Is there a difference between niche and audience? What should you focus on?
Many people get confused when they hear the words niche and audience. These two words are sometimes used as if they mean the same thing, but they don’t.
Understanding the difference between niche and audience is essential for building a strong business and brand.
Let’s start with a simple distinction
The Difference Between Niche and Audience
What is a Target Audience?
A target audience (or target market) is the specific group of people you want to reach, help, or sell to.
For example:
- If you’re a financial advisor helping young families save for college, your target audience is parents of young children planning for education expenses.
- If you’re a freelance writer creating content for tech startups, your target audience is founders and marketers in early-stage tech companies.
What is a Niche?
A niche is the specific solution or service you offer to a specific group of people who are most likely to buy your products or services.
For example:
- If you’re a life coach who helps women overcome burnout and find balance, your niche is burnout recovery coaching for women.
- If you’re a graphic designer who only works with authors, your niche is design for writers.
In other words, your niche is what you do (the service you specialize in), and your audience is who you do it for (the group of people you serve).
This gives you two powerful ways to build your business:
Start with your audience: focus on the people you want to serve and explore different services you can offer them.
Or
Start with your niche: focus on the service you’re passionate about and find different audiences that need it.
Building a Business Around Your Audience
You build your business focusing on the people you want to serve.
Maybe you want to help writers, mothers, designers, or fitness lovers. Once you’ve chosen your audience, you can offer multiple services that support their goals and needs.
Examples of audience-based businesses
Audience that shares the same interest:
Writers Edit is a community for writers and book lovers. They provide writing tips, publishing advice, and inspiration.
Audience of the same gender:
Click Community serves women interested in photography. They offer tutorials, classes, and forums to learn and connect.
Audience with the same specialization:
Smashing Magazine targets web designers and developers by sharing high-quality content tailored to their craft.
In each case, the business sticks with a specific group of people and expands by offering more value through various services or products.
Building a Business Around Your Niche
People don’t just buy products or services, they buy solutions.
You’ve probably heard about finding out what your customers need and then offering a service that solves it. Your niche reflects the specific problem you’re solving.
Let’s say you’re a designer specializing in visual content for online media. That’s your niche.
Your next step is to find the audience that needs it, such as bloggers, online magazines, or companies with content-heavy websites.
Or imagine you’re a photographer who specializes in headshots. That’s a narrow and clear niche.
Your audience might include business professionals, entrepreneurs with online brands, actors, or models who regularly update their portfolios.
Once you’re established in one market, you can expand to serve other audiences with similar needs.
This is how a niche-based business can grow by becoming known for a specific service and then reaching new groups who benefit from it.
Another way to find your niche is to start with a broader question: How can I make people’s lives better?
People want results: they want more time, better health, financial freedom, or business success.
They may not always say what their problems are, but if you can help them get where they want to be, you’re offering real value. That’s the heart of a strong niche.
What Is a Niche Market?
Now that we’ve defined niche and audience, what exactly is a niche market?
A niche market is the combination of your specialization (what you offer) and your target audience (who needs it).
Niche Market = Your Niche (What you do) + Your Audience (People that needs your serive or product)
In other words, a niche market is a specific group of people to whom you offer a specific service.
Where Should You Start?
You can begin with either:
- Finding a niche you’re passionate about and identifying who needs it
- Clarifying your audience and exploring what you can offer them
Eventually, the goal is to find your sweet spot, which is the niche market that fits you well and has customers who want what you offer.
How to Choose Your Audience
Start where you are. The easiest way to find your tribe is to be part of your audience.
So, focus on the audience you already know. Are they getting the complete service and information they need to do their work well or improve their lives?
If not, find out what they need and help them get where they want to be.
Ask yourself:
- What are their goals or struggles?
- Are they getting the support or information they need?
- How can I help them get better results?
Focus on one group first. When you try to serve everyone from the start, you often end up reaching no one. Once you’ve built trust and credibility with one audience, you can expand to others.
How to Pick Your Niche
When you look for your niche, think about what you enjoy and are passionate about, as well as your personal strengths, skills, and advantages.
Ask yourself:
- What do I enjoy doing more than most people?
- What topics am I naturally drawn to?
- What do I read, research, or talk about with excitement?
- Can I see myself still loving this in a year?
Don’t worry about the competition right away. The thing is, almost every niche already exists, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for you.
What sets you apart is how you do it. Your voice, your style, your story – these make your offering unique.
For example, Pam Foster was a general freelance copywriter. She found her edge by focusing on one audience – pet businesses – and became a go-to expert in that niche.
When choosing a niche for your business, consider whether the market is saturated or if you offer a fresh perspective that genuinely benefits your audience.
Conclusion
Clarifying your niche and audience will help you focus your message and find the people who need your service the most.
Now that you understand the difference between a niche and an audience, your marketing becomes clearer and more effective because you can focus better.
But what if you’re still unsure about what niche market to choose?
Start with something close to your experience or interests. You’ll learn what works and what doesn’t, and you can adjust your strategy as you go. The most important thing is to take action and begin.
While you’re only thinking, nothing happens. But when you take action, you’ll see what needs to change to make things work.
