Niche or Not

SkyPoint Studios vision: The Starbucks of Web Design

Niche down is a phrase often mentioned by business advisors and coaches to people trying to figure out how to expand and grow their business. And it can be good advice depending on the type of business and it definitely works for some people.

The question is whether to niche down or not and what the other alternatives are such as being a generalist. Here at SkyPoint Studios we are a generalist provider, meaning that we serve all industries and people creating businesses in all manners.

We definitely do have our specific customer demographics that we focus on, but they are completely industry agnostic. This matches the philosophy of our company as our vision is to be universal and ubiquitous, ‘The Starbucks of Web Design’.

To that end, we provide a consistent experience across all locations and areas we serve, just like one would experience at a franchise such as Starbucks, McDonald’s or even Walmart.

Walmart is not a franchise, it is independently owned, such as our company, but it makes a good example as it serves the common person. In our company we don’t try to be highfalutin or elite, we try to serve the common working person with their common goals to help them achieve something extraordinary in their business.

We have humble roots and humble beginnings here at SkyPoint and that’s what we try to bring to the mission and vision of the company. So back to the idea of niche or not, should you pick one particular industry and just go all in on that?

Some web development companies will pick out just plumbers or just roofers to focus on for their marketing and only serve up website designs to those type of companies. The idea with this is that it’s so much easier to just create one template of a website and then replace the little details about that particular company and save a ton of time and cost rather than having to reinvent the wheel every single time on a new project.

I get that from a time-saving standpoint and from generating revenue standpoint, however, from a creativity standpoint, this is very boring and makes the company into a mass production company and not into a creative studio.

The joy that I get in my job is that I’m constantly challenged by new industries and learning about all kinds of businesses that I would have never learned about had I not been in the generalist web design field.

Our customers benefit as well as they get the well-rounded experience that we have, an ability to adapt to all kinds of different industries and help them succeed. All this while not having a conflict of interest by helping their competitors to take over their market.

For example, if we were to only help out attorneys with their website and search optimization, then how could we in good faith take payment from one attorney in a city to help them succeed while also taking money from another attorney in that same city to succeed in the same category, it would be highly unethical.

That is why I don’t believe in doing niche for my company. I understand that other companies and visions will be different, and it may work for you, however I feel like being a generalist is so much better than being in a niche business.

What are your thoughts on niche-ing down? Are you more of a generalist? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, so sound off in the comments below and we can have a discussion!

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