“It is now cheaper to build your own audience than to sponsor. But to stand out, you need to find a niche that a group of people really cares about, and go deep on that topic,” posits Chris Savage, Founder, CEO at Wistia, a B2B video marketing company.

We’re all looking for ways to break through the noise in the marketplace to reach our customers. But most of us do not have a well developed content strategy to make this possible.

“I think we forget especially with B2B content that if our followers gain insight that can change their business or improve their career, they will pay attention,” continues Chris. “If you’re trying to do something for everyone, it won’t work.”

It may seem scary to choose a very specific niche, but Chris explains: “A tiny little niche is actually enormous on the internet. We live in a world where everyone is connected.”

To help develop and hone your niche area and to get a sense of how big these communities are, he suggests looking at subreddits on Reddit, Twitter lists, or LinkedIn. “You will see just how many people are interested in very hyper-specific, niche topics.” 

I had a chance to speak to Chris recently and learn more about his key principles for breaking through with buyers by starting with a “niche” focus.

1. Find Your Root Cause 🌱

“If you want to scale an audience, you have to go to the root input,” Chris says. “Get feedback on why a group of people is motivated to listen to you and figure out how they are finding you.”

He shared a few examples of companies who found their root cause as a way to grow large communities who were featured on recent episodes of his podcast.

➡ A CEO coach, who targets owners who want to scale and weather business downturns. The key takeaway: “If you want to scale a lot, you need to figure out where customers are coming from and gating factors to get more customers through those key channels. You have to optimize the channel and content input driving customer acquisition”

➡ CMO at Atlassian, who talked about finding and cultivating your community of champions to drive traffic. Find out who your champions are; integrate them into your marketing; determine how they can amplify your content creation. Atlassian used this approach to create 400 communities and found 2-4 times greater retention with those who participate in the community.

It’s about having a set core focus and core audience. 

2. Apply the Principles of a Show 📲

“Once you’ve narrowed in on your niche, whether or not you want to call what you’re doing a show, you should use the principles of a show,” Chris says. 

• Figure out a format for your content that works best, then use it consistently 
• Find the format that hooks your audience, which can help set your tone and enter into a relationship with your audience
• Iterate content from the same format and figure out how to continuously make it better
• Build trust by providing high-quality, in-depth content that will keep your audience with you and coming back for more 

Taking this approach can help you build confidence in your specific niche. The consistency of approach also makes it easier to solicit input and get qualitative feedback on where things are resonating or not.

3. Atomize and Amplify Content 🔎

Chris suggests that one way to build trust is by “atomizing” your long-form content. 

How do we get more people to discover our content? Chris makes a few suggestions based his strategy: 

• Provide the right clips, the right content, at the right moment that are derivative of the longer content   
• Take four to six clips from each podcast episode and put it out on different social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, email, and others to explore the opportunity
• Put the audience in control to some extent so they can choose how they consume the content, where they are, whether they want to watch, listen, or read

It’s not just about a great title anymore like it was previously with blog posts. It’s about 30- to 60-seconds of audio or video that will hook them. If you can hook them, they’ll come back and explore more. 

To break through in a challenging market, having a niche focus initially makes it easier to communicate and iterate with an audience in ways that help to scale.

Watch their conversation.