Who is My Market?  It's Smaller Than You Think
by Ilise Benun 

Many designers believe that marketing the widest range of services to the largest possible group is the path to success. You’d rather be a generalist because you think you’ll get more business.

But in reality, it doesn’t work that way.

In fact, success comes to those who focus on the smallest number of activities most likely to yield the quickest and largest return.

What really lets you dominate the market and get more business? Specializing.

It is tempting to position yourself broadly, but if you want to be credible, you must limit your offerings. Without some specialization, you would not be able to provide a coherent message to the marketplace, nor would you be able to qualify potential clients quickly, which leads to wasted time and effort.

We live in the era of the specialist. In fact, the larger your target market, the more you need to specialize. Being a generalist, trying to be all things to all people, doesn’t sustain long-term business growth because you never create an identity and you never focus on a market that identifies you as their expert. Instead, you’re a blur in the mind of your market.

In order to rise above the information overload that bombards your clients, you must distinguish yourself from all the other designers clamoring at your clients’ doors. The only way to make a strong enough impact in the minds of your prospects so they choose you is to be clear about what you stand for: your focus or area of expertise.

If you still resist specializing, what you fail to understand is that your clients need you to specialize in exactly the service they need.

They don’t want to be your guinea pigs.

They need to know they are dealing with an expert who serves their particular needs, who understands the specific challenges they face. They need you to have explicit experience that will help them.

That’s what will make them feel more comfortable choosing you. That’s what will help them sell you to their managers.

Four Strategies for Specializing

1. Start out broad and evolve your specialty

If you are a new designer, you may be a generalist simply because you don’t yet know what to specialize in. That’s fine, but as you begin to work with your clients, be attentive to what they are asking for and what they seem to need without knowing it. Then start giving it to them. Ask yourself questions like: “Of all the services I offer, which one is being requested most often? What do people seem to be the most perplexed about? What new technology do people need to understand?”

Anticipate the needs of your clients, and evolve your business to satisfy those needs. Start focusing your services and proclaiming your specialty as soon as you can. It will snowball. The more you talk about it, the better the response, which gives you more opportunities to learn more about and reinforce your specialty.

2. Focus on an industry and offer them multiple services

Focusing on a vertical industry allows you to market yourself the most efficiently. You will get to know the industry and the people in the industry, who will talk to each other and spread the word about you. You can join the main trade organizations and use the member directories, which means that your list of prospects can be found all in one place. You can speak at conferences sponsored by the industry to increase your visibility and credibility. You can get your articles printed in online and offline trade publications for maximum exposure.

In addition, you’ll be able to make the most powerful statement to your clients: “I really know your business.” Nothing has a stronger impact. You will become an expert not only in your business, but also in their business, which becomes one of your most important benefits to your clients. As you get to know them, as you watch their industry grow and change, you also evolve your services to change with the industry, adding and subtracting services as needed. By letting the growth flow from the needs of your clients, you grow your business organically, which makes less work for you.

3. Focus on a special skill or talent that you have that fits a very specific need

You also can approach your specialty from the opposite perspective: identify your skills and talents, and then approach the prospects who may need them. This is much less efficient because it means you have to repeat the same message, or a slightly revised version of the same message, to different industries over and over again. It’s hard to build momentum when you’re spinning many different plates, so this is not the ideal strategy. But if you are expert in your particular skill—for example, web design or annual report design—and you are willing to do extra marketing of your own services, then take that as your specialty.

4. Focus on companies of a certain size

A company’s challenges often are a function of their size. Small-business owners face different challenges than Fortune 500 companies. They have different budgets, different processes and more (or fewer) layers of bureaucracy. You can market to a variety of industries if you specialize in the challenges faced by companies of a particular size.

It Helps to Have More Than One Area of Expertise

Specializing doesn’t have to limit you to just one area. In fact, the ideal situation is to have two areas of specialty. Then, if your particular niche becomes the epicenter of an economic downturn, you have the flexibility and the agility to shift gears and pursue another avenue.

Specializing also doesn’t disallow you from taking jobs that are outside your market. But that decision often will depend on how hungry you are, what’s currently on your plate, what projects are pending and which prospects you are pursuing. The important thing is to be honest with your prospects about your skills in terms of their needs. They may have heard such good things about you that they want you anyway.