Defining your niche and creating an authentic brand
Defining your niche and creating an authentic brand is one of the most important first steps to think about before starting your business. For me it felt completely premature. I thought….
I’m not a brand yet
nobody knows who I am
Is it too early to label myself?
Those thoughts couldn’t be further from the truth. In this new world where your small voice has to be heard amongst the crowd it’s important to make your message to the world loud and clear.
Here I am, this is what I do, these are my goals, and you are my kind of customer.
Defining my own niche
Just until very recently I really struggled with this myself. I have two passions in my life: gardening and illustrating.
With most businesses relying on having an online presence it’s more important than ever to find your niche. This can be really hard when you’re new to the game. Luckily if you’re in this brand new state of business you have time to figure that out.
How do you find your niche?
Easy, what are you passionate about? What are you good at? And what is something that you are knowledgeable at that you can share with your audience?
For me I looked at my life and knew that I’m really good at taking care of animals. I have a drive to continually practice growing things, I love photography, I’m artistic and enjoy sharing my work.
It may seem a little self inflating but those are the things you have to label about yourself.
Focus on your strengths!
You know your niche, now what?
Keep niching down…. Yep I said it. Gardening for example, is too broad of a subject to be a defined niche. I had to really imagine where I wanted my business to be in several years, because right now it’s honestly all over the place.
I took an awesome course by Jenna Rainey called Brand+Brand and part of the course work was defining your ideal customer. It was the weirdest thing trying to creatively define who I was selling my art and brand to, but it really helped narrow down my niche. My customer is someone like me. I paint the things I like, I paint by what I’m inspired by, I paint from my garden and animals. My customer is going to be someone who is interested in homesteading, who dreams about a simple life, and who is creative and gentle minded.
Being unique
At first I was completely stumped at how I was going to fluently incorporate my art and my passion for homesteading, but then I realized that combining the two made me different, it was my own niche that was unique to me.
Regardless of what your passions are here are some examples of niching down
Traveler? (Where do you mainly go? Certain age demographic? Do you specifically document food, culture or architecture? )
Beauty? (Natural beauty? Glam/cosplay? Fitness? Nutrition?
Motherhood (certain age range? Homeschool? Craft projects? DIY?
Whatever you feel led to educate about, find a way to be really specific. Be the expert in your niche and the reason someone comes back to your business.
People like connecting even on media platforms so use your brand to reflect your unique personality and share the knowledge that you have to engage your audience and be an authentic brand.
