Learn if and how you should switch your niche to increase your business prospects
There are plenty of reasons businesses owners decide to switch up their niche.
Whether you’ve realized you’re not that passionate about the problem you’re solving, or you can’t seem to make your current niche take off, a change in direction could be what you need to find momentum again.
Below we help you identify whether or not it’s time to shake things up, and the steps you can take to relaunch your business for a new niche.
Should you switch your niche?
Before you dive into a whole new niche, let’s make sure that’s the right move. Afterall, a new niche means starting over with branding, content and building an audience.
Let’s look at some different reasons you might want to make a change, and how you might proceed.
1. You don’t like your niche
If you don’t actually like what you’re doing, it’s going to be very hard to keep it up. Unless you’re someone who can genuinely push through just for results…you’re better off finding a target audience you’re excited to help.
When settling on a niche, you want to make sure you have:
- Expertise. Where can you add the most value and bring unique perspectives—rather than constantly researching and regurgitating existing ideas.
- Passion. When things get tough, passion will keep you going. Plus, it shines through in your marketing.
- Audience alignment. Make sure your goals align with your audience both in regards to interest and finances. You can’t pay your bills on passion alone, but just chasing money could be why you’re tempted to switch niches in the first place.
2. You’re not growing enough
Unlike being unhappy with what you’re doing, being dissatisfied with your business growth isn’t necessarily a good reason to pivot just yet.
Before you assume your niche is the problem, make sure you’ve taken the right steps to consistently show up in the space, brand yourself as an expert and ultimately build your client base.
Regardless of how you proceed, be sure to leverage marketing strategies for small business growth to set yourself for success.
3. Your niche is too oversaturated
The point of a niche should be just that. It’s unique. Unfortunately, sometimes a space becomes so popular, it may feel like you’re lost in a sea of businesses vying for the same audience.
The solution? Niche down even more.
Niching down means you won’t have to start over completely. You can adapt your approach to a more specific audience.
For example, if you’re a marketing agency that currently focuses on “B2B” or “e-commerce”, you’re a dime-a-dozen. Niche down to companies by size, industry, or business stage within those categories.
People feel like you’re the right fit if you can speak directly to their unique challenges and goals. For example, you could be known for:
- Helping small businesses make their first million in revenue
- Creating a brand platform for new businesses
- Working with companies trying to branch out from their first product (we’ve all heard that Amazon started with books, right?)
Deciding on your new niche
If switching niches is the right move for you, it’s time to think about who you want your audience to be.
If you don’t have a new niche in mind yet, brainstorm based on your expertise, goals and interests.
Don’t be afraid to get creative—or personal.
For example, finance coach Ellyce Fulmore created The Neurospicy Money Method to help neurodivergent people better manage their money. Her personal experiences (and struggles) with finances as a person with ADHD give her the passion and expertise needed to succeed in the space.
Think about what unique experiences or interests you have that make you the best fit. A life coach for people working abroad, a financial advisor for tattoo artists, or a marketing agency for women-owned tech—there are endless niches you can choose.
Before you move ahead with your new niche, ask yourself:
- Do I have the expertise to be a leader in this area?
- Am I interested in the niche I’m pursuing and the problems I will be solving?
- Is there a big enough audience to make this venture profitable?
If you can answer yes to all three questions, it’s time to move ahead.
Relaunching your brand
If you already did the leg work with your last niche and have buyer personas and a brand platform with your brand values and messaging, don’t reinvent the wheel.
Take a look at what you have, and see what you need to change. Even if some areas are completely different, certain things—perhaps your values or brand voice—may remain the same (or at least similar).
Once you’ve developed your new branding, launch it online.
Change logos, photos, headers, web copy, bios and images on your LinkedIn, website and socials to match your new brand.
If you’ve got a completely new niche, create new accounts on social media and a new website. Most of your old audience won’t be engaged if you’re no longer relevant to them, and they’re likely not the clients you’re looking for now.
Transitioning clients
You may be wondering what to do with your existing clients. Now that you’ve pivoted, do you have to start all over?
In many cases, no. How many previous clients you should carry over depends a lot on how different your new niche is.
If you’re niching down (getting even more specific from your initial audience), you can make a pretty seamless transition by slowly narrowing your messaging and content to your new ideal client profile. You’ll attract new clients, without necessarily losing existing ones.
For more drastic transitions, you may need to straddle two businesses for a while so you still have an income. To transition out of your old niche, steadily refer old clients to another expert as you gain work in your new niche.
In some cases, you may have old clients you want to keep on that don’t fit your new niche. Reach out to these clients before you eliminate your existing brand, and communicate the upcoming changes. Then let them know you love working with them and would be excited to continue the business relationship going forward.
Building your new client base
Your new brand is live and old clients are prepped for the change—it’s time to start selling.
You can find a lot of your prospective clients by social selling on LinkedIn—a process that involves marketing yourself as a subject matter expert through LinkedIn posts, actively commenting on posts, and developing an outreach strategy.
You can build leads by social selling on other platforms too, like YouTube or Instagram, but LinkedIn has specific tools that optimize your sales efforts. The most effective social selling strategies will incorporate LinkedIn with a couple other platforms, so you can maximize reach.
We’ve also made a list of the best sales blogs that you can reference for more ideas on building your sales strategy.
Optimizing your outreach with LinkedIn
While posting content is a great way to increase visibility, establish your reputation, and build trust with prospective clients, it always helps to reach out and talk clients over the finish line.
One of the benefits of having a really specific niche is that you can send messages to clients that feel personalized, without manually typing each message.
Since you already have a hyper-focused idea of who you want to reach, you can go on LinkedIn Sales Navigator and use Sales Navigator personas to generate lists of potential clients that match your niche.
From there, you can create outreach messages that outline the unique problems your niche has, and how you can help.
You can further optimize the process with LinkedIn messaging AI tools like CoPilot AI. These tools will help accelerate your outreach and follow up, so you can focus more on helping clients.
Learn more about how LinkedIn AI can accelerate your sales outreach.
