A Horizontal Niche



Instead of all your ideal clients being in the same industry (a vertical niche), maybe you realize that most of your clients' main contacts are office managers. What do you do next? Take an informal survey. Ask them what their biggest IT problems are, what their biggest business problems are, and make sure that you're working towards becoming a solution to those problems

This will help you retain those clients. But also, more importantly, it's going to give you a heads up on what the big business issues are and what they see as the biggest IT issues. That's going to enable you to craft your marketing pitch to go after other clients that are just like them. Begin looking for mailing lists, organizations, magazines, and conferences where you'll find a lot of office managers.

What IT Specialists Should Know:

For marketing purposes, you need to ask the following kinds of questions about any target market:

o Who are “they”? ____________________________________________________

o What do they read? _________________________________________________

o What trade publications are out there? ___________________________________

o What e-zines? ______________________________________________________

o What newsletters do they get? ________________________________________

o What local and regional conferences might they already be attending? _________

o What trade groups have local chapters that they belong to? __________________

o Where do they hang out? ____________________________________________

o What do they talk about? ____________________________________________

o What do they worry about? ___________________________________________

To get the answers to these questions, talk to your best clients… but only if you want to be an IT specialist with more clients just like them.

Chances are you've developed personal relationships already. So take your clients out for breakfast; take them out to lunch. Tell them you want to be an IT specialist and ask them your questions so you know exactly where to look for more new clients just like your current ones.

The Bottom Line on Being an IT Specialist

To get more clients in a horizontal niche, you need to find out as much as you can about your clients jobs, where they hang out and how you can find more clients just like them. When you do, you've given yourself the distinction of being an IT specialist.