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Answers to Your Marketing Questions — Selecting a Market Niche
28 February 2007You will hear it and see it everywhere (I routinely say it)… find a market niche… I have a small section devoted to selecting a niche in my Mediation Business & Marketing Success Action Plan. I was just talking with another mediator yesterday and we were discussing this topic.
For many mediators embarking on building their practice this is the first big hurdle they encounter. If you have signed up for a court roster, then you may be mediating cases all over the place. Yet, for those of you who loathe the thought … I thought I would reiterate for you, the rationale behind selecting a niche and what it means in the mediation marketing context.
I have pulled the following article from a past Mediation Marketing Tips Newsletter and reposted it here.
Q: A Mediation Marketer has the following question:
Help! I am having difficulty selecting a niche or specialty. What area should I focus on and how do I go about choosing a niche?
A: Excellent question and it demonstrates that you have heard me when I say that in today’s marketplace you really must specialize and define a niche for yourself. Now, this doesn’t mean your niche is a life sentence – you will be able to expand out from your initial starting place. Nor does it mean that you will turn away business from those outside your niche, unless you don’t want to work in that area or feel unqualified to do so. Further, it is possible that you may decide to change niches or expand into other niches as time goes on and you see market trends, or you get feedback from your marketing efforts.
What is A Mediation Market Niche?
A niche is defined as a special area of demand for a product or service. In the mediation context, it is often tied to certain areas of legal or industry specialties. For example, a niche market is employment or workplace mediation. Another niche is family or divorce mediation. You can even have a sub-niche within these areas. Your market niche is your area of the market for mediation upon which you will then target your marketing and focus.
Why Having A Niche Is Important:
Let me remind you why I suggest having a mediation/ADR specialty. First, it allows you to target your marketing to a certain audience. If you say you mediate anything and everything to whom are you going to direct your marketing efforts? Lack of focus and a scattered approach of attempting to throw paint balls out there hoping you hit a wall of clients is an approach doomed to failure. If, however, you are focused on a certain niche or specialty, it is relatively easy for you to figure out where you target audience congregates. You can find the associations your chosen clients (your target audience within your niche) belong to for implementing the writing, speaking/presenting or networking marketing strategies.
Second, having a clear niche or specialty will allow you to position yourself as an expert in your niche. Remember that people are going to hire you when they know you, like you and trust that you can help them. If you position yourself as an expert (through speaking, writing etc. within your niche), then you build trust and credibility over time. These are key ingredients for attracting clients to you. People like to hire specialists and experts in a certain area. Many employment attorneys, for example, will only hire employment mediators who have practiced employment law or specialize in that area.
Third, having a clear niche or specialty (in addition to a unique or brandeable approach to your services) will allow you to distinguish yourself from your competition. I know as mediators we want to collaborate not compete. In order to do this, you must distinguish yourself from the hundreds of other mediators operating in your geographical area. If you are attempting to serve the same potential clients, in the same potential way and are not focusing on a niche, you may get lost in the crowd.
The bottom line is that having one or two niches upon which you focus will allow you to concentrate your time, energy and resources in order to succeed.
Strategies To Consider In Selecting A Niche:
Ok, so now that you understand why it’s important to have a niche, let’s explore some strategies for selecting a niche. The first group of questions relate to your personal motivators and your personal expertise and experience:
1) What is your natural market? Your natural market builds upon what you already have in terms of contacts, reputation, expertise and experience. If, for example, you have been a medical malpractice attorney for many years, your natural market would be to branch out into specializing in mediating medical malpractice cases. If you have been a therapist or social worker working with divorcing couples, your natural market would be to specialize in divorce or family mediation. Get the idea? Define your natural market:
2) What are you passionate about?
3) What angers you? What motivates you to act?
The next group of questions relate to factors to consider outside of yourself and about the potential market you choose: Note, not all of these factors must be satisfied to select a profitable niche – these are just some ideas to help you intelligently and strategically select a niche that will work for you:
1. Choose an area to specialize in that will pay for your services. Is there a proven market in your jurisdiction or another where this group of people will buy mediation or conflict management services? You certainly can be a pioneer and forge a new niche (and probably will reap wonderful long term rewards). I suggest that you think strategically about whether this group of people would be willing to buy and has the ability to pay for your services. For example, selecting a niche of neighborhood disputes in an area where there is a free community mediation program would not be a good idea. Yet, selecting a niche of working in real estate disputes (of all types from buying and selling, to eminent domain, to broker fiduciary issues, to undisclosed defects, etc.) may be a good niche.
2. Choose a niche that can be easily identified and affordably contacted. For example, a niche that already has established trade organizations, industry magazines, or local groups where you can easily find the people in this niche;
3. Choose a niche that does not already have a lot of mediators serving it in your area. Is there some up and coming area that you can be the first specialist in? Do you have some unique traits or experiences that you could focus on (e.g. heritage, business experience in a certain industry etc). You do not need to limit your mediation or conflict management niches to the existing legal specialties (e.g. employment, commercial, intellectual property, real property, bankruptcy, securities and insurance) Your niche can be a certain industry, an ethnic group, a faith based group etc. Think outside the box.
4. Choose a niche that either has independent business owners or is served by lawyers or other professionals (therapists, accountants etc.) that you can educate with benefits and thereby create demand for your services.
5. Choose a niche that has serious conflict problems that you can help solve (relates to no. 1 and client’s willingness to pay you to help them solve their conflict problems).
6. Choose a niche in an area that you already have expertise in (a natural market) or are interested in developing expertise in.
7. Choose a niche that has a critical mass of “buying units.” In order to get a certain critical mass you may want to expand your geographical reach and/or have more than one niche. I just caution you to focus on business development in one area at a time! If you take a scattered approach you will not develop the necessary expertise or depth of market penetration to be successful.
I hope you find these suggested factors to consider helpful. I cannot stress enough the importance in today’s marketplace of finding one or two areas to really focus on in the beginning and to distinguish yourself from the crowd. Part of attracting clients is to clearly define for yourself what type of clients you want to attract. Once you are clear on this, you can then measure your marketing activities against whether your strategy is aimed at connecting with your chosen clients within your niche.
NEVER GIVE UP!
Kristina
p.s. If you are still struggling with this critical concept, contact me. You can get a one time business acceleration session with me (up to one hour long) for $97 (This is more than 60% off my typical consulting/coaching rate). Also, remember our success groups start April 2007, sign up now.
Posted in Uncategorized, Marketing Strategies, Answers to your marketing & practice building quest
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March 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Medical Malpractice Mediation…
Thanks for creating this blog. I thought it was a very interesting read. It is so interesting reading other peoples personal take on a subject….