In today’s episode, I’m going to show you how to niche down in your web design agency so you can do what you love, stack that moolah, and really own in on your craft. Let’s dive in.
Also, leave a comment below, let me know what your web design niche is and why you chose it. I’m opening up the comments section and I’m creating a dialogue, and I wanna hear from you.
Let’s dive into web design niche and how to find your sweet spot when you’re looking to really own in to your craft.
So I get to hear a lot of web designers having problems and I listen: “I don’t know, should I niche down? And if I niche down, will it be close to something where I want to have enough opportunities to work with enough clients?” And a lot of things go through folks’ minds.
So I wanna show you the best way to niche down and to make sure that you have plenty of clientele to collaborate with. So let’s go ahead and jump into this right quick.
So first things first, you wanna think about why your web agency should niche down. One: niches help you set your business apart by helping customers with specific needs.
For example, Starbucks. They’ve niched down, right? They have a specific type of clientele, a specific type of price point, and food type that they work with.
They’re not out here trying to sell burgers—I mean they do have varied products. But again, they’ve stuck to their niche, and it’s worked out very well for them. And by niching down, this tactic actually decreases your competition and allows you to charge more for a specific process.
So you think of it more in the perspective of, “Hey, our agency works primarily with startups.” So because we work with startups, one: we have less competition, right? Because we’re looking specifically at a type of client that’s looking for a type of agency to work with.
And by saying that we primarily work with startups, it means that we have extensive experience in that space—or maybe we’re acquiring experience in that space—and we’ve worked with other startups before. Meaning we can replicate our process, and be able to leverage that process for other startups.
So again, think about how to niche down, decrease your competition, and allow you to charge a premium, right? Because if someone comes in—and we work primarily with startups, but there’s another agency that works with everyone, who is the client going to choose?
If they’re a startup, they’re going to come with us because they know we have the expertise to help them—and we can charge a premium because we’ve perfected that over time.
Now before niching down, I’m going to tell you right now from experience: at 5four Digital, we did everything. We did SEO, SEM, Social Media Ads, Video Production. I mean, it was ridiculous, right?
And we were doing so many different services that we had a fragmented process. Our framework was all over the place because we couldn’t own in on the specific things that we were doing, the whole team was overworked, and we didn’t have a specialty.
We were basically like, “Hey, if the client wants to work with us, we’ll work with ‘em.” And that makes it really difficult for you to really scale your efforts.
So let’s break it down into four buckets: the riches are in the niches.
The first thing you wanna do is assess your interests, passions, and skills. Your interests, your passions, your skills. Create a list of problems you’ve solved for yourself and problems you’ve solved for others—and that can be in your personal and business life.
Then, you wanna think about who will actually pay for the above, right? Who would actually pay to not go through what you went through?
For example, I enjoy building websites and I’ve built startups for myself that have done pretty well. So because of that, I have been able to create profitable revenue streams from my online businesses. And I take all those skills and assets that I’ve learned, and carry them over to other clientele.
Hit them head-on: what would make your ideal clients’ lives better? Just ask them what they need, right?
The best places to look are Facebook groups—go into Facebook groups and say, “Hey guys, I’m a web designer and I’m looking to niche down. What are some issues that you have with your website, or what are problems that you have, or what’s your specific vertical, or what’s the business that you’re in?” It’s a great way to start conversation and people are habitually divulging what they’re feeling.
Also, get on forums. I mean, you’ve got Reddit, you can hit up Reddit, hit some web design forums, ask questions and get to know individuals. And that would also help you own in on your niche.
Quora is another thing. You can ask and answer question on the platform—it’s almost like a Q&A where professionals ask other professionals their opinion.
Also, look at your Google Analytics, right? Look at the top performing pages, look at where you’re seeing most of your clientele fall.
Sometimes it just happens organically, you know? We were a web design agency and we started working with a lot of startups. And we figured: we might as well niche down, since we’re already working with a lot of startups.
So it has worked really well for us because a lot of startups come to us saying, “Hey, I’ve heard about X, Y, Z, working with you. I would like to collaborate also.” So again, it works really, really well for that.
You can also do some keyword research. There’s a few free tools on Google that you can use, like Keywords Everywhere and a few others where you can do some keyword research to find out what people are searching for, right? Maybe there are specific types of lawyers that you can work with, or startups, like us. It really helps you resonate and find out what you’re looking for.
Next up, decide what you do and decide what you don’t do. Literally take a pen and a pad, develop a list of things you do in your business, and the things you don’t wanna do in your business.This is difficult for some folks, but again, this will make it easier for you in the long run.
For us, we literally listed down all the things we do in our business and said, “These are where we wanna focus our efforts.” Anything that wasn’t in line with that, we took off.
So, Facebook Ads, Youtube Ads, we’re not specializing in that. We’re web designers and developers, we are focused on UI/UX. We don’t wanna work on those types of projects.
So what you can do is make a list of vendors, or friends, or associates that are great at what they do. And if anyone comes to you for those services, just let them know like, “Hey, I have a friend or an associate that can help you with that. We don’t focus our efforts on that, this is what we do. But if you’re looking for that type of service, you can go to X.”
This makes it easy for prospects to find solutions to their problems with trusted vendors, while you focus on what you’re great at. So Facebook Groups, Quora, Google Analytics—again, all great research options.
Lastly, you want to test, test, test. Talk to your audience, garner interest, and ask how you can solve their problems.
So with that said, the best way to do that is to hit the streets. Touch base again on Facebook Groups and garner interest by stating your ideal client base and asking how you can solve their problems.
So just let people know, “Hey, I’m in this space, what are some problems that you’re going through that I can help with.” And you’ll slowly see how your niche can benefit from your services.
So again, with that said, that was a quick breakdown. I’ll take it back for you and show you all four of those. Think about the audience, embrace the issues, decide what you do and what you don’t do, and then test—get out in the streets and make it happen.
So I hope that was helpful for you. Again, if you have any questions, drop a comment below and we will talk soon.
