The Benefits of Pigeonholing
The following conversation about “pigeonholing” came up in my coaching chatroom. Kurt Elster shared a great story about how he dramatically improved his web agency's business by specializing. Enjoy!
- anonymous
- Jonathan advocates narrowly defining your niche. I am wondering how do each of the members of this group define and describe their niche. Please share if you feel comfortable doing so.
- kgelster
- I was terrified of not being a generalist because I thought I'd turn away too much work. I never had that problem until I narrowly defined my niche then I became an expert, and for the first time, I was booked solid.
- anonymous
- So what is your niche?
- kgelster
- I came up with a CRO package and marketed it to Shopify store owners: http://websiterescues.com/
- anonymous
- Ah, cool.
- kgelster
- My fool proof positioning statement would be something like: "I help Shopify store owners grow their revenue. Unlike other Shopify Experts, I am solely concerned with delivering ROI to my clients."
- kgelster
- I differentiate on value while everyone else talks about pixel-perfect design.
- anonymous
- That is very nice - succinct and understandable.
- jonathanstark
- Thanks for that @kgelster! Once you defined your niche, did you find that it changed things internally at ethercycle?
- kgelster
- I know it was right because everyone was happier. With such a clear focus, we all collaborated better and there were no longer questions of directions. Though I did face some resistance when I was turning away non-Shopify clients. Now they admit I was right to do so. Such is my life as Captain of the good ship Ethercycle
- jonathanstark
- Nice! I'm guessing it allowed you to optimize systems as well?
- kgelster
- Yea, roles became much easier to define. And having a single platform just made those roles cleaner, clearer.
- jonathanstark
- Content marketing strategy became easier? SEO?
- kgelster
- Content marketing and SEO didn't just get easier, they became overwhelmingly successful for the first time ever. They always helped, but now the floodgates opened. I went from just writing blog posts, to being paid by Shopify for guest posts and having guest bloggers throw free posts at me.
- jonathanstark
- Roughly how many leads do you get per week now vs before?
- kgelster
- I went from 10/mo avg to nearly 100 last month
- jonathanstark
- So 10x! Nice
- kgelster
- I just cherry pick the ones that work, and refer the others to people who quickly become friends :simple_smile:
- jonathanstark
- When you made the switch did you go cold turkey or did you maintain two different web presences?
- kgelster
- no, it was a gradual process. I first built the productized offering and then a shopify specific landing page for it. Then I made the website rescues page purely about Shopify. And finally edited ethercycle.com to be shopify focused.
- jonathanstark
- Awesome. How long did that all take?
- kgelster
- 3-6 mo
- jonathanstark
- Any dip in business during the transition?
- kgelster
- No, just some personal struggles with declining projects
- jonathanstark
- Last question: If you had it to do over would you go cold turkey or do you recommend a transition?
- kgelster
- COLD TURKEY. Hindsight is 20/20. I was testing the waters. Iterating, trying things
- anonymous
- Thanks guys. This has been very informative.
Cheers!
Jonathan