Are you in a “hard niche?”
These are niches like Real Estate Agent, Insurance Agent, Mortgage Loans, Financial Planner, etc. Most industries that have individuals in the business that are commission, tend to be this way for the simple reason that each “agent” is out there marketing. Which means one office may have 10 individuals that market for themselves and their brand.
This quickly jumps the number of competitors that you have to compete with for every aspect of developing your business.
This is also true for search ranking and digital advertising, which will increase the cost of marketing efforts. There are ways to try and get some wins in saturated niches.
Find your sub-niche:
We will start by looking at Real Estate, which has an 87% failure rate in the first 5 years because of the competition.
A “Listing Agent” is not a true sub-niche, if you are a listing agent, then you still want to look at sub-niches like a “luxury home listing agent” or “townhome listing agent.”
“First time home buyers agent” is a sub-niche, but it is a common market that new agents target, so it still remains highly competitive. Instead you may want to look at “buyers agent for a single woman.”
Neighborhoods can also be sub-niches. For Eugene, you could look at the Ferry Street Bridge area, Gilham Road, West Eugene, Barger area, and so on. If you are in Springfield, you may look at Centennial Blvd, Downtown, Thurston area and so on.
Schools are also a good one, Sheldon High School and South Eugene High School are popular schools, but they may or may not be worth your focus.
No matter what you choose to look at to find a niche or two, you will need to do keyword search research, to see if possible long-tail keyword phrases (search term over 3 words long) aka sub-niches will have enough search volume to generate traffic to your website or phone.
These ideas can apply to other high competition areas as well. Mortgage has VA, FHA, Rural, Condo/Townhouse, and more, but even with these sub-categories may need to be extended to carve out a true sub-niche.
Do the research
Here are some FREE tools:
- Google Trends
- Keyword Shitter
- AdWord & SEO Keyword Permutation Generator
- Answer the Public
- Google Correlate
- Keywords Everywhere
- Wordtracker Scout
- Google Search Console
While we offer keyword research for SEO as well, you know yourself and your industry better than any external company, we recommend you play around and trying to find some areas where you could focus on as a sub-niche. Remember when doing research to think like a normal prospective customer, as most people don’t use industry terms.
We hope this helps and please do not hesitate to contact us with questions.