Gareth Healey is a Marketing Agency Mentor for GYDA Initiative. Gareth has spent the majority of his 24-year career in the marketing agency sector, and for 15 years was partner and CEO of a £12.5M, 175 person, integrated agency based in Leeds and London.
Over to you Gareth…
Why Niche?
I spend a lot of time with my clients discussing how they can become a niche agency i.e. an agency that is more targeted towards certain types of clients and/or offers fewer services.
There has always been a lot of discussion about the benefits of niching. With the amount of competition and disruption in the agency market, it doesn’t surprise me that niching remains a hot topic. If anything, the debate is intensifying.
My own experience is a testament to the power of niching (by client sector at least). We built our agency into a £12M business by specialising in retail. It was a very powerful and successful strategy for us. It also gave me a unique perspective on the challenges and barriers to becoming a niche agency.
In this series of articles, I’m going to look at the advantages of becoming a niche agency. I will also be outlining what steps agency owners should take to niche successfully and grow their businesses.
Let’s start by looking at why niching is the exception rather than the rule. What drives and motivates so many agency owners to avoid niching?
To read full article head over to GYDA Initiative.