Last year I was skiing in Aspen with some friends who live there and have been on skis since they were 2 years old. One of them said “let’s go do some double-backflips”. I thought he was kidding… He was not.
So we all went and I saw them performing these amazing double-backflips. They were all waiting for me. It was my turn and I was completely terrified. My heart was beating so hard it almost broke my ribs. But my friends starting calling me “chicken” (yes, they knew how to push my buttons) so I decided to go for it. I love challenges and this was a big one.
As you can imagine, I didn’t land it and I hit my back so hard I could barely breath. Luckily, I didn’t break anything, but a month later my back was still in pain.
I started looking for doctors and found one ad in the newspaper that caught my eye:
Ski-Related Back Injury?
I’ll make your pain go away in 3 weeks or you pay nothing.
“Wow!” I thought. This person read my mind. The guarantee was great, but the fact that she was treating back pain caused by ski wrecks was even more impressive. IT WAS LIKE SHE WROTE THE AD FOR ME!
There were other ads in the newspaper from doctors that promised to make pain disappear, but nobody talked about back injuries, let alone ski-related back injuries. Who do you think I called?
6 Reasons Why You Want to Position Yourself as a Specialist:
Higher Perceived Value
When you’re the guy “who does the taxes for small business owners in the health industry”, your services have a much higher perceived value than those from “the tax guy who does the taxes”.
You Can Charge More
I was more than happy to pay a premium for my back pain specialist. I paid about 30% more than the average doctor visit and it seemed like a bargain!
There’s Less Competition (or No Competition at All)
Do you know of another doctor specialized in back pain caused by ski injuries? If I ever hurt my back again, there’s no other doctor I’d consider going.
It’s Easier to Find Your Target Market
My doctor was born in Chicago, but there’s no much skiing there. She found a market that is all about skiing (Aspen) and gave them a solution to a problem they had. Smart, huh? When you find a niche market, finding your audience is a piece of cake.
It’s Easier to Push Your Customers’ Hot Buttons
When you find a niche market, you can tailor your marketing message to say exactly what your market wants to hear.
It’s Cheaper to Do Marketing
My doctor does just two things for marketing: the newspaper ad and a sign on the Aspen’s hospital billboard. That’s it. When people get hurt, they go to the hospital. While they wait, they’re exposed to the billboard. They’re bored and they read the sign. Genius!
A Great Idea
If you’re thinking “this is a great idea, but I don’t want to risk leaving out 90% of the market”, I have a solution for you. Split your business and target different niches separately. This is something we did for one of the companies I’m involved in:
- The company offers golf tours for seniors, field hockey tours for women and rugby tours for men (all in New Zealand)
- They had everything under one website
- When I started helping them with their marketing, we created three websites (one for each niche)
- The three markets are very different and they all need different marketing approaches, so we wrote new copy for each of the three niches
- Would you rather go on a golf tour to New Zealand with a company that specializes in golf tours to New Zealand or with a company that does all different kinds of tours and happens to do golf tours too?
- Since we started going after each of the three niches separately, the inquiries increased by about 250%
