How to Switch, Add or Find Your Niche in your Digital Planning Business
If you've followed along with Pink Ink content, you know that we are firm believers in niching down to move forwards in business. However, we don't always get it right on the first try! Niching down can sometimes involve trial and error, but navigating the waters between one niche and another can be tricky. Today we are going to go through how to switch niches while making sure that your business is profiting from the switch and you aren't stressing yourself out. If you're just starting out on your digital planning journey and want to niche down for the first time to target potential customers who will fall in love with your products immediately, this blog post will guide you along the way!
We'll be covering...
Choosing your first niche
Adding a niche while maintaining your customer base
Pivoting from one niche to another
Developing a marketing strategy for your new niche
How to continue scaling after you niche down
Choosing Your First Niche
Niching down can be daunting, it can seem like you're limiting yourself to only one sort of customer! It may not seem like the right thing to do when you're first starting out and just want to make sales, but it can actually be a blessing in disguise. The Pink Ink was one of the first digital planning businesses on Etsy back in 2018, but nowadays, there are a lot more people out there selling digital products. Niching down will help you stand out amongst competitors.
Your niche should be at the intersection of three things: your passions and interests, the problem you solve, and the services you offer. This ensures that you enjoy the work you do while still working in a profitable niche. As an example, let's say that I am passionate about all things organization and productivity. I see a problem in the world of small business owners, they aren't organized enough and are losing out on time and money-making opportunities. I sell digital planners, so I know that my products can help small business owners save time and increase revenue. Therefore, I can niche down and specifically market my planners to entrepreneurs!
Do you need a bit of inspiration to choose a niche? See if any in this list resonate with you!
Students or teachers
Mothers and mompreneurs
Service-providers
Product-based businesses
Wellness and health professionals
Creatives, artists, and visionaries
Digital nomads
Psst! Having trouble coming up with a niche on your own? Take this quiz to discover the perfect target audience for your digital planning business!
Adding a niche while maintaining your customer base
If you've been in business and are looking for a way to increase revenue, gain experience, and enjoy creating new products, adding a new niche to your business will give you all three! Maybe you've dipped your toes in and seen real potential with a different target audience, give it a try!
This is best to do when you have an idea and a bit of interest in the second niche that interests you. To maintain the audience you currently have, poll your followers and warm leads to see what they think of your new idea. Take their feedback and adjust accordingly. Revisit your brand's mission statement, messaging, and business plan. Will adding this niche to your business bring you closer to your goals? Make sure that there is a need and a gap in the market for the products you want to create and sell. At The Pink Ink, we focus on solution-based products. We take a problem that our ideal client is experiencing, then engineer a product that solves it.
Think about this example when it comes to adding a niche to your business. You're selling digital planners for students and have had great success, but keep noticing and hearing things about the teachers and their lack of a custom digital planner. There may already be teachers in your audience, ones following along with your business in hopes of helping their students. If that's the case, polling your audience and seeing how many teachers there are interested in purchasing their own digital planner may help you add another niche to your business that moves you closer to your goals while helping more people!
Pivoting from one niche to another
If you're already in business, you may be considering swathing niches entirely instead of adding another. When is it best to pivot from one niche to another?
When your current niche is too broad
When you aren't getting the satisfaction from the work you're doing
When you aren't making enough sales to stay in business
When your products are no longer solving a problem
When you see a gap in the market and a larger problem that needs to be solved
Pivoting niches can trigger an even larger transformation than adding a niche to your business. It can be a scary risk! Pivoting from one niche to another could potentially mean changing your entire digital marketing strategy and rebranding your business. Take a look and see who in your audience fits into your new niche and what you'll need to do to position your brand in front of your new target audience. With that being said, let's talk a bit more about creating your new marketing strategy no matter which of these three circumstances you relate to most!
Developing a marketing strategy for your new niche
With a change in niche comes a change in approach to your target audience. Since I've been in the online digital planning world for three years, there are a few different social media platforms and other marketing techniques that we've found the most success in!
The best way to decide where to market your business is to go where your ideal client is hanging out. Some people are going to be more easily reachable on Pinterest, whereas others are going to be found scrolling through TikTok. Consider the demographic of your audience and do research to decide what platforms will be best for your business. Stick to about three platforms if you can! At The Pink Ink, we focus on Instagram, Pinterest, email marketing, and organic traffic through our blog.
Continue scaling after you niche down
Niching down can be just the first step on your journey to scaling your digital planning business! You have a whole audience to create products and collections for! If you want to learn more about taking your digital planning business to the next level and gain some inspiration for what to do next, explore more on The Pink Ink blog!
Learning how to scale your business in a way that aligns with your values can be difficult. Inside our signature program, Digital Planner Academy, you’ll learn everything about starting a digital planning business - from choosing a niche to scaling your business! You can learn more about Digital Planner Academy here.
