8 Ways To Niche As A Designer

Design biz

Mar 30

🎧 Music in video by www.bensound.com 🎧

Wondering how to find your niche as a freelance designer?

I’m spilling all the details in today’s blog post!

Niching isn’t a mandatory thing, but you should know that it can seriously improve your marketing strategy and help you book out your calendar in a flash. We’re gonna have some serious fun with this powerful topic!

Before we get into the details of exactly how to find your niche, let’s visit this week’s happiness hack: setting boundaries with your phone.

THIS WEEK’S HAPPINESS HACK:

SET SOME **BOUNDARIES** WITH YOUR FREAKING PHONE

First thing’s first—disable those pesky notifications!

Getting rid of those alerts will help you only use your apps (we’re talking email, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.) when you actually need to use them instead of constantly being distracted by the pings, rings and pop-ups.

Got those notifications disabled? Perfect.

Now let’s talk about the glory of do not disturb mode. If you use Apple products (MacBook, iPhone, Apple Watch, etc.), you can actually set this so it’s effective across all of your devices!

Basically, you choose your productivity window (for me it’s 9am-5pm Monday through Friday) and turn on do not disturb. It keeps your notifications, texts and calls from coming through…except in case of an emergency. (You can also set it to where a specific contact is allowed through!)

Setting up easy phone boundaries by disabling my notifications and using do not disturb mode have seriously helped me feel SO MUCH BETTER in my day-to-day.

I’m more focused, less distracted, more creative, less sidetracked and more productive! WOOHOO!!!

Now it’s time to dive into 8 ways you can find your niche as a freelance designer.

Before we get into the specifics, I think it’s important to note that the point of finding your niche is not to limit yourself!

Think of it more as:

Helping you help the people you wanna work with 👊🏻
Positioning yourself as an expert 💸
Making yourself more attractive to your audience 💃🏻

Are we all on board? Beautiful.

8 ways to niche as a designer:

Values

Think about your core values and relate to your potential clients through your shared values.

Maybe creativity is most important to you, so you connect to clients who also value creativity. Or maybe you wanna work with people who value happiness, so you market yourself as a happy brand.

Type of service

Is there a specific service you love providing or are especially talented at? Consider focusing on just that service!

If you choose to niche this way, you’ve gotta be really into the service you provide, because it’s all you’ll be doing! But if you choose wisely, you’ll only spend your time providing services that bring you joy!

Some ideas for types of services:

Done-in-a-day services
Shopify only
Sales funnel design

Budget

Choose your own adventure: budget-friendly or high-end.

There are loads of clients looking for designers on both ends of the spectrum. Most high-end buyers won’t even consider a low-budget offer, and vice-versa.

These clients are typically in two very separate camps, so it’s best to choose one budget range and stay there.

Business model

With this type of niche, you choose the type of businesses you specialize in working with, like: service-based, brick and mortar, course creators or online memberships.

When you niche based on business model, you’re showing your clients that you understand what they’re doing and that you’re specifically suited to help them.

Industry

This is typically the most common method when you think about how to find a niche as a freelance designer. With this option, you market yourself as a graphic designer for restaurants or a graphic designer for the wedding industry.

You can get as specific as you want! Maybe instead of working with the wedding industry, you niche down further to working with wedding photographers. It’s up to you!

Stage of life

Here you’re going to think about where your ideal client is in life. What is the defining characteristic of their stage of life?

Maybe they’re a young mom. Start there, and then dig deeper.

Is this young mom working part-time or trying to scale to full-time? Is this young mom a six-figure earner?

Get super clear about where your ideal client is at in life, and then market directly to that person. Your goal is to be the expert for people in this specific, unique stage of life and career because you understand their specific needs and can solve their specific problems.

Goals and problems

This type of niche revolves around helping someone reach a specific goal or find a solution to a specific problem.

Potential (specific) goals:

Reach an income goal (six- or seven-figures)
Book out services
Become an expert in their industry

Potential (specific) problems:

Too many ideas and no direction
Tech-challenged
Too busy to accomplish goals

The beauty of this approach is that you can combine the goals and the problems to get super specific about who you serve.

This looks like marketing to people who “Want to hit six-figures but are too busy to get there on their own.”

When you niche down like this, you can position all of your services and offers as solutions to their specific problems. This kind of marketing connects deeply with your audience and helps them trust you.

This is also an excellent way to charge more for your specialty services!

Design assistant

If you’re just getting started, or you’re super skilled but don’t wanna spend the time marketing yourself as your own brand, niching yourself as a design assistant is a great way to find work.

With this niche, you focus on working with another designer to complete their client work.

The upside of this type of niching is that you get to spend more time creating and less time marketing. So you can get a lot of the freelance lifestyle benefits without putting in the time and effort of creating your own brand.

Here are some real-life examples of designers who’ve niched to show you how to combine niche types to come up with your specialty :)

Brighten Made

“Modern lifestyle brand design made with purpose.”

Niched by:

Values (modern, purpose)
Industry (lifestyle)
Services (brand design)

Rowan Made

“Design for conscious lifestyle and wellness folks."

Niched by:

Values (conscious)
Industry (lifestyle, wellness)
Services (branding — specified further down the page)

Pinegate Road

“Beauty is strategic, especially when building your online business. We create high-level personal brands for experts, coaches, and thought leaders that are more than pretty; they’re powerful!”

Niched by:

Industry (personal online brands that include experts, coaches and thought leaders)
Values (strategy, aesthetics but with purpose)
Stage of life (building business)

Morgan Rapp

“We help e-commerce businesses take their branding and Shopify websites to the next level.”

Niched by:

Services (branding, Shopify design)
Industry (e-commerce)
Goals (level up)

Wayfarer Design

“Heart-led design (branding, packaging, web design) for the thoughtful and ambitious entrepreneurs.”

Niched by:

Values (heart-led, thoughtful, ambitious)
Services (branding, packaging, web design)

Hello Big Idea

“A creative agency at the intersection of design and social.”

Niched by:

Services (full creative agency including design + social)

Now you’ve got some excellent options for helping you find your niche as a freelance designer, but how do you actually start working with these people? Stay tuned, my friend, because next week we’re talking about a super easy way to elevate your marketing and get the type of client you want.

And in the meantime, head here to download the High-Value Process Roadmap bundle that I created just for you!

It’s got 15 ways to elevate your client experience and 4 canned emails to start using immediately!

Most of us want to feel more organized on the backend of our business so we can show up with more confidence in front of our clients. This bundle is designed to help you do just that!

Until next time, friends!