if you ever tried to come up with a “niche”, “target market” or a “target audience” for your online business, chances are that you were given this advice:
“Simply think of your ideal client and think about their:
- age
- gender
- occupation
- interests
- hobbies
- income
- education
- location
- language
- …
Voila! This is how you define your target audience!”
So on paper this might sound great. But in reality, there are a few MASSIVE problems with that.
First of all, this approach only relies on assumptions, not data.
You basically make shit up and hope that your audience is correct. That’s not very scientific to say the least, and in reality, just leads to a lot of bad niches (you want to be testing your assumptions and collecting data, not guessing and brainstorming when building a business).
Second, this approach doesn’t work and makes it difficult to find your target audience,
Let’s say I’m targeting male lawyers ages 35-47, who like skiing, earn $100k-$150k/year from Alabama with college degrees who also speak Spanish.
HOW DOES THIS HELP ME!?
It doesn’t. In fact, it doesn’t get me any closer to finding a profitable online business idea or finding a gap in the market. It doesn’t help me validate my idea either.
It might make me FEEL more productive because I filled out a worksheet in an online course, but that’s about it.
Third, this is completely unnecessary.
You don’t need to make up random facts about your target market in order for you to find a good niche.
Here are some solid niches, without the necessary fluff:
- Productivity for poker players
- Burnout management for programmers
- Meditation for lawyers
- Intermittent fasting for Croatians
- Ice climbing for beginners
- Personal style for tech guys
- …
These are all great niches – and yet they’re so much simpler than the above “demographics”. Instead of talking about the irrelevant details, they focus on the problem + audience (sometimes there’s an angle involved as well).
Finally, this approach is useless.
Even if your audience would be male lawyers ages 35-47, who like skiing, earn $100k-$150k/year from Alabama with college degrees who also speak Spanish, how would you use that in your business?
Would you write your website copy any differently? Create any different products? Would you even know what to do with this?
Probably not.
Luckily, there’s a much better approach to finding your niche / target market / target audience – that actually works.
I share it in my new Masterclass on finding your perfect niche.
In the Masterclass, you’ll learn:
- How to use the “slice & dice technique” to find your perfect niche
- How to find 30+ profitable niche within a bigger market (with 3 in-depth examples)
- How to KNOW if your niche is “too broad” or “too specific”, and how to choose the right niche
You can watch the Masterclass here:
If you have any follow up questions on the video, share them in the comments below and I’ll happily answer them for you.
Let me show you what it REALLY takes to start and grow an online business today
If you enjoyed the above video, you’ll love my 100+ Page Ultimate Guide to Starting Your Online Business.
In this guide, I’ll show you:
- How I went from earning $7/h as a programmer to starting a 6-figure online business (with no previous business experience, no connections, mba, investors or rich parents)
- The exact steps you can take to start your own online business and earn your first dollars online (proven and tested through thousands of my coaching clients accross hundreds of industries)
- How to scale your online business to $30k, $50k or $100k+ a year (and the 6 counterintuitive mistakes to avoid along the way)
Just drop your name and email in the box below, and I’ll send it your way!
Leave a Reply