Category: #Strategy

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Niche – What’s yours and how are you using it?

By Kathleen E.R. Murphy

There is a saying that no two grains of sands are the same, and the same concept can be applied to people too. Although many people might have a great deal in common with one another, when you begin to take a closer look into who they are, you quickly will see how they are different from others. It is the differences which help to define who they are as a person, and if you had to articulate what their niche is. A niche is different from your value proposition, and should be easier for you to define. I’ll help you to think about this by providing a story about how this concept can work for you.

Yesterday I had a very fortunate opportunity to do something I have wanted to do for many years, and it was to go snorkeling in the Great Barrier reef off of Cairns, Australia. When I was researching which reef tours to go on, I thought the best way to narrow down my search would be to choose one based on a referral. Since I naturally enjoy asking questions, I started asking people I encountered if they had recently been on a reef tour, and whether they would recommend the one they went on. Most of the people I spoke to had gone out on the large 100 foot reef trips which take 100-300 people on them. In my mind this did not seem very appealing and was too commercial for my liking. Fortuneately the last person I asked the “reef question” to, had been on a reef tour the day before. When they started describing the experience they had and used the word “quirky” more than a few times, I thought this was definitely something I wanted to experience, and I did the next day.

The reef experience started out early in the morning by arriving at the dock and seeing what appeared to be an old fashioned sailing vessel. It looked nothing like any of the other reef tour boats which were mostly 50-100+ foot fast moving catamaran hull boats. The captain and crew were also not who you might point out from a group of people who you would think would be your typical crew mates, but they were beyond amazing at what they each did. Because it was a small crew, they each had special skills which were on full display during our experience with them (e.g., scuba instructors, two of them knew how to sail the boat, all of them knew how to manage the boat sails and rigging, each had an amazing personality and only two of them were from Australia – the captain grew up in Miami, one crew member was from France, one was from Tazmania and the other one was from all over, with the last place she lived being Fiji). Since the boat was around 55 feet in length, the amount of guests on board could not exceed 20 people, which was a perfect amount of crew to guest ratio.

When I asked Captain Doug what was to me a rhetorical question about what his niche was, his response was not what I expected. He said that in all the years he has been taking guests out on reef tours, only a few guests have ever taken photos of the large reef tour boats cruising by, while our sailing vessel was being continuoulsly having its photo taken. This is because our boat is the only fully functional and operating former pearl farming boat which is also well over 100 years old, and looks amazing due to the care taken of it. So, the answer Captain Doug gave me was that this is the only boat of its kind which takes people on reef tours and is what clearly defines it as its niche. Being the only Great Barrier Reef tour sailing vessel is also what offers them a competitive advantage when people are looking for a unique reef trip experience.

As I mentioned earlier, everyone and every company has a niche. Some are more obvious than others, and if you have not defined what your personal or company niche is, you can do so by answering and responding to these three inquires.

  1. Make a list of things you believe make you or your company unique, then narrow this list down to 2-3 items.
  2. Ask other people to describe what makes you different from others, either from a business or personal perspective. Extract the aspects of what they have conveyed to you which are repeated by others, and this will help you to establish defining your niche.
  3. Think about the work you are doing. Now think about how your skills or abilities are different from your colleagues, and why someone might ask you to help them with something versus asking someone else. Or, think about the type of work you are doing, and how you might approach getting the work done differently from others, and perhaps get better results than others.

Describing your niche does not have to be paragraphs long in length, but it should allow you to be in a defensible position so that others cannot readily claim your niche as theirs. There may be subtle differences of your niche from others, but one or two words can make a tremendous difference in helping you to define what your personal or your company niche is.

This blog is dedicated to Captain Dan and his crew of the #Falla in Cairns, Australia who is the perfect example of having defined his personal and business niche. fallareeftrips.com.au

Kathleen E. Murphy is the Founder, Chief Strategist and CMO of Market Me Too. Market Me Too has expertise in bridging marketing and sales teams and providing organizations techniques to accelerate their market growth, regardless of the industry they are in, or the business stage they are presently at. Contact Kathleen at kathymurphy@me.com.

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(11) Tips to help you know your audience

By Kathleen E.R. Murphy

The concept of knowing your audience may in fact seem like an elementary concept, but when you peel back the layers on this one, it really is anything but simple. In fact, it can quickly get complex, and this is why when people are presenting to an audience of either one or many, the outcome of the communication can go in a different direction than they intended. Sales people tend to be the best at knowing and reading their audience, as they have a great deal of practice doing this, but not all sales people are at the same level of proficiency in this area. The emphasis on practice is how most people become much better at reading their audience. 

Since most people are not salespeople, or may in fact not have as many opportunities to present to others, how do they become better at knowing their audience, and what are some techniques they can apply to become better at this concept? Here are some points to consider to increase your chances of knowing your audience better, and having a more desirable outcome from your interaction. 

  1. Don’t make assumptions about how they are going to react to your information. There is an old but wise adage which breaks down this word into not making an “ass” out of “you” and “me”. 
  2. If you do not know the person or people you will be communicating with well, when possible, simply ask them what their preferred methods of interacting with them are. You may not be able to appeal to everyone’s preferred method, but you will have a better chance of appealing to them when you ask this question. 
  3. Depending on how you will be communicating with your audience, if it is via a visual method such as slides, make sure your slides don’t break every rule in terms of the best practices for presenting information. In other words, keep the number of words on your slides to an absolute minimum, don’t use graphics which are not coordinated with the message and after you have created the slides, step away from them for a few minutes and come back to see if they pass the KIS rule of “Keep it simple”. 
  4. Ask the person or people if they are “ready” to hear what you have to say. Think back to when you were in elementary school and how the teacher would always start with getting everyones attention before they spoke. 
  5. Keep an eye on your audiences body language. If you are speaking too long and not allowing them to interact with you in some manner, you will likely loose their attention. If you see this happening, ask the person or audience if they have a question, and if no one asks one, throw in a question someone should be asking.
  6. When presenting to executives, it is best to be extremely succinct with your information. Tell them up front what your “ask is”, or what you expect the ideal outcome from the meeting to be. Whenever possible, keep the content being discussed to no more than 15 minutes in length. If you can’t communicate what you have to say in this period of time, chances are what you will be communicating will not be impactful and obtain the results you desire. 
  7. One on one communications with people you know well may seem like the easiest audience to communicate with, but again, the time of day, the place you are meeting, the content and how enthusiastic you are about the content can all play a significant role in having a positive outcome.
  8. Before you begin speaking, make sure you are in the right frame of mind, and think of yourself as being on stage. Would you come out on stage and start speaking in a monotone voice, with poor posture, eyes starring downwards and seemingly lack energy while you are presenting? Of course not, but lots of people present information to their “audience” this way, so make sure you are not guilty of doing this too. In other words, fake being an “actor” if you have to, or at least until you feel confident enough in coming across as being enthusiastic about the information you are conveying. 
  9. When presenting to a “live” audience or even one or a few people, make sure you are positioned in a place where they can see and hear you well. Ideally you should be standing if you are presenting visual information, and at the front of the room. Many people make the mistake of sitting and presenting their information in these situations, and miss the opportunity to commandeer the audiences full attention when they do not stand up. 
  10. If you do not know your audience well, do some basic research on them (e.g., check them out on LinkedIn, or read their bios on their company website if they are at the executive level, or Google their name and see what information comes up about them.) If possible, ask others that work with, or know them well enough to provide you with information about how they like to have information presented or conveyed to them. All of this information can give you greater insight into who you are presenting to, and clues in terms of how to ideally appeal to them with the information you are conveying to them.
  11. The final tip is a bonus one, and is to make sure you send a summary of the information to them via an email. Keep it short, and leverage this communication to convey your key points to make sure they were passed along to your audience.

Now that you have some tips on how to “know your audience”, go out and start putting these concepts into practice. As I stated earlier, practice is the key element to what makes understanding your audience something you can become quite good at. Let me know what you think after you have tried some of these tips.

Kathleen E. R. Murphy is the Founder, Chief Strategist and CMO of Market Me Too. Market Me Too has expertise in bridging marketing and sales teams and providing organizations techniques to accelerate their market growth, regardless of the industry they are in, or the business stage they are presently at. Ms. Murphy has been quoted in Money.com, featured in the Huffington Post and speaks at conferences on the business topics around the globe. Contact Kathleen at kathymurphy@me.com.