I’ve thought about this idea for about five years now.

At first, I loathsomely rejected the concept entirely.

Then, I slowly—and begrudgingly—began to embrace it. 

As the embrace became real, I was a guest on my friend’s podcast called The Focus Factory and talked about it for 35-minutes.

It’s the topic of niche.

About two years ago, members of our FishBowl here pulled whittles out of our pockets and started carving, paring away at the bare block of wood that was Fisheye’s future.

After all, that’s what you do with niches.  

You don’t declare them randomly and boldly. You discover, refine, and begin the arduous process of carving them out.

So what does that mean for Fisheye? 

Well, let’s go there.

ABOUT NICHE

Before we start, let’s define our terms.

For those of you unaware, niche (/niCH or nēSH/) is defined as a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service.

Niche is focus.

In my eyes, there are two high-level ways you can niche:

1. The people or industry you serve (the who).

2. The way you serve them (the what).

Another way to say it:

1. Vertical niche

2. Horizontal niche.

Fisheye knew that in order to make an impact (core value alert!), we had to begin carving.

So… what’s the plural for niche? (Spoiler Alert)

THE FUTURE OF FISHEYE MARKETING



As the founder of this company, I want to take a minute and pull the curtain back on the future of Fisheye.

I’ve never really done this publicly.

I’m going to provide some insights into the future focuses of Fisheye and why we’re looking to explore certain niches.

Take a poke at the list:

Niche #1

The Niche: Golf (Resorts / Clubs / Courses)

The Reason:

Past client successes; breadth of internal experience; deep industry knowledge.

The Opportunity:

Golf courses have such incredible natural content that is waiting to be captured.  So few of them do it in a way that compels customers to take action.

Beyond that, their communications arms could be strengthened significantly to better flex and connect with their customer base.

Specifically within the world of private golf, very few private clubs have taken their member communications to the lengths needed to make meaningful connections with their membership. 

We have an exciting announcement coming soon on this front. 😉

Niche #2

The Niche: Beekeeping

The Reason:

A lack of industry experts in marketing; nuanced technical jargon our team maintains; a growing marketplace; strong partnerships.

The Opportunity:

We never recognized this industry until an act of serendipity occurred in our business a couple years ago.

A prospect came to us in the manufacturing of bee products and at first, we didn’t see much potential synergy beyond small project work.

We were wrong.

Fast forward to today, and their business is experiencing exponential growth and they credit (with potentially too much praise, we humbly add) that the marketing efforts played a noteworthy role in their expansion.

Our team has taken keen interest in the world of bees. We love their impact, what they mean to the world, and the biological marvels they are. 

We feel impassioned to help this industry advance with tactful use of modern marketing tools at their disposal.

The opportunity is thick and we’re already  gaining contact and referrals with many industry players.

Niche #3

The Niche: Hospitality

The Reason:

A sometimes slow-moving, antiquated industry; Great existing partnerships; hurting with recent current events.

The Opportunity:

We already have a handful of great relationships in place in this space. We’ll be honest here: the time from March 2020 until the posting of this blog has obviously been very difficult for this industry — our partners included.

As for these long-time partners, we are eager to scale and grow with them by helping them solve marketing problems within the scope of content, email, and social media marketing.

Bringing new, fresh ideas to these properties will help drive the marketing results the leaders in the hospitality space see frequently. 

So there you have it. 

Now a question you may be asking yourself: Is it really niching if we have multiple industries of focus?

Many would argue no. 

But I view this as a process of evolution.  Prior to denoting these three industries, we had zero industry focus at Fisheye. All we had was a focus on content, email, and social. 

We were somewhat specialized, but not nearly enough.

The target is honing and the scope of our agency is tightening.

Before I close this article, I want to say one final thing: this does not mean we are unwilling to help people outside of these industries. 

We still have partnerships outside of these niches.  In fact, some of our best partners are in industries outside these.  

Point blank: if a)  we feel we can help you, b) you have a great product or service, and c) you fit well within our systems — we will help.

However, our outbound and inbound sales and marketing efforts will work to target folks in these three industries of golf, beekeeping, and hospitality.

More to come in the next few months.

Excuse me while we continue carving.