The Flexible Career Paths of Grant Writing: 4 Options

Grant writing is a flexible, impactful career choice. It also meshes beautifully with the goals, skills, and desired lifestyles of many professionals from all backgrounds.

For example, nonprofit staff from diverse organizations of various sizes, marketers and communication professionals, stay-at-home parents, former teachers, and more regularly forge successful paths into the world of grant writing. Along the way, they unlock more freedom in their personal lives and bring more impact to their organizations.

If you’ve considered moving into grant writing, what can you expect? What options are available to you?

Let’s explore the four main career paths that we often see our members and friends in the Learn Grant Writing community build for themselves. We’ll also lay out our recommended career change approach, a straightforward process we call the Organic Networking Framework.

First, what will you need?

To start a grant writing career change, some level of training is essential. While grant writing is a field that allows you to learn as you go (to an extent), jumping in with no preparation is a recipe for disappointment and burnout.

A lot more goes into a successful and sustained approach to grant writing than just drafting a proposal. To really thrive, you’ll need to master additional research, analysis, communication, and project management skills, not to mention deepen your contextual knowledge about different types of grants and funders over time.

That said, grant writing training can take many forms depending on your needs and experience level.

Full training programs are best if you’re starting from scratch, especially programs that cover the complete grant writing process and, if needed, the business know-how you’ll need to secure paid freelancing clients. If you already have some experience with grant writing, additional training or a refresher course certainly can’t hurt. Online classes are generally your best bet, but you can opt for something less intensive as needed. We’ve rounded up a selection of the best grant writing resources, including a wide range of training courses, to help you compare options.

Whatever the case, we also recommend finding a community of other grant writers to join. Hearing from other grant writers, learning from their challenges, sharing your experiences, and celebrating wins together can be an invaluable way to sharpen your skills and build your own career momentum.

Career Paths as a Nonprofit Grant Writer

The most common career paths for nonprofit grant writers generally fall into two general categories—in-house grant writing for a nonprofit and freelance grant writing as an independent consultant.

1. Becoming a Better In-House Grant Writer

Let’s say you already help secure funding for your organization and have maybe even pitched in on (or led) previous grant projects. With this career path, you’ll make grant writing a real area of specialization through extra training and resource allocation.

For context, it pays off when nonprofits invest wisely in grant writing. Grants are a critically important revenue stream for organizations of all sizes, and they play a key role in building nonprofits’ capacities to drive impact.

Why? Because unlike fundraising, which is a continuous effort that requires ongoing (and often a lot of) time and resources, grant writing can be a more efficient path to growth. With an upfront investment of time and resources, you can work to win a large grant that helps your organization build a new program and fund it for a period of time (during which you can secure additional funding or build a sustainable plan for it). All you’ll need to do is run the newly funded program and spend a couple of hours each month or quarter reporting your progress back to the funder.

This kind of effective grant program requires careful strategy, upfront work, and attention to maintain compliance and sustainability. However, it ultimately takes less time than constantly chasing new donors or over-relying on exhausting, unpredictable annual fundraising.

You’ll need: Additional grant writing training scaled to your needs, as well as a plan to pitch the importance and benefits of grant seeking to your organization if everyone isn’t yet on the same page.

2. Becoming a New In-House Grant Writer

Maybe you work at a nonprofit but have never helped with grant writing before. Perhaps you don’t even directly help with fundraising, but you have the desire (or have been asked) to secure more funding for the organization.

Don’t get overwhelmed—training, preparation, and enough time will set you up to succeed.

If your organization is small or has never pursued grants before, the key difference you may encounter in this situation is that you’ll likely need to ensure leadership fully understands what grant writing entails, including:

  • Investments of time and resources
  • Reporting requirements
  • Attention to organization and relationship-building
  • Persistence and ongoing work (even just a few hours a week to start)

Many grant newcomers fail to understand the full scope of what’s needed for long-term success, instead assuming that a stressful application blitz will pay off with funds and then be done. If your proposals are denied, you could then lose organizational buy-in to keep trying—but remember that grant seeking is a long game that pays off. If you lose one grant, you could easily win another by adapting your plan and resubmitting next year.

Organizations need to understand that they stand the best chances at ongoing success when grant writing is a sustained activity, not a one-off longshot. This means that part of your job as the new in-house grant writer is to advocate for grant writing as a long-term strategy.

You’ll need: More in-depth training if you’re starting from scratch and a plan to fully align the organization on what’s required to support the full, ongoing grant lifecycle.

Career Paths as a Freelance Grant Writer

Going the independent route as a grant writer is a popular choice for a few reasons. Self-employment unlocks more freedom in your day-to-day life while allowing you to drive impact for nonprofits in your community. For many freelancers, it’s also quite lucrative.

There are two general paths you might take toward starting as a freelance grant writer, depending on your level of commitment:

3. Starting a Grant Writing Side Hustle

For freelance work on the side, consider launching a grant writing side hustle. This option can work well for part-time professionals, stay-at-home parents, and others who can’t or don’t want to build a new full-time career.

To get started, follow our recommended career change strategy (explained below), and build a small client roster. And make it your own—keep your work scaled to your personal goals and capacity.

You’ll need: Grant writing training appropriate for your needs and a plan and vision for your side hustle. It’s also important to find initial contacts to pitch your services (or an idea of who you’d like to connect with) and time—building any freelance endeavor takes time and patience.

4. Starting an Independent Grant Writing Consultancy

A small freelancing business is a step up from side-hustling and, for many grant writers, the eventual goal of their hard work. This route involves building your side hustle into full-time consulting work for multiple nonprofit clients.

By starting with a side hustle and growing your operations, you’ll benefit from all of the relationships you’ve built along the way with nonprofits, funders, corporate giving programs, government offices, and others.

You’ll need: All the same necessities as a grant writing side hustle but with an extra dash of patience—you can move as fast or as slow as you want, but it takes time to build a successful track record without burning yourself out.

Our Recommended Career Change Framework

There’s no one-size-fits-all way to change your career, but there are some common steps you can follow and adapt that will help you approach the process more intentionally. We call it the Organic Networking Framework, and it allows you to step into a new career at your own pace through building freelance experience. Here’s how it works:

  1. Create an outreach list. Who would you like to work with? For grant writers, this will mean nonprofits that you know (personally or otherwise). Gather a list of these potential clients and begin reaching out with a request to simply chat and learn more about their grant writing efforts and goals.
  2. Host an informational interview. Once you’ve secured a meeting, approach it with the intent to simply listen and learn, not to pitch your services right away. Aim to uncover your contact’s current state and grant goals so you can find an easy way to offer them value.
  3. Determine a quick-win deliverable. Reach back out to offer a quick deliverable that the contact will find valuable. For grant writing, this often means a Funding Strategy, or a roadmap of the next grant opportunities a nonprofit should pursue over the next year or so. This is an easy way to get your foot in the door without committing to or pitching a larger service that the client might not yet be ready for.
  4. Create the deliverable. Once the client agrees and you sign a quick contract, create the deliverable that you’ve offered. Deliver it on time—or earlier!
  5. Amend the contract. Provide your deliverable to the client, and then offer your services to take it a step further. Again, Funding Strategies work particularly well for this because you can easily lay out your plan to put its grant roadmap into action. Explain how you can write the proposals for the opportunities in the Strategy. Once you have determined the details with the client, amend the contract to extend your work.
  6. Repeat and keep improving. Repeat steps 2 through 5 to complete more paid work, building your knowledge and contacts along the way.
  7. Earn $15K through freelancing work and decide next steps. After reaching a revenue goal (whatever makes sense for you, although we recommend $15K for freelancers), think about what you’d like to do next with your new skills and track record. If your goal is to freelance, keep the momentum going. If it’s to find a new full-time job, begin applying and showing off your skills.

This framework offers a customizable, easily-repeatable way to build not just your know-how but your confidence. What it doesn’t mention, however, is training. Again, grant writing training is essential. Programs like the Global Grant Writers Collective are built with freelancers in mind, with specific training coaching on the business skills you’ll need.

However you approach your career change, setting yourself up to succeed through training and freelance work can give you the skills and confidence you need to wow your first clients (or employer) and create a powerful snowball effect. Happy grant writing!

Meredith Noble is the co-founder of Learn Grant Writing and author of the book, How to Write a Grant: Become a Grant Writing Unicorn. She has secured over $45 million in grant funding, and her students have secured over $627 million – a number that grows daily. Meredith can be found adventuring in Alaska or reading.

The title of the article, Multi-Channel Marketing: The Key to Reaching Supporters

Multi-Channel Marketing: The Key to Reaching Supporters

Marketing research indicates that it can take up to 50 touchpoints to make a sale. A few factors influence the exact number of interactions needed, such as industry and where the individual is in their journey. Regardless, this fact points to one major takeaway: multi-channel marketing is essential for driving action.

This holds true in both the for- and nonprofit sectors, meaning your nonprofit needs to connect with supporters repeatedly to inspire support. Multi-channel marketing, the act of contacting supporters across multiple platforms, is often the key to acquiring new donors, volunteers, and advocates. It also spreads awareness of your services and programs to beneficiaries.

To strengthen and diversify your nonprofit’s outreach strategy, we’ll explore why multi-channel marketing works and how your team can use it.

What is multi-channel marketing?

Multi-channel marketing is a strategy that involves communicating with supporters across multiple platforms, such as email, direct mail, and social media. This approach ensures messages reach supporters where they are active and increases the number of times they see your communications.

For example, perhaps your nonprofit is promoting matching gifts. You start by creating a dedicated webpage explaining the program and its impact. To maximize reach, you repurpose that content into a compelling Facebook post, include a mention in a fundraising letter, and send a brief but impactful text message reminder.

For nonprofits, multi-channel marketing builds donor trust and cultivates stronger relationships by providing consistent messaging across various touchpoints. It leverages the strengths of different channels—such as the personal touch of direct mail, the immediacy of social media, and the storytelling power of email—to create a unified donor outreach strategy.

Omni-Channel vs. Multi-Channel Nonprofit Marketing

Multi-channel marketing is related to omni-channel marketing. With multi-channel marketing, you reformat the same message for multiple platforms. With nonprofit omni-channel marketing, each message builds on the one that came before it, integrating multiple channels to create consistent experiences for supporters.

Omni-channel marketing is a more personalized strategy designed to guide supporters through their giving journey. For example, your nonprofit might send a direct mail donation request, thank the donor with an emailed eCard, and then text the donor an invitation to follow you on social media.

Both strategies are valuable and should build upon one another to maximize impact. Start with multi-channel marketing to attract new supporters, learn the basics of communicating via multiple channels, and discover which tactics work best. Then, transition to an omni-channel approach to nurture relationships and encourage long-term giving.

Why does multi-channel marketing matter?

Your supporters don’t all engage with content the same way. Some prefer email, others scroll through social media, and some respond best to direct mail or phone calls. Multi-channel marketing helps you meet supporters on the platforms they actively use.

Instead of relying on a single outreach method, use multi-channel marketing to:

  • Expand your reach. The more platforms your nonprofit markets on, the more prospective supporters will see your content.
  • Build brand recognition. Repeated exposure builds familiarity. When supporters consider which nonprofits to give to, they’ll likely gravitate toward organizations they’ve already heard of. By getting your nonprofit’s name and mission in front of the same supporters repeatedly, they’ll come to know and trust your organization.
  • Improve conversion rates. Each touchpoint pushes supporters toward giving. A donor might ignore your first email, but a follow-up text or social media post can prompt them to give. Providing multiple touchpoints ensures supporters can respond in the most convenient way.

Whether you’re soliciting donations or looking for extra volunteers, diversifying your outreach will keep your cause top of mind for current and potential supporters. Consistency will ensure your message reaches the right people at the right time.

Essential Platforms for A Nonprofit Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy

Your nonprofit will need to find a unique combination of platforms that drives results. Select your outreach methods based on what channels your audience uses and how confident your nonprofit is in its ability to maintain an active presence.

Let’s explore a few popular channels.

Email

Email is a powerful channel for driving donations, sharing project updates, and educating supporters about your mission. In 2023, nonprofits experienced a 7% growth in their email subscriber lists. This growth positions email as a reliable channel to deepen your nonprofit’s connection with its audience.

You can enhance your email strategy by:

  • Improving subject lines. Subject lines determine whether an email gets opened. Aim for 50 characters or fewer to avoid getting cut off. Use urgency, curiosity, or personalization to elicit an emotional response and boost your open rates (e.g., “You Can Change a Life Today”).
  • Issuing just one call to action (CTA). Emails that ask donors to take multiple actions, like donating, volunteering, and subscribing to your newsletter, may confuse recipients.
  • Varying the content you send. eCardWidget’s donor retention guide recommends sending donation appeals, personalized thank-yous, impact stories, and mission updates to keep donors engaged. Switch up the format by using letters, monthly newsletters, and digital greeting cards.

Even with these strategies, your emails will only be effective if delivered successfully. If your emails have a high bounce rate, your subscriber list is likely outdated. Use an email append service provider to fill in missing emails and correct defunct ones. In turn, supporters will receive your focused, inspiring emails.

Social Media

Many supporters likely use social media. Focus on the platforms where they’re most active. For inspiration, here’s how to incorporate social media into your nonprofit’s multi-channel marketing strategy:

  • Facebook. Facebook commands a massive audience. While advertising isn’t discounted for nonprofits, Facebook’s audience targeting tools allow you to direct ads to high-value prospects. For organic posts, focus on compelling storytelling, high-quality visuals, and mission-related news stories.
  • Instagram. An Instagram account can be impactful if your nonprofit’s mission lends itself to eye-catching photographs. For example, the animal shelter Perry’s Place went viral for its “Naughty & Nice Cat of the Week” marketing campaign.
  • X (Formerly Twitter). Share timely updates, post about relevant trending topics, and engage via replies and shares. Additionally, keep an eye out for upcoming competitors like Threads and Bluesky.
  • TikTok. Nonprofits have flocked to TikTok in the past few years. However, the future of TikTok in the United States is unclear due to recent legislation. If your nonprofit decides to pursue a TikTok strategy, consider signing up for TikTok for Good, which provides nonprofits with free marketing tools like donation stickers and fundraising livestreams.

When it comes to social media, only create accounts if you know your organization will be able to maintain them. Abandoned accounts can make supporters question your organization’s health.

Nonprofit Website

Your nonprofit’s website is an essential marketing tool. It serves as the central hub for information, tells your organization’s story, and enables supporters to donate or sign up for opportunities.

To create an inspiring website, follow these best practices:

  • Communicate your work. Feature an ‘About’ page, create individual program pages, post case studies, and write blog posts about your mission. Show the difference your nonprofit is making.
  • Feature compelling visuals. Use high-quality images and videos that showcase your nonprofit’s impact. Photos of beneficiaries and volunteers create emotional connections, infographics simplify data, and videos tell inspiring stories.
  • Include trust signals. Showcase impact metrics, testimonials, and reports to build credibility and reinforce donor confidence.
  • Make it easy to navigate. Feature important pages in your website’s navigation menu. Include strong CTAs across key pages to guide visitors toward donating, volunteering, and getting involved.

To improve your website’s discoverability, optimize its content for search engines. That means using relevant keywords in each page’s copy, meta description, and headings. An effective SEO strategy also involves ensuring your site loads quickly and is mobile-friendly. In turn, your site should show up to supporters and beneficiaries looking for nonprofits like yours.

Search Ads

Google processes more than 8.5 billion searches every day. This means the search engine has a massive audience that nonprofits can tap into with search ads. These ads appear at the top of search results for websites related to the user’s query.

For example, here’s a search ad for a nonprofit that explains the organization’s mission to combat adolescent depression. The ad promotes multiple landing pages for learning more and getting involved:

A screenshot of a search ad for the nonprofit Erika’s Lighthouse.

Paid advertisements can get expensive quickly, but fortunately, Google provides nonprofits with credits to spend on search ads. The Google Ad Grants program provides up to $10,000 in ad credits per month to approved charitable organizations. Participants can use their grant money to bid on mission-related keywords and promote specific pages on their websites through text-based ads.

Your nonprofit might promote its:

  • Donation page to encourage financial contributions to your mission
  • Volunteer opportunities to recruit people to help out
  • Fundraising events to encourage registrations
  • Educational content that shares valuable insights and mission updates
  • Program pages to inform people about your services

Essentially, your nonprofit can promote any content that will push its mission forward. If your organization complies with the program’s rules, the grant will renew each month.

Text Message

Text messages connect you with your audience almost immediately, making them effective for quick updates and urgent messages. While text messaging can be a powerful part of your multi-channel marketing strategy, it’s also easy to overuse.

Many people keep their phones within arm’s reach, meaning they will likely see your nonprofit’s messages quickly. While this is convenient for getting your message seen, it also means supporters will be aware of how often you message them. During busy times of the year for marketing, like the end of the year or during election season, it’s easy for supporters to get overwhelmed with text messages.

To retain donors, use text messages sparingly and only when an immediate alert to your audience is appropriate. You might use it to announce an upcoming event, send urgent appeals, remind volunteers about upcoming shifts, encourage donations throughout a campaign, or send donation receipts.

Key times to text supporters, which are written above.

Direct Mail

While much of modern nonprofit communication is digital, there’s still a place for direct mail. Receiving a letter in the mail can make recipients feel special and help your nonprofit stand out.

To build brand recognition, ensure your direct mail communication has the same branding as your online marketing materials. This creates a consistent experience across platforms and presents your nonprofit as a capable, professional organization.

Allegiance Group + Pursuant’s direct mail fundraising guide provides an excellent example of a direct mail insert donors can use to send donations to the Georgia Mountain Food Bank:

An insert donors can fill out and mail in to donate to a nonprofit.

Notice how it features the organization’s colors and an eye-catching image of a child, representing the families the food bank serves. The nonprofit makes it easy to select an amount and provide payment information with clearly labeled boxes. Alternatively, the nonprofit’s website URL is featured in a box, providing the option to give online.

To emulate their approach, start by creating a nonprofit style guide that includes guidelines for direct mail. This might include directions for font sizes, letterheads, and signatures.

Launch Your Nonprofit’s Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy.

By sharing your nonprofit’s messages on multiple channels, your organization can reach new supporters and reinforce your brand identity among current ones. Choose which channels you’ll expand to by assessing your audience’s interests, your nonprofit’s resources, and each platform’s outreach potential. In no time, you’ll strengthen your presence across both online and offline channels.

“Tips for Hosting a Successful Event for Small Businesses”

4 Tips for Hosting a Successful Event for Small Businesses

Picture this: Your small business has been operating online only, but now you’re ready to open a physical storefront. To generate excitement and attract new customers, you host a grand opening event with drinks, snacks, and a 10% discount on every purchase. At the end of the day, you’ve had your most successful day of sales yet and positive feedback from community members who are excited to come back.

Whether you want to boost sales or improve employee retention, events present a valuable opportunity for small businesses that want a concentrated burst to their results. After all, nothing beats the energy and excitement of an event when it comes to fulfilling your goals!

In this guide, we’ll explore four tips for ensuring your small business’s events succeed and bring you great results. Let’s begin!

1. Identify goals for the event.

Many small businesses see events as large investments and are determined to get a great return. However, this can lead them to try to do too much with a single event, resulting in lackluster outcomes.

Don’t expect your event to be a jack of all trades—instead, identify one or two goals it should meet. These might fall into the following categories:

  • Generate leads and sales
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Strengthen customer relationships and loyalty
  • Give back to the community
  • Network with other local organizations
  • Recruit new employees
  • Boost employee satisfaction

For example, let’s say your small business is a gym. You might host an event that helps you increase gym memberships and give back to the community. Your event may also offer tangential benefits, such as increased brand awareness and more connections with local nonprofits, but keep in mind that these are not the main focuses of your event.

Keep your event focused by setting a SMART goal—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. With SMART goals, you’ll always know how far away you are from your desired outcome, allowing you to know when to pivot or adjust your strategies.

2. Choose the right type of event.

If you want to celebrate your ten-year-old’s birthday, would you host a bowling party for them and their friends or take them on a brewery tour? Certain types of events are better suited for specific goals than others. Let’s take a look at the main types of events you may want to host to meet your small business’s goals:

  • Sales events. If you want to generate more sales or leads, choose an event like a business grand opening, product launch party, flash sale, exclusive shopping event, or pop-up store event.
  • Educational events. To increase brand awareness and authority or network with other local organizations, consider hosting workshops, webinars, expert panel discussions, and other educational events.
  • Community events. If you want to help build the community, you can host one of two genres of events. The first consists of entertaining and social events, such as community potlucks and bar mixers. The second is social good events, such as volunteer days or social good fundraising events, where you raise funds for a charitable cause.
  • Employee events. To boost employee retention and satisfaction, host employee events like team retreats and team bonding dinners. For employee appreciation, eCardWidget recommends hosting movie nights, group outings, and holiday parties.
  • Recruiting and networking events. If you want to recruit new employees or connect with other organizations, host local business networking mixers and recruitment fairs to get the partnerships and applicants you desire.

Feel free to get creative and customize these events to your business’s unique needs and industry. For example, if you’re a massage therapist trying to help the community, you might take a vendor booth at the annual community fair and offer free five-minute massages to attendees. On the other hand, if you run a sports goods store, you might host a 5K run instead and donate the proceeds to the local youth center.

3. Add extra value to boost event engagement.

You’re probably already familiar with the event planning process, from establishing a budget to choosing an event venue to purchasing decorations and hiring vendors. Those tasks are essential parts of creating a successful event. However, to take your event to the next level, look beyond them and consider how you can add extra value.

“Extra value” might seem vague, but it refers to any additional perk, benefit, experience, or activity you can offer event attendees. With this added value, not only will invitees be more likely to attend your event, but they’ll also be more engaged during it.

For instance, let’s say you’re organizing a team dinner for your employees where you’ll announce the winner of your Employee of the Month program. Instead of just making the reservation, you might pay for transportation from your office to the event and cover the price of everyone’s drinks. Additionally, you can have a small trophy or plaque made for the winner. These value-adds will ensure team members show up to celebrate your top-performing employees, resulting in greater workplace satisfaction.

Or, perhaps you run a gym and are hosting a marathon. Through this marathon, you’ll raise money on behalf of a local sustainability nonprofit and invest in the well-being of your community. For an extra value-add, you might take Sneakers4Good’s advice and partner with an athletic shoe reuse provider to collect gently worn, new and used sneakers that you’ll trade for more funds to donate. Additionally, offer runners free swag like t-shirts and water bottles to entice more community members to sign up.

4. Measure your event’s results.

Every event you host is a learning opportunity, as long as you take the time to evaluate your results and determine what you can do to improve in the future. After your event, start by looking at key metrics in your event management software:

  • Total registrations
  • Number of actual attendees
  • Number of new attendees
  • Number of returning attendees
  • Total revenue generated during the event
  • Attendee satisfaction levels
  • Engagement rates for specific activities or experiences

Additionally, evaluate metrics even after your event is over. For example, your grand opening may motivate individuals to make purchases even after the event. Or, you might experience elevated hiring metrics for a few weeks after hosting a recruitment event. These give you the big picture of your event’s impact.

Hosting any event is challenging. With these tips, you’re poised to host successful small business events that help you meet your goals, whatever they are!

4 Unique Challenges for Niche Businesses + Our Solutions

Small businesses like yours fuel the American economy, representing 43.5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). But it’s no secret that it’s increasingly difficult for small businesses to thrive when competing against big box store prices and the convenience of online retailers.

These problems are only amplified for small businesses that cater to niche markets. In addition to chasing the latest industry trends and managing standard business operations, you also have to contend with challenges like striking the right balance between meeting niche needs and appealing to a wide enough audience.

To help you navigate this landscape, we’ve compiled a list of the most common challenges businesses like yours face, along with our recommended next steps for each. By following these tips, you’ll put your business on the road to sustainable growth and revenue generation. Let’s begin!

1. A limited customer base.

Because your business targets a smaller, niche market rather than aiming for mass market appeal, your customer base will naturally be more limited. However, this can make it more challenging to grow in the future. Extremely small markets are also more at risk of becoming oversaturated—in other words, the supply of your product or service exceeds its demand.

Our Recommendations

  • Enter the digital landscape. If you don’t have an online shop, you’re missing out on lots of potential new sales and connections. After all, online stores make it possible for customers who live far away from your physical location to purchase your products. If this sounds overwhelming, start by listing a few of your best-selling items and promoting limited drops on digital communication platforms.
  • Study and emulate competitors. Identify and study businesses operating in the same or similar niche that are on a path to growth—what are they doing differently from you? For instance, perhaps they participate in monthly town markets to connect with local customers face-to-face. Gingr’s guide to niche marketing recommends emulating and improving on their strengths and current offerings, making note of any gaps your business could fill.
  • Offer a referral program. Reach new audiences via your current customers (and reward them in the process!) through referrals. These programs are typically set up so that if a customer refers a certain number of new customers to your business, they receive a perk like a discount or free item. For example, you might ask customers to refer five friends to receive a 50% discount on their next purchase.

2. Balancing specialized offerings with broad appeal.

Highly specialized products fill hyperspecific needs or desires, making targeted buyers feel seen. On the other hand, these niche offerings can limit your market or even alienate adjacent audiences. 

For example, a running shop’s inventory might consist of pricey running shoes, belts or vests, and Garmin watches intended for marathon runners. While this selection satisfies the needs of experienced distance runners, it may intimidate beginner runners.

Our Recommendations

  • Cater to various audience segments. For every niche interest, there are beginners or casual enjoyers and hard-core, seasoned enthusiasts. Communicate that your business is open to any and all interest and experience levels. You might hold workshops for beginners or create starter kits for those who are just dipping their toe into your niche, securing a foothold in the mass market.
  • Expand your offerings. While staying true to your brand, consider ways you could expand or diversify your offerings to slightly broaden your niche. Returning to the running store example, you might curate a line of products specifically for beginners with more basic, affordable options.
  • Consider adjacent audiences. Let’s say you run a pet boutique, and your primary audience includes fashionable pet owners who want to provide their pets with luxury items and gourmet food. An adjacent audience might be pet parents who prioritize pets’ health and wellness through organic food, supplements, and other natural products. To learn how to effectively target multiple audiences, Deep Sync recommends leveraging third-party data collected by external sources.

3. Difficulty maintaining year-round traffic.

Many small businesses experience peaks and troughs in sales rather than steady, year-round traffic. For example, fireworks stores see a massive demand for their products leading up to Independence Day, followed by a steep drop in sales. This can make it difficult to retain a full team of employees, manage your cash flow, and make financial decisions and predictions. 

Our Recommendations

  • Adjust your marketing efforts. To maximize your marketing investment, you could pause or limit communication during slow months. Or, you might target a different audience or need if there is some demand for your product but a lack of awareness. For example, knitters in your community might not realize your yarn shop carries fibers like bamboo that would allow them to create summer-appropriate garments—promote offerings like this to encourage year-round sales.
  • Offer promotions during off-peak months. Get back on your customers’ radar and incentivize them to engage with your business even during slow periods with an appealing deal. Returning to our yarn shop example, perhaps you could have a “spring cleaning” sale and heavily discount wool materials from the winter.
  • Consider adopting a few evergreen products or services. Are there any related products or services you could provide that your customers need year-round? Consider a dog boarding business that receives peak traffic during summer when most families vacation. In this case, the business might begin offering grooming services that pet owners will need all year.

4. Competing against corporations and online retailers.

Large online retailers like Amazon have billions of dollars, a wide reach, a huge variety of products, and the resources to provide fast, convenient shipping. Niche businesses often struggle to keep up with these giant corporations’ low prices and adapt to rapidly changing trend cycles. As a result, consumers may opt for cheaper products sold by online retailers over a similar product offered by a small business.

Our Recommendations

  • Focus on personalization. Offer personalized bundles, recommendations, or services that the big stores can’t replicate. You might provide one-on-one lessons related to your niche or offer personal shoppers at your boutique for those trying to find their style. Prioritize customer experiences with gestures like handwritten cards inside each package you send out or freebies like stickers that match your branding.
  • Create loyalty programs. Reward the customers who stick with you and incentivize new ones to come back. Set up a digital points system and provide rewards or benefits for reaching set milestones. Or, create tiers with unique perks that get better the more customers engage with your business (e.g., gold tier earns a 10% discount while platinum secures a 30% discount).
  • Connect with your community. Rather than being a faceless entity, forge true connections in your community. Participate in local events, encourage customers to hang out in your shop, and make each interaction meaningful. Don’t neglect your online spaces, either—interact with the online community associated with your niche, whether that’s home bakers, yoga enthusiasts, or coffee snobs.

Competing against the world’s largest corporations can feel like an impossible task. However, your small business has things they don’t, and it’s up to you to uncover and highlight those unique offerings. 

Whether it’s top-of-the-line customer service, unparalleled expertise, or the sense of community you’ve built around your niche business, finding what makes you stand out is the first step. From there, infuse this differentiating factor into your communications, products, and customer experiences to build loyalty and set your business apart.