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Araminta is the Founder at Mint Studios, a content marketing agency that turns content into measurable pipeline for finance companies.

gettyMy agency is niched twice: vertically and horizontally. We specialize in the fintech/financial services industry, and we also specialize in helping companies turn content into pipeline. We don’t do website, Google Ads, events or design: We do one type of marketing, for one vertical.​

I’ve been running it for over five years, and although niching down has helped us in many ways, it’s also brought problems in other ways.​ Back then (and still today) the advice was always: Niche down, niche down, niche down. ​I still think that’s great advice, but I don’t think many people talk about the downsides of niching down or what it really means when building a business, especially when you are as niche as us.​

So, I thought it would be interesting to go through two pros and cons that we’ve experienced over the past few years of being a super-niche agency. This way, you can make a more informed decision about your own agency’s decision to niche down or not.

Pro: It’s a lot easier to win when competing against other agencies.Marketing leaders often have to put together a “list” of agencies they’re evaluating, even if they already have a preferred one. Whether it’s an RFP or just a request from above, you’re being measured against other agencies.​

By being specialized within a vertical, we’ve found that it’s a lot easier for the marketing leader to make a justification for selecting us. They don’t have to use the argument “I like them,” and can say, “Well, they specialize in our sector so they clearly have more experience than an agency that doesn’t.” Whenever the choice is between us and a generalist agency, we usually win.​

This is especially true in complex industries like fintech, where understanding the product is half the job. By picking an agency that’s used to getting up to speed with complex products, and has maybe even worked on a similar product, the onboarding is faster and it’s a lot easier to work together.

Pro: It’s harder to replace you.A lot of people will ask (especially with AI): Isn’t there a threat that they just take what you do in-house?

That’s true only if you do something that is quite replicable. Because we’re so niche horizontally and we solve one very specific problem, this is a lot harder to do in-house. ​

Not just any content marketer can do what we do: They’d need to be experienced in fintech and know how to do content marketing that can be tied back to revenue. I know quite a few people who do one of those two things, but I can count on one hand the people who can do both.​

Not only does it make it harder to be replaced as an agency, but it also positions us as the expert. We’re not just taking orders from a client, our advice is needed because no one else does exactly what we do.

Con: People will not understand what you do.Being a “market of one” is great when someone knows you. But the downside is that it’s a lot harder for everyone else to understand what you do.

We’ve often had potential customers reach out who “just want content,” in other words, just the writing. They want to pick the topics, create briefs, review, etc. In their minds, the main role of a content agency is to create content.​ This means that I often have to spend quite a bit of time explaining that we’re different and will actually be accountable for the leads and revenue that come from that. ​

It means that the sales cycle is often longer because if they do end up wanting to work with us, they may need to revisit their content strategy and team structure and get their team aligned. Sometimes we just have to turn them down. ​

When we first started, this was quite a big downside, since we weren’t known in the market. Interestingly, now that marketers are suddenly a lot more focused on tracking revenue metrics and LLM visibility, it’s become a huge upside.​

Con: Hiring is a lot harder since you’ll need to train everyone up.This is the con that I wasn’t prepared for: Since very few people do what we do, it means there is no “experienced” person in our field. There are maybe highly senior marketers who can do an element of what we do, but no one does everything.​

That means that everyone on our team has to be trained carefully. We have to have strong SOPs, be very good at communication and take the time to train everyone accordingly. It also means being aware that people will take three to six months to be fully operational.​ That’s why when we hire, we always say the main thing we look for is attitude. Some experience in writing and content is needed, but everything else, we teach.​

It’s just something to be prepared for: If you’re going to be super specialized, be honest with yourself about whether you’re prepared to invest that much in training.

Tight positioning has worked, but it’s good to be aware of the negatives.Looking back on the last five years, being tightly positioned has benefited us more than it’s cost us. It made us stand out; when I started, I knew very few people in the space, and the positioning helped us gain ground much more quickly.​

But I didn’t know what the cons would be, and they both cost more money and energy than I anticipated. If I were starting again, I’d budget from day one for two things: spending a lot more time educating a market that doesn’t yet know your category exists, and potentially working with recruiters to help find the right people.​​

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