7. Should you have a niche? (And how to choose one)

Welcome to 15 Minute Freelancer, your snack-sized guide to being your own boss and building a business and life you love. I'm your host, Louise Shanahan. My LinkedIn bio says I'm a freelance health copywriter. But for the next 15 minutes, I'll be tickling your ears with practical strategies, behind the scenes stories, and nuggets o' wisdom so you can create a freelance business that works for you. Whether you're just starting out or you've been self-employed for a while, I'll be right here with you to help me navigate the ups and downs of freelancing life. So, grab a coffee relax and join me for 15 minutes of freelancing fun. Don't forget to hit subscribe! 

Hello and Happy Friday. Today we are tackling an issue that comes up a lot in the freelance world, and that is the question of should you have a niche? Is it better to specialise in one particular thing or to be a generalist or a Jack or Jill of all trades? Is choosing a niche overrated or underrated? 

Now some people swear by specialising, while others think it's better to keep your options open. And in truth, there are pros and cons to both. This week I did a quick poll on Twitter and LinkedIn – thank you to everybody who participated – to see whether people think choosing a niche is overrated or underrated. And the results were pretty evenly split. I think slightly more people were leaning towards specialising. But it seems like there were some misunderstandings about niching. So that's what we're talking about today.

First up, let's be clear about what we mean when we talk about specialising or having a niche. To me, this is about building your business and services to serve a particular industry or a type of client, or to offer a specific type of project or service. It's really a way of narrowing down your services to be an expert in something, so that you're known for something. You can slice that a million different ways, which we'll get into in a moment. 

Why might you do this? There are a few reasons I think people want to choose a niche. First of all, you become more of an expert. You hone your skills in that area. You understand the client's needs, the industry trends and jargon that they might be using or trying to avoid. So you can give your clients a more tailored service. You can deliver better results. And you can probably do that faster too. Your expertise is going to be more highly valued by your clients. And you're less likely to be seen as a hired help, you're more likely to be seen as a consultant that they bring in to solve a particular problem. That's all about building trust. 

Here's an example that I quite often like to give when I'm talking about niching. If you needed open heart surgery (bear with me!) you’d probably want an expert heart surgeon doing that, right? You would want someone who's done it a million times before, who's got a good track record, and who's got previous patients who can attest to those skills. You probably wouldn't want a GP who's willing to give it a shot and figure it out as they go, because they did something similar a few years back. No offence to GPs. 

It's a way to differentiate yourself from everyone else. And having that competitive edge is not only better for your clients, but it's also a really great marketing tool. It's much easier to showcase your relevant work and results. And it's easier to build your reputation in a particular area of expertise. I think that makes it easier for people to talk about you and refer you for projects. You become the go-to person for that thing. I've put effort into being known as a health copywriter. So that if anyone asks you, dear listener, if you know anyone who might be interested in taking on a health copywriting project, I hope you would immediately think of me. Even if you know loads of generalists who would do a great job, I want to be the first person you think of – that's the whole strategy. 

Niching makes it easier to build your authority and easier for people to remember you. I don't know about you, but I'm in a lot of different Slack channels, and there are quite often

different project opportunities coming up. It's so much easier if people just tag you in the opportunities because they think of you for that project, rather than you having to pop up in the comments every time a job comes up saying, “I can do that! I can do that!” 

It's a much better marketing tool than you having to do the outreach all the time. It just makes running your business a lot easier. You know what you do, it's easier to market yourself, and your processes for running your projects will be smoother, because you're not having to start from scratch each time and think, “Oh, how do I do this again? It’s a while since I've done this kind of project.” 

You don't feel like you're in competition with other freelancers. I'm just generally a big proponent of making freelancing feel easy. And to me niching is one big way to do that. Of course, all of that usually means that you can charge a premium and make more money because people pay for expertise, don't they? 

So that all sounds great, right? Why might some people choose not to do this? Well, being a generalist means you can be more flexible in the projects you choose. I think that's really the main attraction. Keeping your options open, you can bring insights from different industries and clients. And you can bring a fresh pair of eyes to each project. There's a huge advantage in that too. 

Some freelancers say they prefer to stay open to different opportunities. Choosing a niche would mean closing off options. You might be put off choosing a niche because you think you'll get bored doing the same thing all the time. Maybe you enjoy learning new stuff, and you crave that choice and flexibility, which after all, is a big reason why many of us start freelancing in the first place, isn't it? But that's also where I think this misunderstanding comes in. 

From the comments on the poll, a lot of people tend to assume that niching just means choosing an industry to focus on. If you're a freelance writer, niching might be assumed to mean that you specialise in health or eCommerce or finance or pet stores or whatever it is. And some people, rightly enough, say they can't choose a niche because they don't want to write about one thing all the time, or they're not just interested in one thing. Well, I hope you do have a lot of interests. That's not really what niching is about, in my view.

Niching by topic is just one way to do it. Yes, you can specialise by industry, which is what I do. But you can also specialise by the type of project, or the service that you offer too. As a copywriter, that might be website copywriting, or SEO copywriting, or case studies, or direct response, or white papers, or email marketing. It could be a particular tone of voice that you write in. The list is really endless.  

You might specialise by the type of client, so that could be working with B2B brands with an annual turnover of at least $50 million, or solopreneurs, or coaches, or companies with between five and 20 employees. Maybe it's organisations that are based in a particular geographical location, it really could be anything. It may also include the personality or values that you share with the client: you might only want to work with clients that love to be controversial. Or maybe you want to limit your clients to those that value sustainability, 

You might be known for a particular style. If you were a designer, you might specialise in Art Nouveau illustrations, or bold prints, or a particular approach to typography, or American kitsch. Maybe you focus on logos, or branding, or ads. Maybe you're known for using a particular software, or maybe your niche is about the way that you walk clients through the process in a nice, easy way. It can really be any of those things. 

And you can combine these niches into even more focused areas of expertise. To go back to the copywriting example (because that's what I know best) you might focus on email marketing for food-related eCommerce companies. Do you see? It could be any combination of the type of client and the industry and the type of service. Really whatever you like. 

Equally, you can expand out and go in the opposite direction. Let's say that you are a FinTech marketer. Your clients will value your expertise in that niche industry and your understanding of the current regulations and new developments. But you can also make their life easier if you can solve multiple problems for them at once, by bringing in the generalist side of things. So maybe you would write their website and then build in a content marketing and social media strategy. And maybe you also have expertise in Facebook ads. So you can apply generalist skill set in a way that can be a real advantage when it comes to serving your clients in a particular area. 

There are a few considerations though. You need to be sure that there is a decent market for the niche that you choose. You know, there's no point if you decide to offer a particular service and nobody wants it. You need to be sure that you can deliver those services to that market. So again, there would be no point saying I'm going to do X Y Z services, if that's actually not something that you can do to a very high standard. And you need to be sure that you enjoy it enough to make it the focus of your work because it is something that you are going to have to talk about a lot. 

All that said, if you're sold on the idea of having a niche, how do you figure out what exactly your niche should be? As you may have gathered by now I'm strongly in favour of niching. I thought it might be helpful if I just talk through how I figured out my niche and how it works for me now. 

For me starting out as a new freelance copywriter, I didn't have a lot of samples or previous projects to demonstrate my ability to get results when I spoke to new clients. And you might be in that position too. If you're just starting out, people ask, “What have you done before?” and maybe you don't really have many samples yet. And that's fine. Nobody does at the beginning. If I said I was a generalist, it would be really hard for me to stand out and make a strong case for why anyone should hire me. 

But I could draw on my previous experience and position myself as an expert in the health industry from day one, because I did have expertise in healthcare. I had 10 years in government, which was mostly in public health. I had a Master's in Health Policy and I had personal experience of health challenges and an interest in health and fitness. That meant that I could speak with confidence about the health industry from various angles. So rather than focusing on my copywriting expertise, which of course I was building up at the same time doing lots of training and courses, really, I was emphasising my expertise in health and understanding the different issues and concerns that my clients had. I also had experience of big comms campaigns and behaviour change, and an insider view of public sector policymaking, which was relevant to health care brands, who might want to influence the decision makers. So it was also about understanding my client's target audience, too. It made more sense for me to lean into that area of expertise to command reasonable fees at the beginning, rather than starting out as a journalist without portfolio at that point. 

That's worked really well for me, I definitely don't get bored. I know a lot of people worry that they're going to end up writing about the same thing all the time, but I interpret health very broadly. For example, this week, I've been working on a white paper on cancer diagnostics in the UK, and a website for a fitness company in Saudi Arabia. It's not boring. There's loads of variety. 

I don't feel like I'm being pigeonholed. Interestingly, I find that clients often appreciate the fact that I have a stake in the ground. So even if it's not their area, I often have people say, “I know you focus on health, but can you do this other thing?” I think it pays to be seen as an expert in something rather than just being seen as willing to take whatever you can get. 

To address the original misunderstanding, nobody says you can't do work outside your niche. I do non-health projects all the time. A few months ago, I was working on a language learning website. And I regularly write for a third sector organisations in Edinburgh through my own kind of personal contacts. So that helps keep things varied and fresh, too. 

I think it's natural as freelancers, we often want to be helpful. And we don't want to say no to people. And especially, you know, in the current circumstances with the pandemic, or maybe our particular financial situation, means it feels kind of uncomfortable to say no to paying work that comes our way. We're always kind of programmed to say yes, but having a specialism doesn't mean that you have to say no to those other things. This is your business, you get to decide, you can have more than one niche, and your niche can change over time. There really are no rules when it comes to this. 

Let's recap some of the things that you might consider when you're choosing your niche. You probably want to consider your expertise, your experience and your interests. You can start by listing all the projects that you've done recently, and trying to see if there is a common thread between the projects that you enjoy and the ones that you can get the best results for your clients, and the ones that pay a decent fee. 

What are your clients looking for? What can clients pay? And then when you start to narrow it down, you might then think about whether you would enjoy doing this kind of project on a regular basis. Can you do it to a high standard on a regular basis? Can you comfortably position yourself as an expert? Do you have the social proof or the qualifications or whatever it is to position yourself as the expert? 

And then you want to think about is there demand for that nice relaxed specialism that you could offer? To figure that out, you might speak to others in your industry about what they're doing, and find out what's working. You could speak to your clients about what they're investing in, and what's a priority for them in the coming year. And pay attention to what's on social media and what conversations people are having about what they say they need and what's becoming a challenge for them. What they're going to be investing in over the next wee while. 

By all means, test the water in a few areas and narrow it down as you go. Sometimes a niche will find you and you'll just kind of find over time that people come to you with similar sorts of projects. You can pay attention to that, and then maybe play that up if it's something that you want to do more of. Equally, maybe rethink what projects you talk about and what kind of topics you're talking about so that people will start to associate you with the kind of projects that you want to be doing. If you keep showing case studies and sharing examples of previous work in a particular area, if that's not the kind of work you want more of then you maybe want to rethink that and emphasise the kind of work you do want to be doing. 

Hopefully, that's given you a bit of food for thought and some great reasons to specialise, but you shouldn't be specialising for the sake of it. I've done this because it works for me and my business. There are lots of advantages to specialising. But equally, there are plenty of reasons to keep your options open, if that suits you better. I was listening to somebody talking recently. I'm sorry, I forgotten who it is. But I will try and remember and put it in the show notes. This person was talking about how, as business owners, we're not just aiming to operate in our zone of genius. We have to think about our zone of joy too. And I know that sounds a little bit woowoo. But you should be choosing something that you're excited to talk about on a regular basis. 

We need to find that sweet spot between what we want to do what's realistic from a market perspective and what our clients need. And episode 3 of the podcast, which was on freelancer-client fit might help you figure that out too. So do go and give that a listen if you're interested in digging into this in a bit more detail. 

That's all for today. Have I changed your mind about choosing a niche? Are you going to narrow down your services? Let me know what you think about niching and specialising and as always, thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next week. 

You've been listening to 15 Minute Freelancer with me, Louise Shanahan, freelance health copywriter and content marketer at thecopyprescription.com. If you enjoyed this, please hit subscribe, leave a review or share it with a freelance friend. And if you've got a freelancing question you want answered on the podcast find me and say hi on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. Thanks, and until next time, happy freelancing!