Today’s episode is aimed at those of you who are considering copywriting as a career and wondering if you need to choose a niche.
I’ve been working as a copywriter for over 10 years now and this was something that concerned me when I first started out. Many copywriting experts will tell you that the path to success is to find a niche straight away but, having now carved out a career I love in this industry, collaborating with great clients and enjoying the work I do, I’m going to share my experiences with you and explain why choosing to specialise in the early days of your career can be a trap.
In this podcast you will discover:
- My opinion on specialising vs. generalising.
- The benefits and pitfalls of becoming a copy expert in one specific industry.
- How I would go about choosing a niche (if this is what you want to do).
- How I got to where I am today and what questions you need to ask yourself in order to build a career you love.
Today’s sketches have been designed to make you think about the drawbacks of choosing a niche. When I thought about doing the same thing over and over again, home improvement shows popped into my head and I wondered: what would happen if they stepped outside of their niche? Tune in to find out. I’ll also show you how trying something different, especially when it comes to choosing a partner, can be more beneficial in the long run.
I hope that this podcast helps to reassure you on the subject of choosing a specialism and gives you more confidence going forward as a copywriter, whatever you choose to do. Please feel free to get in touch with any questions and let me know if there is anything that you would like me to cover in upcoming episodes.
Links:
- Register for the Write with Influence course
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
SPEAKER: AMY HARRISON
SHOULD YOU CHOOSE A NICHE IF YOU’RE A COPYWRITER?
27:50
Amy Harrison:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Write with Influence where I share my copywriting advice and experience. Now, you might want to pursue copywriting as a career, you might want to improve your writing skills to sell your own products, or you might work for an agency where you’re writing copy for clients all the time. If that doesn’t sound like you, you might be in the wrong place, but you’re very welcome to stay. Today’s episode is really aimed at people who are moving into the field of copywriting as a career. A common question that I get asked and therefore would like to look at today is: should I choose a niche? Now, before we go any further, let’s just tackle the elephant in the room – I’m going to pronounce it niche because it’s a French word and over here, we’re pretty close to France and that’s just how we pronounce it. Those of you in the niche (sounds like itch) camp, I hope that this isn’t going to be too annoying for you. So, the word niche comes from nichier (I have no idea if I’m pronouncing that correctly) and apparently it means ‘to nest’. And I’d like to do a quick shout out to Martin Whitmore who does illustrations for this podcast, he’s done a great image for this week which fits perfectly with the idea of nesting – you can see it if you visit www.writewithinfluence.com and click on the link to the podcast.
So, should you, as a copywriter, build a nest or a niche for the work that you do? I’m going to explain my personal view for both choosing and not choosing a niche. Whilst I’ve never strictly chosen a niche, I have narrowed my focus of who I work for and the type of work that I do and I firmly believe that that has been a huge help in helping me find great quality clients without making the work that I do too narrow or too boring for me.
So, developing a niche can be done in different ways. The most common way is probably defining an industry or a target market of people that you work with. For example, I know a marketing firm called The Profitable Firm and they only do marketing for accountants and they do really well. All their content is geared up to the pain points that accountants have when marketing themselves, they do a fantastic job of it, and they’ve really carved out their marketing and branding around that niche. This makes a lot of sense because their customers are usually accountants and tend to be people that have a lot of accounting experience, but not so much marketing experience. However, they don’t just want to be guided through their marketing by generalists, they want to be guided by people who understand accounting and understand what their clients are looking for when choosing an accountant and, as I said, this company does really, really well.
Now, I did see someone who had developed a niche that didn’t actually appeal to me, but caught my eye. It was someone trying to connect on LinkedIn and they had positioned themselves as the weight loss coach or fitness guru for copywriters. I didn’t accept the request because I couldn’t understand the connection and I found it a little bit odd. I mean, do I need to get fit? Absolutely. That goal of emerging from lockdown as a butterfly and perhaps maybe with a novel under my belt, that’s long gone. If I can come out of this with my sanity intact and just a modicum of muscle wastage, well, that’s going to be a win for me. So, I couldn’t see the benefit of a trainer who would understand the copywriting industry. I don’t need someone to show me how to do push ups and also talk about benefits and pain points, I want a trainer who can shout and motivate me. I’m personally a massive fan of Shaun T, who is awesome. He developed the insanity program – I highly recommended it. My failing at the insanity program is nothing against Shaun, he did everything right, I’m just too lazy.
So, you might choose your niche based on target market, or it might be that you choose a niche depending on the type of content that you want to write. So, you might be the copywriter for webinar scripts, or email newsletters, or podcast scripts. I would say those are two main areas where people tend to focus:
- Industry.
- The type of work that they do.
Now, a lot of marketing advice will tell you to pick a niche and I can see a lot of reasons for this. For example:
- The more you focus in one area, the easier you will become an expert at that subject matter.
- Your marketing becomes a lot easier because you can be more focused in one area.
- Onboarding your clients is a lot simpler.
So, let’s unpack those briefly:
- The more you focus in one area, the easier you will become an expert at that subject matter.
This is absolutely true. Let’s say that you’re a copywriter for investment companies and financial advice. Now, over the years, your knowledge of bonds and exchange traded funds and securities is going to be invaluable because you’re going to develop and use the language of experts in your field and you’re going to do it naturally. You’ll be able to employ language that shows that you are not an impostor, you are someone who is steeped in this knowledge and as a result, you’re going to write more confidently and you’re going to be more credible as a copywriter. So I can definitely see an advantage there; you become a real specialist and that’s going to shine through in the writing that you do for clients.
2. Marketing yourself is going to be a lot easier.
If you narrow your focus by only working with one type of person or one type of industry, you have a smaller area in which you need to show up and be visible. So, rather than target any business that could benefit from copywriting, you could look at putting adverts in specific trade magazines, or trade websites and publications. You could look for specific events to sponsor or blogs on which to guest post. I remember attending an AWAI conference and one of their speakers was a lady who had carved out her career by being the copywriter for pet stores. You know, this doesn’t just make it easier in terms of where to advertise your services, it also helps you with positioning yourself as the copywriter for ‘X’ type of industry. These sorts of businesses give customers confidence because they’re choosing a specialist over a generalist.
3. Onboarding your clients is going to be a lot easier.
If you’re serving the same industry or same style of client, you’re not starting from scratch each time when you onboard them – you don’t have to do a lot of research on the industry or their business to get you up to speed. Instead, you can start much further ahead if you’re already very familiar with the work that they do and this means that your project can probably move faster and it will be easier to build rapport because you’re not going to be asking questions about well-known industry terms or nuances that might make your customer nervous and think, ‘Gosh, if they don’t know about that in our industry, how can they possibly write good sales copy authentically?’
I can absolutely understand and see the advantage of choosing a niche. A lot of businesses will really value someone who has that specialist knowledge as opposed to someone who has worked with a variety of different industries and businesses because there are certain situations when you really will want to hire someone who has done what it is that you need and what is it that you’re looking for – someone who has done that again and again and again, thousands of times over perhaps.
[NEW SCENE – ON SET – HOME IMPROVEMENT TV SHOW]
HOST: Welcome to ‘House Horror – Happy Home,’ where we feature someone who’s bought a shockingly awful property and now wants to be on TV to get some renovation help at a reduced rate.
Today we have Susan who paid a little bit too much for this ugly cottage. Susan, tell me about it.
SUSAN: Well, I’ve just always dreamed of having a little cottage in the country.
HOST: It’s a bit run down though isn’t it, Susan?
SUSAN: Yeah.
HOST: Do you get embarrassed when people come around?
SUSAN: I suppose a little bit.
HOST: Gosh, what do you think they say … when your friends leave this shit hole and go back to their lovely houses?
SUSAN: Well, all my friends are actually quite nice and kind so I don’t think they mind too much.
HOST: Do you think they’re saying things like, ‘Gosh, Susan’s place is so shit!’
SUSAN: Oh …
HOST: Don’t worry Susan because we have on hand, one of our fabulous construction experts. This is Terry, he’s an expert in renovating period cottages, aren’t you, Terry?
TERRY: Yeah.
HOST: And how many have you done?
TERRY: Thousands, it’s just a never-ending stream of cottage renovations. It’s the same thing again and again and again.
HOST: Oh, sounds like you’re in safe hands, Susan.
TERRY: Let me guess, you want to keep the main features – the beams. But take out some walls, make it open plan so you can see guests from the kitchen when you entertain and you want more footprint upstairs with a dormer and an ensuite off the master bedroom?
SUSAN: Yes, that’s exactly right.
TERRY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, thought so. Yeah, we can do that, we can do that.
SUSAN: But most of all, Terry, I just want this to be a really fun house.
TERRY: Well, what did you say?
SUSAN: A fun house.
HOST: Well, Susan, that sounds wonderful and welcoming. OK, Terry, we’ll see you in a couple of months.
{A couple of months later}
HOST: OK, I’m back with Susan, she’s been staying with friends whilst Terry renovates.
TERRY: I can’t wait to show you what I’ve done, Susan. Your words really stuck with me and I know I’ve done thousands of cottage renovations over the years, but this one, this one was particularly special. I just, I decided to look outside of the niche I was comfortable with and borrow some ideas from a different type of building altogether.
SUSAN: Oh wow. Can we go have a look?
{Susan approaches her house}
SUSAN: What is that?
TERRY: It’s your fun house – come on in!
SUSAN: It’s Inflatable?!
TERRY: That’s right. We tore down the property completely. You might have the council asking for a word because I think it was listed. Anyway, in its place, we constructed a huge inflatable house.
SUSAN: My beams—
TERRY: All gone. You wanted a fun house Susan, and I was inspired by that 1980’s TV show of the same name and decided you truly deserve a fun house. Over here is your ball pit.
SUSAN: Is this the kitchen?
TERRY: Yeah, obviously no hot drinks and try not to spill milk because you will never figure out where the smell is coming from once you drop it in here.
SUSAN: I don’t understand. Is any of this stuff done to regulations?
TERRY: There’s no regulations about having fun Susan.
HOST: Well, I think, Terry, you have excelled yourself. Oh, whoops! Susan is so overcome with joy, she slipped … and is that a gunk tank, Terry, that she slipped in? She’s covered in slime!
TERRY: Yeah.
HOST: Well done, Terry.
TERRY: Cheers.
[END]
AMY HARRISON:
So yes, I can definitely see the benefit in choosing a niche, but before you decided to jump in and become the copywriter for construction workers or insurance companies, here’s something that you do need to consider: what if you get it wrong? So, when I started working for myself and I did some research in to marketing, every piece of advice about choosing a niche (and this was back in 2009 when there was a really strong argument to niche down), all the advice made you believe that this was something you could do in about 30 minutes, like you could just choose a niche and then get going. All you needed to do was sit down with a pen and paper, pick your niche and boom – go. What I didn’t find was any useful advice about how to choose a niche. It was a little bit like that advice you used to see all the time about setting your hourly rate: work out how much you want to earn, work out how many hours a week you want to work, divide that and there’s your hourly rate. And it’s not that simple because, as much as I wanted to earn half a million pounds by working one day a week, no one, as yet, would want to pay me that hourly rate. I mean, there might be someone out there, but I’d probably have to do some very, very bad things. My additional frustration with the idea that you can ‘just choose a niche,’ is that you don’t know what you don’t know. Now, what I’m going to say next is very much my own opinion and I’m not saying I’m right, but this is what I found, this was my experience – the problem that I faced was the idea of: how does 2009 Amy (who is just starting out as a copywriter) know what 2012 Amy is going to want to write about? If I pick the wrong niche, am I going to hate it but then be committed due to my marketing and branding three years down the line?
Now, I love goal setting, I’m all about setting goals and stretching yourself, but something I’ve always struggled to get on board with is the idea of making a decision today based on a very detailed vision of the future. So, you’ll get advice when it comes to goal setting, for example, being told to imagine the house that you want, right down to the furnishings etc. I’m sorry, but I think that’s rubbish and I think that there’s a temptation there that could put you into a trap. I couldn’t tell you what curtains I like today, never mind what curtains I want in my dream house five years from now. And this is what frustrated me about picking a niche. What if I invest all this money in a website, branding and positioning only to discover I hate it? Maybe I won’t like the industry and I won’t like the writing. This is one of the reasons I rarely work with start-ups because until a business has been operating enough to know what their customers actually like, what their product does well, where it’s really unique, you can’t build a sales message that’s going to work – it’s all just fluff and supposition at that point. So, here’s my approach to setting goals, and it’s also how I navigated the idea of picking a niche. It’s simple, it has definitely not been well researched, it is purely based on my own personal experience, you won’t find any academic papers backing this up as brain science, but it served me well and I think this approach is one of the reasons why I’m lucky enough to have a current book of fantastic clients who I respect, who pay very well and who love the work that I do, and give me writing projects that I enjoy working on. So, instead of sitting down and painting a very specific plan of a precise picture or goal in my mind, I tend to just keep it simple and ask myself, ‘am I happy?’ And if not, I ask myself, ‘what would I like to change? What do I think is making me unhappy and what would I like to change that I think could have the potential to make me happier?’ And I’ve used it this approach to make life decisions, but I definitely used it in terms of picking a niche and deciding who I wanted to work with. So, if I decide that actually, no, I’m not happy, when I answer the question of ‘what would make me happy?’ I try to keep the answer at very broad strokes and base it more on values rather than physical or monetary gains, because in my experience, stuff and money doesn’t make you happy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very driven by earning money, it’s one of the reasons I love writing sales copy, but money alone is usually not a great goal. If money was my only goal, I would have moved to London and got a job in finance, or I would have stayed in my old job and worked my way up to try and become a partner in the business, but I’m pretty sure I would have been miserable. When I started to work myself, it was because I was unhappy. I was spending a lot of time working on spreadsheets that I guarantee no one ever looked at, which was probably a bonus actually, because there was probably a lot of mistakes in them. So, I asked myself, ‘am I happy?’ And I said, “no, what would I like to change?” And I thought, ‘I’d like to write for a living. I’d like to be able to go for a run in the morning and then not have to go into the office.’ And that was it. No business plan, no step by step project outline for the following six months, just a broad idea of what I was confident would make me happy and the confidence that I could figure out how to make it happen once I got started. So that’s what I did. So, in terms of picking a niche, when I first started getting clients, I just kept asking myself those questions and I continued to course correct. As I did more work, I found out more about what I liked doing and what I didn’t like doing. I didn’t pick a niche, so to speak, but rather, I whittled away at this opaque goal of wanting to write for a living until the picture started becoming more and more clear and it was always driven by that question: am I happy? And over time I started to see things more clearly, two things in particular:
- What I enjoyed writing.
- Who I enjoyed working with.
So, if you’re struggling with your idea of picking a niche, I recommend paying attention to those two things, and here’s what I found: I loved sales copy. I just gravitated towards it. I didn’t enjoy writing articles. I enjoy writing articles for my own content marketing but not so much for other people. I tend to turn down most, if not all, blog requests, unless it’s for a current client and I don’t tend to enjoy writing web copy unless it is for a landing page or a sales page or part of a funnel that is designed to make sales. What I also found as a bonus to this is that clients will pay more for sales copy than they will for web copy. That was a bonus, but I just loved all the nuance of writing sales copy. I still do, I’m still fascinated by it. I also discovered who I like working with. I like clients who are authentic. I’ve known some people that can say one thing in front of a camera or an audience and then behind the scenes, they unleash what they really think about their customers, their partners or the people that they work with. That’s not for me. So, I like to know that I’m working with someone who is as they present, who have good values (similar values to me), and I like people who value what I do and are happy to pay for it. I don’t want to feel awkward about sending an invoice or wonder if there’s going to be a battle about the amount or if I’m going to have to chase a reminder … I have a client that, every time I start a new project, actually reminds me to track my time and to make sure that I’m not selling myself short. These are great people to work with. I also like working with clients who have the power to approve the message. What I mean by this is that it’s not being passed through 20 people in different departments before it gets a yes or no. And that can really grind your confidence down as a new copywriter. Say, for example, you get a new client and you are developing a message with who you think is the decision maker, but then it goes to a committee behind the scenes and they don’t like it; that doesn’t necessarily mean your writing is no good, it means that they weren’t there and included in the conversations or discussions that helped you build that message. And if you don’t have that awareness, it can really damage your confidence and knock your self-esteem as a writer. So, wherever possible, try to make sure that when you’re working with a client, you’re working with the person who can not only say yes to the message, but can also say no, because then you know that if it’s approved, it is actually approved. Now, none of this happened overnight, 2009 Amy certainly didn’t have the knowledge to design the clients and the work that I’d be doing in 2020. I’m also keenly aware that this isn’t everyone’s approach. Some people know exactly what they want to do out of the gate and they go for it and they get it and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m often very envious of that approach, but I have to be honest with myself that it’s just not me. I come out of the gate, I have a look around, I gravitate towards things that look fun, things that look adventurous, I keep myself open to opportunities and just ask that question: am I happy? And then I pivot, change, course correct, whatever it is, and I still do it today. If I’m not looking forward to the day or if I have a couple of weeks where I think, ‘hmm, I haven’t really been inspired or excited,’ I will ask myself, ‘why not? What about my work is frustrating me? What do I think needs to change?’ And I hope that I always will keep asking myself that question because I think that the real goal is always to be happy.
In summary, here’s what I’d say about choosing a niche – both approaches can work. If you know you only want to write for a specific industry, go for it. What I would say though is, try not to go too narrow. So, for example, something like financial services is such a huge topic that you can still find a lot of variety in subjects and products as well as many clients to serve. If you go too narrow, you might struggle to find a new way to talk about what your client does and you may not have enough of a client base to sustain the business. You also have to bear in mind that some clients, whilst they might want a specialist, when it comes to marketing, they may be uneasy if they think that you’re going to be doing marketing for their competition because you’re working within their specific industry. But I would also say that if you don’t know what niche to pick, don’t worry and please don’t let it stop you getting started because the sooner that you do start, the sooner you will have more information about what you like and what you don’t like, and you can chip away until you see a clearer picture of what makes you happy.
That’s all for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe if you’ve enjoyed this episode and also share it with any other people that you think may enjoy it. You can reach out to me on Twitter @HarrisonAmy and you can find more about the complete course at www.writewithinfluence.com/course.
Until next time, keep believing and really don’t worry about defining the perfect niche – it’s not like you have to marry it!
[NEW SCENE – NEW HUSBAND SHOP]
SHOPKEEPER: Hello and welcome to the future husband shop, how can I help you?
CUSTOMER: I’m looking for a husband.
SHOPKEEPER: No problem. We like to do a little profiling first to match you to your most suitable husband. Let me just dig it out.
CUSTOMER: Oh wow, these look gorgeous … he looks just like Tom Hardy.
SHOPKEEPER: He is a popular model. Feel free to browse. OK, here we go, let’s start with a profile … what were the last five films you watched where there was a notable love interest? Think potential husband.
CUSTOMER: OK. Erm … last five films I watched … Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella … how many is that? One, two, three … Snow White and The Little Mermaid.
SHOPKEEPER: Yeah?
CUSTOMER: We just got Disney Plus.
SHOPKEEPER: OK, this might be tricky. Why don’t you tell me what you would like in a husband?
CUSTOMER: A gentleman, someone who always pulls out my chair before I sit down.
SHOPKEEPER: Always?
CUSTOMER: It’s so chivalrous.
SHOPKEEPER: That’s going to get annoying really quickly.
CUSTOMER: I definitely want him to have a high-powered job and make lots of money. There’s something really attractive about a man in a suit, always rushing around, telling people what to do and just being powerful and authoritative. And I want him to buy me lots of gifts on our anniversary, on my birthday, or just a few diamonds because he’s sorry. And I’m quite drawn to that brooding, mysterious, sort of, slightly moody and edgy type.
SHOPKEEPER: Look, I don’t normally do this and, maybe that is exactly what you want for the next thirty/forty years of your life, but you seem nice so I would like you to consider this model.
CUSTOMER: He doesn’t look like much.
SHOPKEEPER: He’s not at this stage. Look, you’re trying to find an out-of-the-box model, something that’s already made, but a lot of those things you’ve listed are going to drive you insane within a few months – someone married to his job, buying you off with gifts, not spending time with you and ‘brooding’ just means moody. You don’t want to spend your life with someone who’s irritable and critical of everything. Now, this guy, he’s a cheaper model and he’s like a Mr Potato head –
CUSTOMER: What?
SHOPKEEPER: You get to shape him as you go. Now he does come with some quite fun features already built in. Instead of buying new trinkets, he’s got a great intuition for when you need to be poured a drink and left alone to watch some reality TV.
CUSTOMER: Oh, I do like doing that sometimes.
SHOPKEEPER: He will also listen to you complain about your family and friends without judgment and without treating them differently the next time he sees them. He’s also programmed to listen to your dreams.
CUSTOMER: Yes, I want someone who can help me make my dreams come true.
SHOPKEEPER: No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean your actual dreams, you know, when you want to tell a story about that dream you had when you were at home, but it didn’t look like home, but you knew it was home, but you didn’t know how you got there and then there was a strange looking animal that was like a fox or a cat, but you weren’t sure and it’s face looked like it knew you.
CUSTOMER: I have those all the time.
SHOPKEEPER: Well, no one wants to listen to that, but this guy, he won’t just listen, he’ll try and help you work out what your dreams mean … and they don’t mean anything.
CUSTOMER: Wow.
SHOPKEEPER: And don’t tell anyone, but if you sign up today, I’ll throw in some DIY skills – you’ll thank me.
CUSTOMER: He seems, all right, I guess.
SHOPKEEPER: Take this model, and over time you can add some upgrades – a bit of fashion sense, some fitness regimes (the childcare module is very popular), he might even become your Prince Charles.
CUSTOMER: I’ll take him.
[END]
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