Subscription Box Answers

The Power Of Doubling Down And Finding Your Niche.

• Liam Brennan

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On this episode of Subscription Box Answers…

I’m diving into why niching down is one of the most powerful moves you can make when building your subscription box business.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “the riches are in the niches”—and it’s true.
Too broad and you’ll struggle with everything from targeting to pricing.
But get the niche right… and everything gets easier.
Your messaging becomes sharper.
Your customer is easier to find.
And you stop competing on price.

If you want your question answered on a future episode, head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com, join the FREE Facebook group, and post it there!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the questions, you ask the questions, you ask the questions. Liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers. I hope you're having a really great day. On today's episode, we're back talking about niches. So I've just run my Subscription Box Challenge. It was a four-day free challenge the Subscription Box Challenge four days to recurrent revenue, and we were talking a lot about niches. And that was actually one of the days we focused on all around picking the right niche because, as I've said many times, picking the right niche gives you a massive advantage. You can have the best box, you can have the best box, you can have the best looking website, you can have everything in place. But if you pick the wrong niche, it's going to be really, really tough to get movement. And, on the flip side, you may have a great niche and maybe your box isn't portrayed in the best possible way and your website needs a bit of work. But because you've picked the right niche and you're targeting passionate people who actually spend money, you have a massive advantage and you can get some traction. So we talked a lot about picking the right niche throughout the challenge and on today's episode I'm going to talk about this in more detail. And this is really important, right, and this is really for people who are starting out or may be. You've been running a while and you're struggling and, deep down, you think you might not be in the right niche and you may need to tweak your messaging a bit. This podcast will help you as well. But for those people that are just starting out, right before you order any products or build any website, just stop, because if your niche is off, like I said, nothing else matters.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to picking a niche, you're not selling stuff. You're selling a solution to a specific group of people, group of people. So for us in BusterBox, we are targeting passionate dog owners. But, believe it or not, men very rarely buy our box. So we are targeting a very specific part of the market. We are targeting young female professionals. These are women who have usually moved in with their first boyfriend. They're earning a good amount of money, they get a dog and they want to treat the dog, so they sign up to BusterBox. Or we target older women whose child has maybe moved out of the house and the dog is now treated like a child. So we've niched the box down to target those people.

Speaker 2:

This is really important, right? Because a great product in a vague niche means you'll struggle but, like I said, a decent product in a tight niche and you've got potential. And here's a example. Right, this is one of the biggest mistakes people make and we went over it in the challenge.

Speaker 2:

A niche mistake would be somebody wants to set up a snack subscription box and they go with healthy snacks for everyone and it's just random products put in a box, random healthy snack products. So there's no real niche. That's really really difficult niche. That's really really difficult that business to get anywhere. And remember, if you try to speak to everybody, typically you will end up speaking to nobody. Now, on the flip side, instead of just going with healthy snacks for everybody, you went with low sugar snack box for type 2 diabetics. Now you're niching down. You're niching down very specifically.

Speaker 2:

Now can a business be built around that? I have no idea. I have no idea if there is market demand there, but the point I'm trying to get across is, in 2025 and beyond, if you want to succeed with this business model, you do not want to be targeting a red ocean. If you don't know what a red ocean is, let me explain. This is a very, very competitive space. Okay, this is a space where there's a lot of companies swimming in. They're looking to target customers here. You're competing against some big names. It's very, very hard to get movement and typically you're left competing on price when you do this. So you want to be looking for a blue ocean, and a blue ocean means the water is clear, and if the water is clear, there's usually less competition and it's a bit easier to win. Now to target a blue ocean, the easiest way to do it is ensure you're leashing down Now. I'm not saying you can't win in a red ocean. You, you definitely can. It's just more competitive and it usually requires more resources to do so.

Speaker 2:

So the next thing you have to think about when you're picking your niche right, because we can talk all night about red oceans, blue oceans, whatever there has to be demand for your product. If there is no demand for your product, guess what? It's really really hard to get anywhere. You can focus on some demand generation, marketing and, yeah, there may be some sort of potential, but it's just tougher. Okay, it's just tougher. There has to be some kind of market demand.

Speaker 2:

So you have to think about this, right? Is there a group of people actively seeking solutions, ideas or inspiration from what you're looking to offer and this is really important right? Are these people actively spending money on similar things? Are they spending money in your niche, on amazon, on etsy? If you do some google adwords keyword research, can you see people actively searching in your niche? These are all things you can easily look into and you should look into them. There's absolutely no way you should jump into a business idea and put time and money into it without doing some basic research.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you some of the research we did when we were starting buster box. So one of the main things I want to figure out was Are people in the UK market spending the amount of money that we need them to spend on toys and treats for their dog every month? So we looked into it and we figured out that they spend on average 30 a month. Okay, and quickly we realized that's great because we're now able to build a business around this. Now, if we looked into this and we discovered that no, they don't spend 30 a month, they only spend five a month, that would be a massive red flag because we could not build a sustainable business on five pounds per month. It it just wouldn't be possible. Now there may have been some kind of opportunity in there still, but it would have been a red flag. This is simple research you can do. Now, depending on your niche, a lot of this information may be out there. It just requires you to search for it, to find out what people are spending typically in your niche per month. Some niches will be harder to find out this information, but a lot of this information is out there.

Speaker 2:

Another thing, right, can you find Facebook groups, Reddit threads or forms where your target customer hangs out? Do they hang out in a place on the internet and they talk about your niche regularly? If they do, that's a really good sign. Are there some big creators in your niche? Well, they don't even need to be big creators, but are there creators in your niche who regularly post content? If so, that's probably a good sign as well.

Speaker 2:

Now, another thing you need to think about when it comes to picking the niche right. This is really important because, remember, we are looking to build a subscription business. For this business to work, we need to be able to sell something time and time again. If we can't do that and the churn rate is too high, the business model simply won't work. So you need to think deeply right. Is the niche you're targeting suitable for recurring transactions? Will they want what you're offering again and again? Is it the kind of thing that people collect, consume or refresh often? If it is, it could potentially be a good niche.

Speaker 2:

Now. A good example would be monthly self-care items dog toys I should know kids craft items. They're recurring and they can work. Now there's a simple test you can do. Right, that will really help you when it comes to picking your ideal niche. It's some simple research, okay. So the first thing is look for Facebook groups relevant Facebook groups where your target audience hangs out. Join the groups, interact in the groups. If you have to speak to an admin in the group, explain what you're doing and ask can you post a survey? If you need to pay them to post the survey, by all means do that okay, because it's very valuable information and can save you a lot of time and money long term.

Speaker 2:

Simple survey about your box idea. Would they find it helpful? Would they actually sign up and pay for it and collect feedback? Okay? The next thing I would definitely do would be create a waitlist landing page. Now you can do this on your platform. If you're using Subli, you can create a simple waitlist landing page. Now. You can do this on your platform. If you're using Subli, you can create a simple whitelist landing page there. You can do it on character Click, funnels, whatever. It just needs to be a simple whitelist landing page. Then you will run some meta ads on a low budget and you'll try and collect emails. Your landing page will be very simple. It will explain when your box is probably launching a picture of a mock-up box. You'll have some sort of offer on the landing page free gift when they sign up, a founding members discount.

Speaker 2:

Whatever the idea is is to test how easy it is to collect emails. If you collect a lot of emails, that's potentially a good sign. If you struggle to collect emails, that is not a good sign, because if you're struggling to even collect emails for your idea, it's going to be really difficult to sell it when you actually launch the box. The whole idea behind this is validating your idea as quickly and cheaply as possible, without getting sucked into a niche that may not be the best choice for you.

Speaker 2:

Okay, we'll finish today's episode by covering some common niche mistakes. The first one is being too broad. We mentioned that earlier and we used the snack box as an example. I'm launching a subscription snack box Way too broad. You have to get a lot more specific. The next one and I see this time and time again with people they put in so much effort, they have a brilliant box, a really nice website, they have everything in place, and that is picking a niche you want to work versus one which is proven to work with a proven target audience. It's a big one, massive mistake people make.

Speaker 2:

The next one, trying to invent demand instead of finding it. Mentioned it briefly earlier. You don't want to be going down the demand generation route. You want to be launching where there's already demand. It makes everything so much easier. And finally, confusing a cool idea with a hungry market again really, really common. There's so many cool ideas out there and, trust me, I've witnessed this firsthand with different things I've tried to set up over the years. A cool idea does not mean there's a hungry market and you really need to know the difference between that, because you can come up with a cool idea and you can get sucked in really, really quickly, but that does not mean there's a market there that's going to buy your product.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I hope you found this episode helpful. Remember, if you want to have a really successful box and not a flop, you have to get your niche right. Run it through the test that we covered. If it looks like there's promising signs and you're actually honest with yourself that there is promising signs it could have potential. Thanks very much for everybody who listened to this week's episode. As always, we'll be back next week at the exact same time and if you have a question you want answered on the show, make sure you head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom, join the free Facebook group and post your question there. Thanks very much. Have a great day. Bye, bye.