Generating $1,142,075 By Selecting Niches, And Serving Them Effectively.
Contents
Having a business that can serve everyone is both a blessing and a curse. Sure you can serve everyone but the issue is where do you start? Take Amazon, its now “The Everything Store” but it started as an online bookstore. By starting with a specific niche it allowed them to grow into the goliath they now are. The key is starting with a specific focus.
This wall art brand was an offshoot of their main business, a B2B white-labeled manufacturing facility. Having found a lot of success fulfilling for other brands selling their products they could see the demand but there was a major disconnect between having a great product and knowing how to sell directly to consumers, which is why they came to us for help.
The Problem
With logistics, product quality, and demand sorted their problems centered around niche, brand, price, offer, and marketing. Nice and easy then…
Amongst those challenges, there were really only 2 adversaries, niche and marketing which heavily impacted each other. The main issue was that their ‘brand’ was selling thousands of different products/SKUs. The issue with that is it spoke to no one. This was further amplified with their previous marketing efforts.
The Solution
Put simply, divide and conquer. With so many different products available across almost every vertical the decision was made to start niching down the store to a collective group of niches that complement each other.
For example, Water, Navel, Ships etc… this allows us to also focus the marketing on specific groups of people that have interests in these areas.
Once this was successful more brands were created to reflect other niche groups and the products that were best suited.
The Strategy
1) Niching Down
Optimizing for more conversions from the traffic you are currently driving voa advertising is the simplest way for anyone to make more money with no additional cost. A lot of people talk about button colors, shapes, numbers, and No. of clicks needed, and these are all great but in this case, we had to take another step even further back.
With products catering to everyone in every niche they were trying to speak with everyone and were, therefore, speaking with no one. The lack of congruency between the advertising and business was playing a big part in there struggle.
The decision was made to cull all the products that didn’t fit around a specific niche or topic and subsequently set up new stores that focused on these other niches. This meant that we were able to be specific with the advertising, not only with ad creative but also audience selection. It meant the congruency went through the roof and also conversions!
2) Having a clear offer and value proposition
How do you stand out from the competition? Why do people buy your products? These are both incredibly important to not only understand but to then leverage. This is your USP (unique selling proposition).
Are you competing on price? Something we would never recommend as its usually just a race to the bottom. However, because they owned the manufacturing they were able to provide the same product for less than competitors who were outsourcing.
Are you providing a unique product they can’t get anywhere else? At a basic level, no. However, they might be selling artwork but so does IKEA, are they competing? In reality no and let me tell you why.
Buying Art is just like buying a car, some people buy whatever and don’t have a passion, it’s essentially filling a space. On the other hand, others are very specific and passionate, its got to be ‘just right’. This is where our client found their USP and it allowed them to become more customer-centric.
Something people had been asking for, for years, was customizable artwork. A picture they could send in and have printed on high-quality canvas for a reasonable price. A couple of examples of this now would be brands like Pup Socks and Crown & Paw. This is one of the major shifts that allowed them to stand out when no one else could.
3) Utilizing Collection and Carousel Ads
Once the store’s direction had been ironed out, along with the offer and USP, the path we should follow when it came to advertising was much clearer.
The data that had already been gathered was enough for a starting point when it came to launching the new ad campaigns. We created a variation of collection and carousel ads around top-performing products and store collections which would resonate with our, now specific, targeting.
4) Changing environments
The environment is one of the biggest levers you can pull when it comes to developing ad creative. Think about luggage companies, for example, they don’t just show someone packing their luggage their unmade bed at home (like most people would). No, they show people walking into a stunning hotel, walking near a beach or resort.
With wall art, this can also be done, displaying the artwork above a log burning fire in a log cabin and target areas that are most like to resonate with that, or a large open-plan living space looking over a city skyline. Different environments, different people, higher resonance, higher conversions.
The Result
A long term partnership delivered significant results, being able to consistently scale over the course of 2 years, in total yielding over $1 million in trackable revenue.
