The Importance of Niching
Deciding to follow your dreams and start your design business is the first step to launch the career you have always wanted for yourself. When you start your business you want to be seen as the expert in your industry, or the “jack of all trades”, so you can stand out from the crowd and become more desirable to your dream clients. You can do this by niching down your design business.
A niche is defined as a special segment of the market or a particular kind of service.
Finding a niche for your design business is important because it will help you confidently raise your prices, book out with dream clients, and make your design business a full-time career. By positioning yourself as an expert or a specialist, you can charge a higher price for your specialized services. The ones that value your expertise are willing to pay more for your services. So be clear about your skillset and specialty! If clients see you as an expert, then they know that you must be the go-to designer for the problem that they have and need help with.
Here are some general questions and topics to help you niche your business:
What unique offer do you provide?
What special training or education do you have?
What is your artistic style or aesthetic?
Do you have a unique solution or strategy for your ideal client’s problems?
What industry experience do you have?
How can you help your ideal client with their major roadblocks or issues in their business?
You can also niche down by a specific client, specialty, or style you want to work with. You may start with just one and once you gain more confidence you can do all three. Let's go into more detail!
Clients
If you're going to niche down by a specific client, it's best to get very specific about who that person is. Here are some questions to consider:
Who is your dream customer? (Think about their age, gender, profession, etc)
Where do they live?
Do they have kids at home?
What does your dream customer need that only you can offer them?
When will your dream customer be reaching out to you?
Where will your dream customer find you?
The better you understand your specific dream client, then the better you are able to cater to specialized services to them to help them solve their specific problem.
Specialty
Saying you specialize in graphic design is very broad. By getting really specific about what you specialize in within graphic design, that will help you become a specialist and attract those bigger budget clients. For example, you can brand yourself as a web designer that specializes in a specific platform like Squarespace, Wordpress, Shopify, etc. By getting really good at one platform, you become a specialist and then you'll be more sought after. Another example is having your specialty as a brand identity designer. Potential clients that are searching for an expert to help their with their brand identity can seek out your specialize services.
Style
By niching within a style, potential clients will start to come to you for that specific style that you offer. This could mean that potential clients gravitate towards your style through your use of colors, illustrations, fonts, etc. I recommend all new designers to experiment with different styles, but once you figure out the best style that represents you and the style that you want to offer, then clients seeking that style will gravitate towards your design business. An example of a style is clean and sleek.
Identifying your niche will help you with the success of your design business, so once you have done that you can expand your services and offerings to revolve around that. Set yourself as the expert designer and you will see your business thrive in no time with the rates and clients that you love.
