If you’re starting a brand for your business or blog, then you’ve likely heard of a niche. If you haven’t, a niche is your specific audience or topic.

Ideally your niche should be narrowed down to a targeted group or topic. NOT broad.

An example is “gardening for balconies” versus “gardening”. Or “family traveling on a budget” versus “traveling”.

So do you really need a niche when you’re starting a business?

When starting your business or blog, you will be creating content for an audience. Whether it’s selling them a product or providing them with valuable information, you need to communicate messaging to them in a way that they love.

So here are the 5 reasons why you need a niche:

1. Helps to Focus Your Messaging

When you’re creating content or copy, having a well-defined niche helps to focus your messaging. Your niche will guide the words you include and the way you communicate your message.

Essentially, your niche is KEY to your communication.

If you don’t know who your audience is, how do you expect to communicate your message?

Would a doctor use medical jargon to explain his profession to a group of 5-year-olds?

READ THE ROOM. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Besides helping to get your message across EFFECTIVELY to your audience, knowing your niche actually makes it EASIER to write your content or copy.

Once you have a clear picture in your head of the person you are speaking to, then you know exactly what you want to share with them.

2. Attracts the RIGHT People

Having a clear niche attracts the RIGHT people to your blog or business. Plain and simple.

If your niche is too broad or you are trying to attract everyone, you will attract NO ONE. It sounds counterintuitive but think about this…

Would you rather learn about vegan recipes from someone who you shows people how to cook all kinds of food including dinners with meat? Or from someone who ONLY cooks vegan food?

When you create messaging that caters to a specific group of people you will attract only those people, which is EXACTLY what you WANT.

The end goal is to make money. So you want people who will give you their money. And those people will only be people who are attracted to your messaging.

3. Deters the Wrong People

Like reason #2, having a well-defined niche means that you will deter the wrong people. It sounds harsh because people don’t inherently want to deter anyone.

We all want to be liked.

But in business, you want to be liked and LOVED by the RIGHT customers.

If you own an e-commerce website that sells products strictly for dog-owners, do you want to have cat-owners in your audience? OF COURSE NOT! They are not going to buy your products.

So what’s the point? If you try to attract everyone then you are wasting valuable time and resources on people who will not pay you money.

4. Guides Your Business

This next reason is similar to reason #1 but it’s more in depth. Your narrowed-down niche will help to guide your whole business – not just the messaging.

When it’s time to scale your business, your audience engagement and feedback will help you decide what next steps to take; what next product to launch; to what platform to expand your messaging.

It will also help you cut out things that are not working in your business, and thus help your bottom line.

5. Stand Out Among the Crowd

Finally, your niche will set your brand apart from other brands. When you “niche-down’ and get really specific with your audience you stand out.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say your blog explains strategies for car insurance agents to get leads and make more sales. If a car insurance agent comes along and searches “how to make more insurance sales” on Google, then YOUR website link will stand out among the other websites about general insurance sales in the search results.

That is what you want. You want YOUR blog or business to be attracting YOUR people.

So now is the time for you to choose and define your SPECIFIC niche.

Think about what topics you know about and what you’re passionate about. Also, think about what topics people seek your advice on – that’s usually an indicator of what you’re knowledgeable about.

Which niche did you choose? Are you having difficulty narrowing it down? What topics are you thinking about covering in your blog? Let me know in the comments below!