What is a niche?

Positioning & Niche Strategy
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We throw around the word niche assuming people understand what it means.

Frankly, until I really thought about it, even I didn’t understand what it meant.

So here’s my well-thought attempt at defining what a niche is:

A niche is a group of entities with similar economic interests who interact with each other, either as collaborators or antagonists.

Let’s illustrate with an example:

Is software development a niche?

Depends. Are you doing software development or is software development (or developers) the people you’re doing things to?

That’s the first clarification: a niche is always defined by the “group of entities”, a.k.a market. Not your skills or service line.

So let’s say you do Software Development and claim that your niche is “people who need custom software”. This fails the 2nd part of the definition: people who need custom software do not necessarily interact with each other. They probably don’t even know each other.

Is ecommerce a niche?

Very likely. Ecommerce in a specific product line may be a niche. For example, book stores. Book stores collaborate and compete with each other. They collaborate, I hope, in keeping a book culture alive. They compete in sales. If a book store is really excelling in its service – say its website is very good – then other book stores want to know how they are doing it. If they find out that Company X developed their website, they will reach out to Company X and ask them to develop one for them too.

It also works if Company X reaches out to them too. All they have to do is point at their competitor and say “we did that”.

Hope this helps.

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As far as content creation is concerned, I’ve always thought that a niche is what takes your audience from point A to point B — the journey, or the mission. People commonly think choosing a niche is about choosing a topic. Okay but then what about polymaths? You’ll still be in a “niche” if you’re writing or making videos for polymaths, because you’re helping them on their journey.

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There’s a sleight of hand in your comment. Helping the “audience” go from A to B presupposes the audience, which is the niche :slight_smile:

A business is about taking an audience from point A to point B too. A cold email agency is hired for its ability to improve lead flow. If the agency doesn’t do it, they are fired.

So the idea of a niche doesn’t change either in content or in business. It has to be a group of people who interact with each other in some way. Polymaths for example would love to share content that resonates with them. They are in fact themselves amazing content engines for other polymaths since every polymath is likely sharing his work inspiring others. That fits the definition of niche perfectly.

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