How to Test Out a New Niche Instead of Going All-In Right Away

Is it time to pick another niche for your digital agency? There are tons of benefits of niching down. However, there are a lot of concerns about making big changes and focusing on a specific industry. The good news is there are ways to test out a new niche instead of going all-in.

Alano Vasquez is the founder and CEO of Cyberwhyze, an agency that helps cyber security companies become brands that scale. Although he found success and even more room for opportunity in this space, he has had other failed attempts at niching down and understands it can be scary to choose a new market and fail. However remember, failures are just lessons to help you move closer to success!

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Failures that become lessons learned when niching down.
• Testing out a new niche, rather than going all-in right away.
• Having the right team in place to give your freedom in your agency.

Sponsors and Resources

Wix: Today's episode is sponsored by the Wix Partner Program. Being a Wix Partner is ideal for freelancers and digital agencies that design and develop websites for their clients. Check out Wix.com/Partners to learn more and become a member of the community for free.

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First Steps and Lessons Learned When Niching Down

Alano was working in sales at a tech startup right out of college. He was laid off, unfortunately, but when another startup hired him, he soon realized they had no marketing. He decided to use what he had learned and focused on becoming a full-staff marketer.

After learning the tech industry and creating his own agency, Alano started working by with any client in the B2B space. He worked with education, healthcare, and fintech companies trying to offer as many services as he could. Within 3 or 4 years, the agency hit a ceiling of about $1.5 million in revenue.

In trying to work out a solution, Alano noticed a lot of density with the agency’s cyber security clients. However, at the time he actually decided they would focus on the tradeshow space. It seemed like the right choice at that moment. Unfortunately, this happened right before the 2020 pandemic and the end of all in-person events for quite a while. They had spent time and resources on experiential and interactive marketing when everything went virtual because of Covid.

How to Identify a New Niche for Your Agency

After his first failed attempt, Alano and his team went back to the basics and turned to the opportunity in the security space he had noticed before. They focused on branding and content creation for cyber security companies.

Before you pick a niche you pretty much start working with everyone so you can start to see what you like and do really well. You can see where you have success and start weeding out the things that you don’t like or do well. To his surprise, Alano quickly realized this new market presented a big runway of opportunities and was dealing. His agency Cyberwhyze started working with big brands sooner than he thought. He has rushed to create the capabilities in order to keep up with what the clients wanted from his agency. Now sees a possibility to double down on this niche.

You Can Test Out a New Niche Instead of Going All In

In hindsight, his agency would have niched down much sooner had he followed the advice he now gives to his clients. Some of his clients have a few verticals and try to put out a lot of broad-stroke marketing, trying to make it a one-size-fits-all. He finds clients tend to do this to avoid going through the process of creating an entire website for each vertical. Instead, Alano suggests creating a funnel with positioning that speaks to each specific persona.

Agencies can also apply this same principle. There’s no need to build an entire website for a new niche, just build a funnel, test it out on LinkedIn and run some Google ads. It serves as insurance to make sure you’re not going down the wrong path and it might help you feel more at ease when you eventually decide to go all-in.

The Value of The Cheat Sheet as a Lead Magnet

Coming from sales, Alano and his partner knew very early on they did not want to give away strategy for free. They found a way to productize strategy and sell it as a core component of their work.

A good way to attract new clients to your strategy is a cheat sheet. CMOs love them and even bigger brands use them. Cheat sheets come in many forms and you can use them as an opportunity to offer something really valuable while capturing data to continue marketing to your prospects.

Cyberwhyze offers a cheat sheet paired with a video webinar that explains how companies can use it to their advantage. This has helped them build trust and led many people to their website. Even some big brands have contacted him based on their cheat sheet, so the agency didn’t have to jump through hoops to get their attention. It’s all about realizing there’s really no reason to offer strategy for free and later feeling remorse for it.

Having The Right Team to Provide You Freedom in Your Agency

Agency growth is also about continuing to refine strategy and making sure the right people are in the right seats. Agency owners are normally the think tank of the business and the ones coming up with all the client strategies. This could be because it is expensive to replace yourself in that role early on. In fact, most agencies don’t seek to do this until they hit the $5 million mark. For Alano, you have two options when it comes to replacing yourself in the strategy role:

1. Do it anyway and maybe offer a profit share if you feel you can’t quite afford it yet.
2. Keep trying to do all the strategy but become a bottleneck for your own business.

For Alano, it made sense to do this early on, even before hitting $1 million. It was the best decision for his agency. His clients have come to really like the person he hired for this role. The benefit for Alano is peace of mind and freedom. He is able  to take a vacation and only work until 5 PM knowing the agency is taken care of by his head of strategy.

The idea of replacing yourself might be uncomfortable. However, the sooner you can replace yourself as the head of strategy the better if you’re going after bigger projects. Remember, you probably started this business to eventually have more freedom.

This resistance could also stem from the fact that they don’t know the steps they need to take to make sure that this new hire will work. Agency owners are usually visionaries and many struggle with execution or hiring for execution. You need clarity of where you’re going and who you’re going after from the beginning. This way, your team will feel empowered to make decisions without you. Once you have this, you can hire the right person to replace you.

Staying True to Your Why as Your Agency Grows

Alano had to figure out his agency’s growth before getting to this point. He went back to the basics to figure out his individual why and his agency’s why. But don’t forget, figuring out your why should be followed by communicating it to your team and revisiting it from time to time to keep everything cohesive.

In this new stage, he is thinking beyond bootstrapping. He will now look at acquisitions, as he continues to explore his niche market.

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