LS06 – Niche clarity
Crowdfunding Uncut | Kickstarter| Indiegogo | Where Entrepreneurs Get Funded
Crowdfunding Uncut | Kickstarter| Indiegogo | Where Entrepreneurs Get Funded
LS06 - Niche clarity
/

Not having a strong understanding of who your customer is, niching down, and focusing on who you want to serve is by far one of the biggest barriers to success on Kickstarter (and launching products successfully) that I see. Struggling to find your niche or narrowing down your message can seem limiting, but trust me, it’s the opposite. Ever heard the phrase: “If you end up trying to reach everyone you reach no one”. Here’s a test for you to see how focused your niche and message are.

Transcript:

Hey, everyone, welcome to Launch and Scale. This is episode six and today I’m really excited to dive into a topic that comes up on every single phone call I have with you. People that are really looking to launch products, be it Kickstarter, Amazon, or just online, in general. And that question is how to discover your niche, or even if you have an idea of who your customer is, how do you narrow it down to the right one that’s going to resonate with your product to make sure that you have maximum success when it comes to your product launch. So in this episode, we’re going to be having a deep look into what that looks like and why it’s so important with your launch and how even having the wrong niche or not focusing on this can really bomb your launch. Before we get into that, this episode is brought to you by Launch and Scale. It is a group program that helps take creators and anyone launching a product from zero to getting them funded on Kickstarter and be able to create a foundation for a strong E-commerce brand. I’ve been working on Crowdfunding campaigns and product launches for the last four years, and I’ve raised multiple six figures with the clients that we’ve worked with. So to find out more, please do head over to khierstyn.com that’s spelled K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N .com. Click and if you want to book an actual session with myself, or the team, please do go to khierstyn.com/schedule, and you can line up a time to talk about your product launch needs. Apart from that, how do we pick a niche for our product and why is this even important to begin with? When it comes to having a strong launch on Amazon, Kickstarter or any really online marketplace that looks to rank projects and products based on popularity, it’s important that you come in with an audience of people ready to buy your product because it helps you rank on the site. With Kickstarter specifically, if you’ve followed my work on the Crowdfunding podcasts or even just the talks that I’ve done and stuff like that, you will know that the biggest mistake that people make when it comes to Crowdfunding and product launches, in general, is they assume just because Kickstarter has this huge audience that all you have to do is rock up, and you’re going to raise $100,000. It’s quite the opposite. You do have to prove to the platform that you’re popular and worth being shown to other community members. And the way that’s done is by understanding how the algorithm works. And so right up until now, you may have an understanding or whatnot that you need an audience of people ready to buy your product as soon as you go live. But when we go into looking at why product launches underperform, so not do as well as the person-creator hoped, it’s generally because they’re niche, and the audience that they built up or the person that type that they were trying to sell their product to was actually misaligned and it was wrong. So when comes to niching down, I wanted to have an open, honest conversation about this because this is somewhere that first time creators, and even if this is your second or third product, you may, if you’re struggling to sell and you’re struggling to get a good conversion rate with your sales, it is most likely because the product offering that you have is not in alignment with what the niche is that you’re going after. So how do you get it in alignment? The first thing to know is that the mistake that most people make is they don’t want to limit their options. So your first instinct may be to go broad and have you ever heard the phrase, “If you end up trying to reach everyone, you reach no one?” The reality is that when you focus your messaging, and you focus your product to serve a specific niche, so a really narrow audience and a narrow kind of person, you’re actually giving yourself a lot more leverage because your messaging is more specific, and it’s going to resonate way more with that target market. But, unfortunately, what I’ve noticed that our clients, people I have spoken to on the phone and just anyone that is new to launching a product online or fairly early in your E-commerce journey is that you may not really have taken the time to define who the person is that you want to serve and really, really focus on serving a specific kind of person. And so what I want to do in this episode is I have four questions that I want you to ask yourself. And these four questions are meant to give you clarity on who your niche is because I guarantee if you are listening to this episode, it’s because you may feel that your product messaging or being more like really honing in and narrowing down your niche is something that you could work on or can always be improved on, or maybe this is the first time you’ve ever considered this. So I want to take you through four questions that’s going to help you gain clarity on who your niche is because this is so important. It’s often very overlooked and not something people really think of until their product launch doesn’t do as well as they’d hoped, and then they have to go back and really analyze what happened. And knowledge is power. Hindsight is 20/20 I can go on with all these different quotes, but the reality is that this homework and taking the time to really define who your niche is and then going out into the field and testing that hypothesis, that’s really going to increase the chances that you are going to hit the goals that you want with this launch. So I want you to pull up pen and paper, and when you do that write down these questions. So what I would do is I would take one or two sheets of paper, just give yourself enough space to write and take notes. And after each one of these questions you’re going to write this down. And then I want you to pause the podcast, answer the question, and then come back and then proceed to the second step. Okay? So the first question is if you have a landing page or if you have a website. So question number one, “Is the copy of my landing page clear and concise? Does it clearly state what my product is about and what the main benefit of it is?” Okay. And if you don’t have a website yet, then here’s a second version of that. “When you describe your product to a friend, do they fully understand what your product is about and what the main benefit of it is?” So question number one is really about clarity. So please write that down, pause the video, write it down, and then when you’re done, proceed to question number two. Okay, now that you’ve done question number one, question number two, is this, “Is it clear who my target audience is?” Pause the video, come back. Question three, “Is it clear why my target audience should want to buy my product?” Again, pause and then come back. And the last question, question number four is, “How does my product stand out and how is it different?” Awesome. So now that you’ve gone through and, of course, I’m not going to sit on the podcast waiting for you to go do that. Just pause it and do this exercise. Thank me later. If you did go through these questions, and you breeze through them, and you already have complete clarity over your product and who your demographic is, then awesome. If not, then I really encourage you to start there. This should absolutely be one of the first things you do prior to starting your audience building. But hey, even if you have been in business for two plus years, you are launching product number three or four that’s cool. Please go back to the drawing board because you may, for the new product that you’re launching, your niche is always going to be slightly different. So you really do want to become hyper-clear on who your niche is and what your messaging is so that it conveys a strong point of differentiation between your product and what’s already on the market and making sure that when you go and launch your product that it is in alignment with what your niche is looking for and then you perform, and you get funded. So apart from that, this is a critical step that you need to take. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you do have questions you want to get in touch, or you want to submit a question for the podcast, you can do so by going to khierstyn.com/ask, A-S-K. And, yeah, my name is spelled K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N .com/ask and apart from that really stoked. We have a ton of awesome resources on the website from the podcast to free case study to even a spot for if you want to talk about protocol and strategy and how to make sure that you’re getting the best results out of your launch. Please do go to khierstyn.com and schedule a call. Apart from that, we will see you in the next episode.

Shopify -or- Kickstarter? That is the question!

Take the quiz to find out where you should launch your first (or next) product

Take the quiz to find out where you should launch your first (or next) product