Establishing your niche
Before you can start building and marketing your brand, you need to establish your niche. Having a clearly defined niche makes it easy for you to communicate the value you provide to prospective clients—and signal to clients who aren’t the right fit that they’re best off working with a provider who offers what they need.
Many new freelancers think they’ll attract more business by not choosing a niche and instead, positioning themselves as generalists, but actually, the opposite is true—with a specific niche, you can establish yourself as an authority within that niche and dramatically shorten your prospects’ pipeline from awareness to paying clients.
The first step in making your value clear is clearly establishing exactly what you do. In other words, you need to make your niche clear.
Photography isn’t a niche. It’s a field.
Wedding photography isn’t quite a niche. It’s more of a specialization.
Budget-friendly wedding photography is a niche. See how it’s a much more specific offering that tells potential customers exactly what they can expect when they go with the photographer who brands themselves this way?
Your niche is the segment of the market your business fits into. That goes beyond your industry and includes:
- Your price range
- The kinds of projects you do
- The kinds of clients you work with
A budget-friendly wedding photographer can differentiate themselves from photographers with other specializations by offering engagement + wedding packages and by using photos from weddings they’ve shot on their website. They can also differentiate themselves from wedding photographers in higher price tiers by offering shorter time blocks for shooting weddings, emphasizing the value of the packages offered, and focusing on the services they offer clients, rather than the services they don’t offer. The goal with this kind of niche marketing isn’t to come across as “cheap,” but to communicate to clients with lower budgets that they can get beautiful, personalized wedding photography that comfortably fits their budget.