You see them everywhere.
The guys that ‘specialize’ in everything. They have advertisements for a wide range of services such as kitchen remodels, bathroom remodels, new carpet, drywall, windows & doors usually prefaced with the words “specializing in”.
The problem?
Their services are all mediocre, their bottom line is horrible, and they get little sleep. That’s because they aren’t actually specializing in anything; they’re generalists.
What I’ve found works best for our business is to specialize in one thing and do that one thing extremely well. For my company, it’s new screen enclosures.
However, it does more than just allow us to provide an excellent service. Specializing also enables us to market much more efficiently.
Let’s take a look at why you should be specializing.
You Need One Voice, One Message
When you’re running a marketing campaign, the last thing that you want to be doing is trying to market your company for a multitude of services service to everyone under the sun. It’s a headache. Keeping track of a multiple creatives, and tracing each inquiry they bring in down to a revenue dollar, so you can run a lean and optimal campaign is nearly impossible (for someone who doesn’t have all day to spend managing ads). On top of it all, rather than speaking to the customers interested in the services you really want to sell, you ultimately end up attracting projects that fall in a grey area between the lines.
Remember that old saying. A jack of all trades is a master of none?
Don’t let that be you.
Instead of trying to market every single service to every single person, you should be marketing your one service that you do really well. That way, people can get to know who your company is, what you provide, and you can begin to carve out a niche.
For example, my company once ran ads that advertised for ‘everything’ screen enclosure; new screen enclosures, painting screen enclosures, re-screening enclosures and hardware replacement but really what we wanted were the new enclosures. Guess what kinds of calls we got a lot of? “Can you fix my door?” “My screen enclosure leaks”. Rather than using creative space to advertise everything under the sun, I re-focused only on new screen enclosures and used the extra space to highlight our new enclosures and selling points. Although the results weren’t immediate, it ultimately led to more targeted customers, and less inquiries for services which we couldn’t do efficiently or provide value to the customer.
One Message Means Efficiency and Value
When you have just one message, it allows your team to become more efficient when it comes to your marketing campaigns.
Once you have a campaign that is successful, your team then knows exactly what tools they need to use and how to get your message out to the people.
When you’re on that level, everything that you do can be standardized, everyone knows what they’re doing, and your company wastes less time. Less time wasted usually means more productivity and more money for your business.
However, it also helps your customer. When you’ve streamlined the entire process, you can really focus on providing even more value to your customers than you were before. Again, more value to the customer means more business for you.
Your Sales Team Has More Success
Working in sales is tough and, at times, thankless. In my earlier example, the sales calls for the miscellaneous services, would fatigue my sales team. They had to spend time looking for solutions and dealing with inefficient operations. This would lead to lower morale and a not as positive customer experience.
Do your sales team a favor, and set them up for success.
When a company tries to sell every service known to man, your sales team then has to provide estimates on a bunch of random jobs with people who aren’t even that serious about working with your company.
If you specialize in one service? Your marketing team can become really damn good at estimating costs for that specific service.
Once you become known as a serious company, you start to get more and more serious buyers who now see you as an expert in your niche.
You Have Fewer Headaches and More Happier Customers
Happy customers are what it’s all about.
If you’re trying to provide too many services, you’re going to end up producing mediocre work. There’s no way you can be a specialist in everything. You don’t have all the right tools, you don’t know how to handle small problems when they arise because you haven’t done it (that particular scope of work) time and time again, and your standards of quality won’t be as high, particularly if you have employees doing the work. Can you really expect Joe who’s done three totally unique projects this week to have a high standard when he spends everyday frustrated and has no regular standard?
When you’re truly specializing and working in a niche, you won’t have many “unexpected’s”, and you when you do, you’ll have a systematic process in place for handling them quickly and efficiently.
The side-effect of mediocre work from too many unexpected’s and frustrated employees is two things.
The first is that you end up with unhappy customers who are complaining to you. That’s more stress and work for you.
The second is even more critical.
When you have unhappy customers, you get bad reviews. When you get bad reviews, people don’t want to work with your company.
One of the best marketing strategies that you can have is to have glowing reviews all over the internet, and the best way to get those good reviews is to specialize in one service that you do exceptionally well. This compounds as the reviews reflect your services performed, and those interested in your target service take notice.
You’ll Raise Your Bottom Line
The whole point of having a strong marketing message, and the entire point of running a business, is to make money.
If you’re moving from a more general business model to a specialized model, you might experience a small drop in sales at first since people don’t know to go to your company for that specific service yet.
However, word gets out over time.
Once you have a strong marketing campaign going for your service, have worked successfully with some clients, and have several reviews online, people will be coming to you instead of the other way around.
When this happens, you make more money.
But not only that.
If you’re an expert in one area and know exactly what you’re doing, you know what to tell your employees to do every single day. When a company is making money, and the employees see strong leadership, people want to stay and work hard for you.
Thus, you’ll spend less time hiring and training new workers.
Get Started Today
If you’re a company who tries to specialize in everything, today is the day that you need to start thinking about how you can change that.
Which one of your services are you best at? Once you’ve narrowed that down a little bit, start looking at the competition in your area. Try to specialize in something that has a bit less competition so you can pick up on that business.
Remember, a streamlined business is an efficient business. An efficient business is a profitable business. With a profitable business, you’re a happier owner.
Good luck, and feel free to drop any questions or stories in the comments section below!