- You've been asking for a while how we test niches
at Experiment 27 for our clients
and today I want to go through the eight step process
that we use to test niches.
The first step is to build a lead list.
We choose a niche based on the market research we do
during the initial month.
And then we build a lead list of 200 hundred people,
put it into a doc, and send to that niche.
We aim for 200 emails per week, per client
going to a specific niche.
And step two is to track it in a spreadsheet.
Here is the exact spreadsheet we use
link to this down in the description.
Notice in this stock we'll have the verticals.
So it's sports and events, healthcare, education, nonprofit.
We'll rank the performance from one to 10
10 being the strongest, one being the lowest,
and then have comments based on how they actually did.
The number system is a gut feeling
based on the number of meetings that we're generating
and the general response from the emails.
You notice here some niches they will get a lot of meetings
but we'll find that a lot of people we're booking meetings
for are just pitching the agency client.
Like they're trying to sell to the agency client.
So just number of meetings wouldn't be a good variable.
So we're going by that and gut feeling.
If a niche scores underneath five we have ask ourselves
a couple questions.
One, why is this niche not performing well?
Using our brains to try and think through
what's going on in this niche
that would make them not respond?
Number two, how will the same niche respond
if we changed the messaging?
So we go through that email optimization check list
that we talked about in a previous video
that we'll also link down in the description.
And then three, what niches have we had success with
in the past that are similar to this niche
that we can learn from?
And if we've done something similar in the past
we can use some of those learnings to improve our messaging
and see if we can get that niche to work.
So that brings us to step four for the eight step process.
If we find that something isn't working with the niche,
let's say it's below five like we talked about,
then we'll try adding something else.
So maybe we're writing an ebook for the client
or we're hosting an event,
or we're pitching some other type of value.
Maybe we're going harder with ideas in the cold emails.
Changing the email and going with a different approach
to try to break into that niche.
The reason why we're not immediately moving on from a niche
is because we do market research in the first month
and identify based on the client's portfolio
where they should be targeting.
You can do the same thing.
Look at your portfolio, see your top three clients
in terms of how successful they are
and how much money they make you,
and then pick niches based on that.
Is we need to pivot from the first niche
then Santiago, who runs our marketing,
and Leal, who runs our account management,
look through the client's portfolio again
similar to what I just described.
And we try and reimagine the portfolio
to see if we can target other niches.
Let's say somebody has a project
where they're crushing it with universities.
So originally we try to pitch universities.
If that doesn't work then we think about it on the
medal level, what's a university expect for a corporation
with hundreds of employees and a localized market.
So we might be able to use a lot of those technologies
depending on what app or what project the other agencies
generated to pitch another market similar.
Number six, when we pick a new niche
we'll write a new series of cold emails,
send it over to the client's to approve.
Number seven we go back, we build another lead list
within the new industry that we're targeting.
And finally number eight is we rinse and repeat
until we get a niche that's performing over five.
In terms of length, so how long does it take
to go through this eight step process?
Sometimes we knock it out of the park immediately.
You notice here for client two we got medical devices
performance is a nine right at the top
and we have the comment here strong niche for client two.
We knocked it out of the park immediately.
You'll also notice that some clients it doesn't matter
what we do, they always have a low number
and when we see that,
when we see that it doesn't matter what niche we pick
even if we've had success with other clients
then it's time to go back and revise the messaging
of the agency, look at the way the portfolio's presented,
look at the website, and see if there's something else
about the company that might be turning clients off.
And then we also keep a running lost of suggested niches
down here that the client can approve.
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and if you need marketing support for your digital agency
check out experiment 27 dot com.
I also wanted to thank Santiago Gomez, Lael Cook,
Patrick Doohan and Robert Indries
for putting this doc together.