Finding your Niche

In the IT industry, especially in the big nasty world of doing it for yourself (or Freelancing, as we optimistically call it), there are many, many people that can do what we do, who can do it better (they profess) quicker, cheaper and with more ‘pizzazz’. It’s a nerd eat nerd world out there, and if you’re going to make a living, really, you need to have another approach, a different slant on what the others are doing, that will make you unique.

Any good business planner (and you did make a business plan when you started, right?) will tell you that you need to have some things that set you aside from others when you are planning to win over your prospective clients. You need to have something the client wants, you need the client to know this, you need to provide a good service in a good way and be a nice personable individual, and, above all, you have to have something that makes them remember you, so that when they need a ‘whatever’ doing for their own/business/friend’s computer/program/database/training, you are the one that comes to mind. And one way to do this is to have something that others don’t have (have an individual service or approach to your service)- or to look like you do (have an individual way of presenting your service). Are you looking to be the local “Jack of all trades” or the national “Master of one”?

Decide what you are going to aim for – to be individual or to look individual. These things are vastly different. Being an individual is all about specializing in an area of your work, becoming vastly knowledgeable about this area, and providing your client with a specialist service, often for a higher price due to the lack of availability of this service.

Specializing in an area of IT is going to reduce your audience and potential clients from everyone with a computer that needs generally sorting out; to everyone with the specific problem or need you are marketing. How many of these customers are potentially available? What are you going to charge for your services and can you justify this? Can others do what you are doing and will they charge less? How will you communicate the message of what you are doing so that your clients know when they need you and don’t go to a generalist? Do you, in fact, need to promote yourself through other generalists, and might your best marketing plan be the use of your colleagues once they are out of their depth in your area or field? How likely is it they’ll call on you – what’s in it for them?

If you have decided you are going to specialize, because of your training, knowledge, and background, and because the market’s there and you know you can tap into it, you can be sitting on a goldmine. But it’s important to look at why no or few others are about. Is it really that you’re the next Einstein, smarter than the average bear and ahead of your competitors, or is it actually that there is no call at all or very little call for the specialism you have decided to go for? You’re going to need to use all of your powers of research to find this out. How do you know your services will be used? What’s up and coming in the industry that might have an impact on what you’re doing (spoken by someone who knows – every time they re-badge new computers with new software, my book is outmoded and I have to do an update!)