John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall. Welcome to Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today my guest is Michael Gass, Founder of Fuel Lines Business Development. Today, we’re talking about why choosing a niche is one of the best sales tactics. Welcome, Michael.
Michael Gass: Hey, John. Good to be with you.
Picking a Niche for New Business Development
John: Absolutely. Why is it important to pick a niche for new business development?
Michael: Well, I work primarily with advertising, digital media, PR agencies. There’s a tendency for them to look and sound the same. There’s not really a strong point of differentiation. There’s no real appeal beyond, maybe, your personal network. There’s no positioning of expertise.
They are in this “sea of sameness” and it’s much, much more difficult to develop new business opportunities. To me, positioning is the foundation for new business. That’s why so many of these type of agencies and a lot of professional service firms struggle, and why new business is so difficult.
John: That would be true whether you’re an ad agency, a PR firm, or really pretty much any company. Definitely professional services.
Michael: Digital agencies were in the driver’s seat during the recession, and they didn’t have to work that hard. They didn’t suffer as much as a lot of traditional agencies. But, now, they’re finding themselves in the mix with a much larger group of agencies with that particular discipline.
The discipline’s no longer a differentiation, and they’re struggling. They’re having to reposition themselves for new business.
John: Interesting. You’re seeing some of the traditional agencies doing more digital, so the digital shops are somewhat less a differentiator, because the traditional ones are either claiming or are starting to do digital.
Michael: Right.
How does having a niche blog help get business?
John: Interesting. That changes the level of positioning for sure. How does having a niche blog help to get new business?
Michael: Well, I came at this bass‑ackwards. I’ve been working with agencies, doing my consultancy, since 2007. Positioning was always a problem. I was trying to find some solution, some answer to this. Most agencies I found were in this perpetual state of rebranding and redesigning their website, or both. They could never quite get where they needed to be.
We started creating a niche blog that lived off‑site. Looking back on it, it allowed me to get their focus much tighter to a very specific target and to really create a much, much stronger point of differentiation, because it eliminated the fear factor. If it had been incorporated into the website, I wouldn’t have been able to have that success with most.
This way that it lived off‑site, and I always used this analogy, that we were going to “fish for a specific fish with a particular bait, and we’re going to get the bait away from the boat so we don’t scare off the fish.” Social media’s all about people connecting with people.
When agencies got involved in social media, then they tended to lead too much with the brick and mortar. They forgot that this is a very personal communication channel.
By allowing a strong face for that niche blog, whether that’s the agency owner or owners, or some other person within the company that had a strong vested interest, it was much easier to build that personality, and have success, because people want to work with other people that they know, trust, and like. This provided us a way to do that.
John: Ultimately, it’s about thought leadership as a sales tactic. Positioning yourself as an authority, and a thought leader, is key, right?
Michael: To me, that’s the primary point of differentiation, is expertise. That’s what perspective clients are looking for. They’re looking for a strong expertise within their particular vertical. This allows us to gain that positioning much, much quicker than any other process that I know.
John: Well, that ties right in with workingdemosite.com/authority, of course. That’s our primary focus now — is helping people understand that thought leadership can not only help, as you’re laying out here, with your positioning to help you get more business, but there’s such a direct, awesome tie to Google, where Google is looking for topical authorities.
If you have a blog, whether it’s on your main site or an additional separate site, you can then be a topical authority. Google is going to love you a lot more, if you’re really leading with good content.
Michael: Most definitely. It’s all about the content. It doesn’t matter how you define the experts, there’s one commonality. All experts write. That’s very conducive to content marketing, and the emphasis now on inbound marketing, of this paradigm shift where the battle for new business is primarily online.
It allows us all to become publishers. If you have a much narrower niche, a particular focus, and then you’re writing to their challenges, providing content that’s of value that is helpful, it allows you to gain that positioning of expertise relatively quick.
I started my Fuel Lines blog back in 2007. It’s been the hub of my social media strategy. When I started my consultancy, I had only worked in two markets my entire advertising career. It’s like, “How am I going to build awareness for my services having only worked in those two markets?”
I started writing for Fuel Lines, fuelingnewbusiness.com, and providing helpful content, all about business development, primarily for advertising agencies. It continued to grow to the point that it was rated among the top 150 English speaking blogs in the world on marketing.
My fourth client is on the West Coast in Costa Mesa, California. Here I am in a suburb outside of Birmingham, Alabama called Alabaster. In four months time, I have created a new business opportunity all the way on the West Coast. That’s the way it’s worked for me.
I’ve actually been able to build an international business. It’s all fueled by content and establishing that positioning of authority, positioning of expertise, people wanting to work with people they know, trust, and like. It accelerates those new business opportunities like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Future of Niche Marketing
John: Do you see it shifting now that there’s content overload, if you will? People are all jumping in and doing this. Have you seen it slow down at all? Do you see a rosy future for it?
Michael: I think when everybody has jumped in now on the content marketing wagon, many of those still have no focus, no target audience. It’s a lot of more generalized information that’s being propagated, very lightweight. But when you have a very strong target, it’s clear enough that you could go to a list broker, and provide the parameters for them to create you a list. It’s that identifiable.
Then you’re running content very, very specific to them. When you have a niche blog that is so themed and focused around that audience, that content still is really preferred and you’re producing a lot of original content. You’re doing it to that very specific target group. It’s still, I think, the best method for gaining this positioning and to gain it quickly.
John: Really, the positioning as a niche expert, as we’re talking about today, is potentially more important than ever as content marketing has exploded. Everybody’s doing it. The best way to survive is to drill down even deeper into niches.
Michael: Yes, that’s true.
John: Great. Well, fantastic talking to you today. What’s your website again, Michael?
Michael: fuelingnewbusiness.com.
John: Great. Again, this has been John McDougall with Authority Marketing Roadmap. We were talking with Michael Gass, the Founder of Fuel Lines Business Development. See you next time on Authority Marketing Roadmap.
