pizza, you're craving sushi, or because you had seen photos of it on Instagram and you thought, oh, the vibe looks great. Or the food that, that food looks like a great experience. Right. So when we are niching down, there are actually three different ways that you can niche that restaurant.

Let's call it a restaurant, niching your restaurant. So the first way is we only serve kids. This is how way too many businesses niche. This is the, I only work with high performing women. I see this a lot with coaches as well, like business coach for creatives or coach for overachievers. That's one way to niche.

The next one is niching your restaurant by saying, we only serve Italian food. This is now where you are niching by what you offer, so you are not then trying to sell Italian food to someone who is craving Japanese food. And it means that you are not then trying to create Japanese food when you really don't enjoy doing it, and you really just want to be making pizza and Italian food instead.
And then the third way is niching by saying, we offer a high-end experience by the kind of experience that you deliver. And it doesn't have to be a high end experience. With the restaurant analogy, there used to be a restaurant here, where you could go in and they would blindfold you and you would have this entire dinner not being able to see any of the food.
Now that's a fun experience that not many other places offer. So they're not having to compete against the restaurant that's only serving Italian food for somebody who's looking for a really fun experience, fun, unique experience that they could maybe take somebody on a date to, and again, like fast food, McDonald's is a particular type of experience that they deliver.
And because of the experience they are delivering, they're not trying to compete against Nobu, which is like one of the high end restaurants that I think is pretty well known around the world. So the people that these restaurants, these different niches of restaurants attract, they're attracting different people because of the different things that they sell.
Somebody who's craving Italian food is gonna go to an Italian restaurant. Somebody who wants a really fun, unusual experience, they're going to go to that blindfolded restaurant. Or somebody who wants a really high-end, a completely out of this world food experience is going to go to a high-end restaurant that sells that high end experience. So if you are struggling to stand out, and you're finding that people are just shopping for the cheapest option rather than seeing the value in what you sell, it could be that you need to niche down what you are offering. You need to think about what you are offering and think about how could you potentially choose to offer just one particular niche, right? So the Italian food, it doesn't mean you only do pizza, it doesn't mean you only do one type of pizza, but it means you aren't creating pizza and sushi, or you aren't selling pizza and sushi. Or maybe you need to think about what is the experience, what is an experience that you can offer, right? Two questions for you to reflect on that.

 

Firstly, what is something new that you could offer that nobody else in your space is doing?

I think too often we will look at what our competitors are doing, or we'll look at what everyone else is doing and we assume that that's what we need to be doing because if it's working for them, then it must work for us. For example, if everyone's doing masterminds and you see everyone around you doing masterminds, of course you're going to think I have to deliver a mastermind.
Or if everyone around you is delivering VIP days, you're going to think, oh, I have to do a VIP day. Am I missing out if I don't have a V I P day? And then suddenly you are now competing against all of these people who are also offering VIP days. When there might be somebody in your market or there might be a segment of your market who is like, I don't want to do a VIP day, I want a VIP week. Great. That's a new offer, right? And now you're not competing against those people who are selling VIP days.

The second question to reflect on what kind of experience could you offer that would attract your dream clients?

If you are wanting to attract premium clients, you need to offer them a premium experience? Premium clients will pay a premium price point for a premium experience, but they won't pay a premium price point for a McDonald's experience. So what kind of experience could you offer that would attract your dream clients? Somebody who really inspired me with the whole experience idea is Darcy, Ben and Koosa.
She's a photography business coach, and I met her at a retreat that we were both speaking at in Tulum and she talked about how one of the experiences that she put together for her clients is, they meet her in Paris. So she travels to Paris a few times a year and they meet her in Paris and she's put together this beautiful long day for them where they visit all of these different locations and they eat these amazing meals.
And at all of the different locations, she's taking photos for them so that at the end of the day they have all of their social media content sorted. That is a premium. That's an example of a premium experience that nobody else is really doing. She's not having to compete against other people. Because it's a one of a kind experience.
So what could you do? What could you offer that somebody would pay that premium price tag for? And that will help you to stand out.

 

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