To Amplify Your Authority, Why Not Niche Down?

If you’ve been less than thrilled about how your authority building is catching on, maybe it’s time to take a good hard look at how you define your niche.

Your niche as in who EXACTLY are you serving, what specific expertise are you tapping into and what transformation are you promising?

Let’s say your consulting specialty/authority topic is performance management—you’re writing and talking about all the ways organizations can improve how they manage employee performance.

How can you build a more engaged audience? Pick a sub-specialty (or a handful) and niche down. You might segment by:

Type of organization: healthcare, non-profits, family-owned businesses, financial services, Fortune 500, consumer products, franchises, energy, sales organizations, tech firms.

Client level: VP human resources, VP sales, COO, CIO, Director of HR, Director OD.

Client personality/mission: new hire, embedded leader, change agent, employee-centric, strategic, tactical.

Problem/opportunity: planning, monitoring performance, developing systems, compensation, rewards.

Outcomes: increased employee satisfaction, lower management costs, greater team/unit performance, decreased turnover.

Imagine pivoting to target your message to incoming healthcare HR VPs with a change agent agenda to improve employee satisfaction.

It might be just the ticket to getting your work seen by a yes, smaller, but exceedingly highly-motivated audience.

Because instead of a nice-to-read/watch/listen, your content goes right to the top of the list of those who need what you’re selling.

But you’re thinking, how can I focus so tightly? What about the HR heads of local energy companies that now won’t be checking me out?

Uh, they weren’t reading you anyway (sorry). They’re too busy looking for someone who understands managing teams on drilling rigs.

To truly amplify your authority, you’ve got to narrow your focus down to a niche that’s big enough to give you some wiggle room, but small enough so you can own it.

It’s only then that you can create the kinds of human and emotional connections that lead to the client transformations—and authority platform—your expertise deserves.

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