There is something reassuring about keeping one’s options open.

No doors have been closed. No opportunities lost. No decisions made that might become uncomfortable later. It preserves possibility.

Good strategy, however, requires choices.

It is, largely, inevitable. At some point, businesses need to decide where to focus their attention. What to invest in. Who to sell to.

Much business advice talks about defining and then operating within a niche. To narrow the audience, choose a specialism and become known (and recognised) for something. Strategically, there is plenty of logic in this. Yet, as with everything in life and in business, the reality is not as neatly defined nor clear-cut.

Does making a choice in what to focus on require the permanent closure of doors?

The more I think about it, the less convinced I am that this remains a simple binary choice between keeping options open or narrowing focus. Businesses regularly operate across different positions, at different stages, and for different reasons.

How marketing is understood rather than delivered is a theme I explore often. If that resonates, subscribe to follow along.

1. The jack-of-all-trades

The broad expertise, working with any business to address any challenge.

As one business owner informed me once, “We will take any client or project size, as long as they share the same values as us.”

I understand this to ultimately stem from not wanting to be pigeonholed into a particular defined area from which you can’t escape. Not wanting to miss out on opportunities that may be captured by an as-yet unnamed competitor.

At this extreme, narrowing nothing can make it difficult for people to understand where your value truly lies. Yes, you may gain some business. But equally, you may miss out on just as much.

2. Broad and niche-as-you-go

I could argue that many businesses begin life here at some point. With a broad audience, exploring the possibilities as you go. Narrowing focus through experience and evidence.

If I am honest, I can say that my own business started in much the same way.

Sure, I had an offering, relatively broad positioning too. The more I worked with clients, however, the more I began to niche down, focusing and honing in not only on what the client was looking to address, but playing to my strengths, interests, network, and background.

A conscious decision of deliberate discovery. Allowing me to learn where to create value and where demand exists. Emerging from evidence rather than assumptions made in advance.

For how can you know which niche to target before you’ve learnt and gathered enough evidence to prove it?

3. A hyper-focused vision

At the opposite extreme, you have the businesses that are narrow across everything simultaneously. Audience, problem, expertise, and context.

“We don’t want to develop product - it has worked for decades. We just need to focus on one country with what we have. Once we have mastered that, then we can expand to other regions.”

Again, understandable. There is nothing wrong with choosing as strategy to hyper-focus. To do something as well as you can in a market that you perceive to know equally well.

However, something that begins as discipline can become strategic rigidity. Narrowing everything risks limiting the opportunities available and can make it difficult for people to understand how you can evolve with them.

At which point does useful focus become unnecessary constraint?

4. Focused, but not fixed

Specific enough to create recognition in the market, but broad enough to allow for evolution.

A business with a clear position, yet regularly revisiting the assumptions that underpin it. Reviewing strategy, validating what is happening in the market, and speaking with customers.

Recognising that the niche itself may need to evolve as circumstances change and evidence emerges. With a full awareness of where the boundaries are and why they are there, yet prepared to move them through intentional flexibility.

This almost evolves beyond the conventional niche. Firmly into the strategic conundrum. How can you remain distinctive without being limited by what made you so?

If you’re trying to make marketing more effective in your business (not just more active), subscribe to follow along.

A question and a choice

For nearly half a century, businesses have been advised that focus creates a competitive advantage. And sure, it does. However, somewhere along the line, we have also started to mistake focus for a narrowing of vision.

I would argue that there is much more nuance than the standard question of whether “to niche or not to niche”. It comes in deciding where value is created through focus and specificity, and where breadth still serves a purpose. In challenging previous decisions and assumptions, allowing the boundaries we originally set to be redrawn. A niche can emerge, develop, evolve, or expand.

It is not a permanent fixture that needs to be continuously defended.

While the origin of the word lies in a nest, we should perhaps be careful not to become too comfortable or fixed in our own. There comes a point where the greatest opportunity may come from expanding our horizons.

Image courtesy of Getty Images

How marketing is understood rather than delivered is a theme I explore often. If that resonates, subscribe to follow along.

When marketing in your organisation feels busy but not effective, you are not alone. There is usually a deeper challenge in how marketing is being understood.

The Intuitive Marketing Coach is written for people trying to move beyond activity, assumptions, and box-ticking, towards something more deliberate, valued, and commercially effective. It explores a more intuitive approach to business. One grounded in better judgement, clearer thinking, and a more considered view of what marketing is actually there to do.

If you’re trying to move beyond activity and towards something more logical, intuitive, and ultimately more effective, subscribe.