Transform Your Boring Business Niche Into a Broadly Appealing Brand

Some brands seem to have all the luck — a niche that is inherently appealing and exciting to a widespread group of people. But not every niche has instant mass appeal. Businesses that do things like fighting online ad fraud can have a very real positive impact, but they don’t always get customers excited right away.

You can still turn your business idea into something that will appeal to a wider audience even if it doesn’t appeal to everyone. Here’s how.

Develop a tech-driven product or service.

One of the most readily apparent methods to make a boring niche gain widespread appeal is to find a way to make it more tech-oriented. One need only look at how Uber transformed the not-very-exciting (yet often essential) taxi services industry and how similar models have popped up in nursing and other niches to see how dramatic this transformation can be.

Of course, making a product or service more tech-oriented doesn’t always have to completely upend the industry. It often comes down to making your service more convenient and accessible to the end consumer.

A great example of this is travel insurtech brand Faye Travel Insurance. The company’s streamlined app offers a solution that helps travelers get customizable policies in minutes and provides real-time itinerary alerts and reimbursement notifications. Travelers can even file in-app claims and get refunds sent directly to their phone’s wallet while traveling. 

Such tech enhancements greatly improve the user experience from when they get coverage to when they need to file a claim. In a boring industry, offering tech-powered conveniences can be a true game changer.

Produce genuinely helpful and entertaining content for your target audience.

Another powerful way to differentiate your brand and gain widespread appeal is through your content. Providing your target audience with useful or entertaining content can help your company stand apart from its competition. Determining what and how to share is much easier when you consider your audience’s problems and what they want to achieve.

Purple’s viral video “How to Use a Raw Egg to Determine if Your Mattress Is Awful” is an excellent example of combining information and entertainment. In the ad, “Goldilocks” drops raw eggs on a variety of mattresses as an example of how their own products can alleviate back pain.

The unique product demonstration, paired with humor throughout, resulted in a truly memorable and convincing ad that accumulated over 194 million views on YouTube.

Whether through videos, blog posts, infographics, or other types of content, brands in boring niches should consider the information that would be most useful or convincing to their audience, and then find creative and engaging ways to share it.

Look for areas where your competitors are falling short.

Finally, actively engage with the community surrounding your niche. You may not think there is much of a community if your niche is boring, but practically every industry has websites, blogs, forums, and other resources dedicated to discussing their ins and outs.

Checking out these discussions will give you an inside look into your target audience’s current experiences and pain points. Most notably, this can give you an idea of recurring issues or challenges not being addressed by competitors in your niche. 

Examples of this could include a service that people want but isn’t currently offered, a sub-niche that is underserved by market leaders, or an area where competitors deliver a subpar experience.

Identifying these areas and turning them into a key differentiating factor for your brand doesn’t spell instant mass appeal — but it does make an otherwise boring me-too player in a not-so-sexy niche gain much stronger appeal with its most dedicated audience members. Capture their attention and deliver great results to build strong word of mouth, and broader appeal will follow.

Every niche has potential.

Make sure you do not get caught up in the myth that your niche is too boring to attract customers. You can achieve wide appeal by leveraging technology to improve on what is currently offered and creating engaging content to build a memorable and relatable brand image.