Niche Down, Stand Out: How to Dominate Your Market by Focusing on Less

Hello and welcome to the show. Today. We're still on the folks when the curated hampers and corporate gift industry. So we're using them as a case study to see how we can use sales and business development principles to solve our business problems. Now if you've listened to the past three or four episodes, you will recall that one of the problems that we came up with was differentiation. That's how to differentiate your business because most people are going to complain, especially people in the curated hampers space that their business is commoditized.

And so it's a challenge trying to stand up out from the crowd. So that's the first problem that we're going to tackle with this episode and then we'll run through the others in good time. So this is your first time listening to the podcast episode. You want to get an overview of folks who are in the curated hampers and give giving space the players that are there, the possible business problems that they have and then scroll back,

let's say three or four episodes and you'll get all the details there. So today we're going to try and differentiate the business and one way that we can do that is by differentiating through having a niche focus. Now this is how it works. If you're going to decide that you're going to narrow down and have a niche focus, then automatically you're going to stand out from the crowd. Now the reason why this is the case is because most people, or rather should I say everyone,

tries to cater to everybody. And that's because most people are afraid of the potential for lost revenue. So you find that most people have generic or general kind of messaging and general kind of sales tactics. They're trying to appeal to everybody. And it's kind of a Tri fact now that if you're trying to attract every single one, you're appealing to nobody in particular. So by that very fact, if you decide to tackle some sort of niche, you're going to automatically stand out from the crowd because your competition is going to be catering to everybody while you will be seen as a specialist in one particular scenario, one particular use case, one particular ideal customer base,

you know, you just start, all right, from the gecko. Now taking a niche is going to allow you to develop some expertise and some credibility and some reputation rather quickly if you niche down. Now, an example that I'm going to give from my wedding photography days because I started off as a wedding photographer A decade and a half ago, over a decade and a half ago. One example that folks in the oh, sorry about that, the alarm has gone off.

Let's see. OK, we're only doing 3 minutes so far. OK, so good. We're good with time. Now how was I? OK, so one of the examples that I'm going to give is back from my wedding photography days. They remember we're talking about curated hampers and gifts. So I'm going to talk about Yoruba traditional weddings because I started off my wedding career in Lagos. OK well I shot I think 2 weddings in Scotland before I came back to Nigeria and then I

was mostly into Yoruba weddings and even when I moved to Abuja a ton of Yoruba weddings as well. So in Yoruba traditional weddings, they also give hampers and gifts. Now in the Nigerian traditional wedding system or marriage system, gifts are given by both parties, most notably the party who is coming to seek for the hand of the bride. So the what's it called? The groom? The groom. So most likely the groom party is going to come with lots of gifts because that's just the tradition in this part of the world.

It might be. It might sound strange to those of you who are in America or maybe Western Europe, but Eastern Europeans, the Polish people, Who else are Russians? You know, on and on Folks in Asia, you guys are familiar with these sorts of customs, so it will come as no surprise. Now, even though gift giving is a common thing in Nigerian traditional weddings, for some reason there seems to be a tradition that has evolved in the Yoruba Southern states where apart from the traditional things that are required, you know, yams, palm oils,

wheelbarrows, what else? Salts, pepper, sometimes livestock. So apart from all those things, it seems to have developed this thing in the Yoruba tradition where the gums family would send a letter of introduction and sometimes a letter of introduction is accompanied with a hamper. The hamper might have some fruit and some other nice stuff in there. So if one was going to get into the created hampers and gift giving space and you decided that instead of trying to do hampers or gifts for every single person under the sun, I'm just going to focus on Yoruba traditional weddings quickly,

you're going to be able to develop expertise in traditional weddings. What kind of hamper should you put together when the groom is from Ijesha and the bride is from Ileifa or the groom is from? Well, I know you know, you get the point after a while. By focusing, you know, on this niche market, you're going to be able to get expertise. You're going to know what hampers would be adequate, what hampers would be culturally appropriate.

What gifts would be would send the right kind of message. What gifts would serve send the wrong kind of message to your potential in laws. So you develop expertise, you develop credibility and then you quickly build a reputation so that when people say, oh, I know Kemi is getting married or Conley is getting married and we need somebody to do a letter of introduction and to have a hamper go along with that, they'll, you know, they, they pick up the phone and they call you.

So, oh, let's call Henry or let's call Henrietta because he's the guy or she's the girl when it comes to hampers for Yoruba traditional weddings. Now, because you're developing expertise, credibility and reputation, by default, you're going to have a much stronger value proposition than other people because you're meeting very specific needs. So someone needs a hamper for Yoruba traditional wedding. They're going to call you.

They're not going to call the journalist. And that's because your value proposition is on point. It's very simple. I'm getting married. I'm approaching Kemi's family. We haven't done this before. Nobody in my family has married a Yoruba lady before. So we need a little introduction and we need a hamper. They're from. They're Ajesha people or they're a Kitty people and we don't know what it is that is appropriate in those sorts of things.

So they call you up and they say Mr. Hamper person or Madam Hamper person, how much would it cost? What do you recommend? You can see that you guys are having a very specific conversation right from the get and the value proposition here is very strong. It's not like they can put down the phone and say, you know what, Mr. Henry or Madam Henrietta is too expensive and then call someone else. Because let's face it, how many people are niching down into the Yoruba traditional weddings market?

Now I'm not recommending if you're in the created happens and give giving space that you should focus only on Yoruba traditional weddings. I'm just trying to show how if you take some sort of niche, it can allow you to quickly build expertise, credibility and reputation and make sure that you have a strong value proposition and people are not searching, not trying to what's that word sort you around based on price. Now another side effect is that when you start niching down like this, sometimes, not always the case, but sometimes it leads to a perception where people at least with a premium perception that allows you to have this premium pricing because it is you're about traditional weddings, you need the letter of introduction, you need the hamper, you seem to be the specialist.

It's something that I discovered when I was in Lagos because well, OK, well, not when I was in Lagos because you know you're covering the wedding and you don't quite know what is that is going on. But by the time I got to Abuja, that's when I realized that there was such a thing. Because somebody reached out to me and said, hey, hey, Tara. Shima, what's up? You used to be in Lagos, right? I said, yeah. So can you have a number for an Alago?

And I was wondering, Alago, what is that? So I think Alago, if if I'm pronouncing it properly, I think those are the ladies who who chair the wedding ceremony. They're the ones who they're sort of like the master of ceremony. And so they entertain the crowd. They keep everything going. And usually Allegos have good contacts with with people who provide other kinds of services, particular to the wedding. So in this case, if you want a letter of introduction, you don't know who to reach to.

If you call an Alago, an Alago is going to be able to say, reach this person, call this person, tell her you're from me, they'll take care of you. So I was when I go to Abuja that I realized that there was a specialty for these sorts of things because I guess in Lagos, Alagos and people who do the the gifting and the hampers are a lot easier to find than when in Abuja. And I got the sense that in Abuja anyway Allah goes were able to command a certain a certain premium.

And also the people who are associated with them like the people who provide the letter of introduction and the small gifts that are going to accompany the letter of introduction to the to the bride's family. So it allows you to build an air of, like I said, premium perception. Also some prizing because you seem to be exclusive. Maybe that might not work in Lagos, where most of the people at Yoruba, most of the weddings would be Yoruba.

But in Abuja, and I'm guessing maybe in places like Kano or Makudi, there would be some exclusivity because it's not as if you'll be able to find analogo at the drop of a hat. And beside getting a sense of building some premium value, then another way that this niching thing is going to help you differentiate yourself is because when you pick on a niche, your marketing and your targeting becomes much more clear and much more effective.

Because in this case you have a clear audience because you're only talking to 1 audience or one group of people. So in this case, if you're focusing on the Yoruba traditional wedding market, then of course you now know the kind of Instagram ads that you're going to send. You're going to be targeting Yoruba brides of Yoruba ethnicity. OK, no, sorry, it's Grooms will be getting a lot of introduction. OK, All right. To be on the safe side, let me just make a guess.

I'm not, I'm not a specialist when it comes to advertising. So I'm assuming that you would now be targeting brides and Groom of Yoruba ethnicities living in Yoruba cities between the ages of 25 to maybe 30, 30. Should we say 35? That's just a guess. Anyway, please speak to your Instagram marketing specialist or Google marketing specialist before you make any you make any decisions based on my recommendations. So that's my guess.

So in this case, it's very, very specific. Yoruba and Yoruba boys and girls between certain ages, living in certain cities. So your marketing is going to be much more clear and because it's much more clear and targeted, it's going to be much more effective rather than just advertising for curated hampers and gifts to a broad Nigerian audience. Then it's also going to make it easy to build communities online because the niche, the target audience that you're appealing to is rather specific.

It's easy to build a community of Yoruba brides. Rather easier to build a community of Yoruba brides on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, not to try to build a community of brides in general. If you don't believe me, let's look at the experience of folks in Northern America. So I can't remember the name of the sites, but they used to be different bridal communities around different things. Communities around brides that want to have emo themes for the wedding, goth themes for their wedding, rustic weddings.

Let's see, what else? Different kinds of things, even. What's it called? You know, like pin up, pin up. Yeah. So there's there even communities around brides who want to be dressed in that whole pin up aesthetic, you know, So that's stuff that's really working in Northern America. And I assume that if in the wedding space, it'll be a lot easier to do the same thing here as well. So instead of building community of brides in general, it'll be easier to build a community of Nigerian brides.

Sorry Yoruba Brides. And in fact there are such niche segments that are already being developed. Like back when I was still in the wedding game in Abuja, there was talk about Iowa communities. Iowa is a term, I'm not sure what the exact meaning is, but it's a term that is usually applied to people in the northern part of Nigeria, especially the core north in Kota, as you as most folks like to say. And so yes, there's really niche markets and communities around Iowa brides.

So that's a clear example that this sort of thing can work. So I've been talking about Yoruba traditional weddings, not because I'm recommending that that's the niche that all of you should start playing in, but I'm recommending it because it's something that I have practical experience of. So this is not something that I'm cooking up from my head. It is something that I saw over several years and I saw it work. That's the reason why I'm recommending it.

But the different kind of issues that you can play in there, folks. The first hamper person that I tried to do some work for and I mentioned that over on the podcast, she was focusing exclusively on corporate clients. She was looking for banks, insurance houses, what do you call them, wealth, wealth management houses. You know, people don't want to send hampers to their clients who are high net worth individuals. And so that was her own focus.

So you see that's an example of niching. She's not advertising to hampers to Nigerians in general across all the parts of Nigeria, but she was focused on corporate bodies in Lagos, specifically financial institutions, banks, pension funds, wealth managers, those sorts of things. So you see niching down allows you to develop expertise, develop credibility and reputation. After a while you start getting that reputation.

By the time you've been doing it, you know, 3-4 years, somebody needs a nice ample put together for a high net worth individual. Do you know anybody can recommend So Oh yeah, I know Chemi. She handled this project for us two years ago, Three years ago. This is what she did. This was the feedback. What's fantastic I recommend for me give her a call. So that's one niche corporate clients. Then there's also organic and eco friendly stuff.

I've already seen gift baskets like that. I am not sure how popular they are, but I admit I've seen them where you have the basket full of stuff from maybe Organo Gold or Forever Living or you know all those people that are supposed to sell these miracle products. Now you take one component maybe like shared butter for instance, and everything is made of shared butter because it's a magic thing. So shared butter products for the skin, shared butter that you can eat, shared butter things for the eyes, for your teeth,

for your absolutely everything. So I've seen those kind of hampers where the theme is organic or eco friendly. So you can do that. And then I also mentioned when I was doing the research that the subscription boxes that are available, I haven't seen any myself, but it just occurred to me that you can have subscription boxes built around let's say new parents who have just had a baby and they're sending monthly hampers that have all the essential stuff.

So maybe month one will be diapers, baby milk, Let's see, what else then month 2 or maybe month 3. Well, it's been a while since I've been a parent, or at least a parent with a new baby, so I've, I've lost touch. But if you're on that space, I'm sure you can quickly come up with something of a subscription box that will last maybe six months or something where you can give them essential and tailored stuff that they need for the first six months of baby's life.

That's another way to niche. And you can see you're going to be developing expertise, credibility, and you're also going to be developing a reputation, you know, as that hamper guy or that hamper girl for this particular kind of scenario. Then of course there's the culturally specific gifts or hampers that I mentioned, you know, for Yoruba, traditional weddings and that sort of stuff. If you're an Arawa bride, a northern bride and the that sort of dynamic also exist in your space, then please connect with me.

Reach out to me. I'd like to hear nice to hear about it also so that I can use that as another example on future episodes in the podcast. Let's see, and so summaries. The reason why niching is a good idea when you're trying to stand apart is because when you niche, you are clearly from the get go, not part of the crowd, because everybody's going to be one way and you are going to be over there doing something else. So it'll be hard to say, you know what?

Your price is too high. Let me go and deal with a Mecca, or let me go and deal with Chiamaka or whatever, because it's not going to be the same comparison. Amaka and Jia Mecca are going to be general hamper people, but you are going to be that particular person when it comes to corporate gifts or Yoruba traditional weddings or newborn babies. So remember to connect with me and chat on WhatsApp. The number is 08064662140.

Also connect with me on LinkedIn. The name is Tavishima Aydi. I'm the host of the show. Don't worry about the spelling of my name because you can confirm it from the link where you're currently listening to this episode. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.