Test Your Niche with These 5 Questions

There’s one thing the most successful social impact orgs get right, every time.

They truly define and own a niche.

Owning a niche as a social impact brand is probably one of the most important — but least understood — superpowers to further your mission.

When we help our clients define and own a niche, they:

↳ More easily drive engagement and action for their mission
↳ Build capacity and become more effective with their existing resources
↳ Reduce friction in securing donations and growing their revenue
↳ Build a stronger culture and clarity of purpose for their team

But owning a niche is easier said than done. And your niche should evolve over time.

Where you started might not be right for where you are today — or more importantly where you need to be tomorrow.

In today’s episode of Designing Tomorrow, Jonathan outlines 5 simple but powerful questions that you can ask yourself to test your social impact niche.

If you’re trying to find your niche, or ready to make a pivot, these questions can help you make sure you’re putting your ideas to the test. 

Episode Highlights 

• Question 1: What Specific Problem Do You Solve? [01:41]
  • Explore the importance of clearly defining the problem your organization solves and ensuring it's communicated effectively.
• Question 2: Who Experiences the Pain If You Disappear? [06:12]
  • Discuss the significance of understanding your primary audience and the implications of your absence on them.
• Question 3: What Is Your Unique Solution? [09:30]
  • Examine how to articulate your unique approach to solving the problem and how it differs from other solutions.
• Question 4: What Are the Ramifications of Not Solving the Problem? [12:44]
  • Consider the impact of not addressing the problem and how it can help refine your organization’s focus.
• Question 5: Who Are Your Competitors or Collaborators? [15:07]
  • Analyze your position relative to competitors and how understanding this can help strengthen your niche.

Quotes

• "The most important question to test your niche is, what specific problem do you solve?" - Jonathan Hicken [01:41]
• "If my organization disappeared tomorrow, who would feel the most pain?" - Jonathan Hicken (00:06:12)
• "Are you uniquely positioned to solve that problem in a way that's different or better than other people also working across that problem?" - Eric Ressler [09:30]
• "If you didn't exist as an organization, what would be the ramifications of you disappearing at large?" - Eric Ressler [12:44]

Resources

• Use Your Niche to Supercharge Your Mission
• Define Your Social Impact Niche to Build a Brand That Matters
• 8 Key Ingredients to Defining Your Social Impact Niche
• How to Find Your Social Impact Niche
• Al Ramadan - Play Bigger ​

Transcript

Jonathan Hicken [00:00]:

Eric today I want to talk about some questions that might help our listeners test their niche. And it starts actually with a story. I had lunch with a guy named Al Ramadan recently. Al founded a company called Play Bigger. It's this consulting company that helps bigger companies define their category. Similar to some of the work that I know you do at Cosmic Al also wrote a book called Play Bigger and talks a lot about these concepts. And this conversation I had with Al really influenced my thinking on this and I wanted to talk to you about it today. The reason I was having lunch with Al is because he was helping our community, Santa Cruz, the city of Santa Cruz, more deeply understand and define the problem surrounding big ocean storms and coastal erosion. And so he's been enlisted by the city. He actually even spun up a grassroots effort to help this community solve this problem of West Cliff Drive, which was subject to coastal erosion. And at this lunch we started talking about the organization I run, and I started asking myself these big questions. So today we're going to talk about five questions that I think are the most important ones to test your niche. Are you in

Eric Ressler [01:13]:

Anything niche related? Count me in. Let's do it. Let's go. I'm Eric Ressler.

Jonathan Hicken [01:22]:

I'm Jonathan Hicken,

Eric Ressler [01:24]:

And this is Designing Tomorrow.

Jonathan Hicken [01:41]:

So Eric, question number one. The most important question I think to test your niche is what specific problem do you solve? Another way to ask this might be, or another way to think of this might be, can you explain to a five-year-old why your organization exists? Do your clients get this one right, wrong, or somewhere in between?

Eric Ressler [02:06]:

Yeah, it's such an interesting question because I think it seems so rudimentary in elementary around, well, of course if an organization especially is at the point to bring on a creative partner to help, they must have this figured out. But I don't always think that people spend enough time really going deep on this question. So they might have what I might call even maybe, a hand wavy answer to this question or an intuitive answer. But even if they understand it, are they doing a good job explaining it to their team, explaining it to their community of supporters, really making a case for why this problem matters? That's usually where I see things maybe not so clear, but I'll be honest, sometimes when we bring a new client on, it takes us a while to figure out what is the problem you're actually solving here? You're describing your organization and the work that you do, but they kind of over the like, well, why does this work matter in the first place?

Jonathan Hicken [03:02]:

I think that the answer to this question in some organizations can change over time and not always for the better. I think especially organizations that have existed for some years in the quest to have more impact and to go deeper on that impact, we as leaders want to include more people in the impact or include more cases of the problem occurring and want to solve more of it and more of it in the industry. A lot of people talk about this as mission creep and that we lose sight of this singular problem that our organization was solving in the first place. Do you find that leaders in the social impact space are able to overcome questions of mission creep?

Eric Ressler [03:44]:

Yeah, I mean, sometimes I kind of think about mission creep as a boiling frog kind of problem. It's usually not something that happens just like in one big chunk. It happens slowly over time. Oftentimes it happens because the nature of the problem is changing. I guess in the best case it happens because the original problem was solved, and then you're like, well, what else can we do? But I think what we usually see with regards to mission creep is more how you described it, where I think there's a kind of natural tendency in the social impact space to see the problem that was kind of your origin story problem. And then as you do more work against that problem, you start to see how that problem connects with other problems, how that problem is actually part of a larger systemic or structural problem. And so you start to want to solve those things naturally as well too.

[04:33]:

And I think there are times where you should solve those problems or you have to solve those other problems in order to solve the initial problem. But I think there's also times where there's other organizations already working on that part of the problem, and your efforts would be best served by partnering with them or supporting them and staying in your lane, so to speak, and just getting better at solving your problem more deeply or more fully. So case dependent as with most things, but we've seen people overcome it. We've been the ones to point it out to people sometimes, which can be kind of uncomfortable. But I think also our professional responsibility to do so when we see it. One of the reasons we're so passionate about niche is because getting clear on what is the exact problem that you're solving or how are you doing it differently than anyone else? What is your lane? What's the stake in the ground, that you're putting in the ground? That's so important, in my opinion, to the success of a social impact organization.

Jonathan Hicken [05:27]:

I think this is a question that executive directors, CEOs that we need to be asking ourselves literally every day.  I need to wake up, I need to go to work, and I need to ask myself, did we solve this problem today? And that has been for me, a really important tool to just make sure that I'm remaining focused on the most important work. Question number two, which individual or group has this problem? And actually another way to phrase this or another way I like to think about this is if my organization disappeared tomorrow, who would feel the most pain? Is this a question that you come across with your clients? And what are some of the biggest struggles that social impact leaders have in answering this question?

Eric Ressler [06:19]:

We don't usually frame it that way, although I really like the way you're framing it here around if we were to disappear, who would experience the most pain? But it's something we spend a lot of time thinking about. One of the first things we do when we're working with a client is target audience work. And when I say target audience work, you might be thinking of developing personas. That's actually not quite how we do it. We don't find that to be necessarily the best way to do it, but really just trying to understand. Usually social impact organizations are kind of like a micro ecosystem, like a microclimate almost of all these different players. They might be donors, supporters, customers, partners, and there's a story that needs to be told. There's messages that need to get crafted for each of those audiences, and there's things that you need those people to do to help support your mission.

[07:07]:

And so we spend a lot of time thinking about how can we break down this community into roughly three to five core segments, and how can we make sure that we are telling the right stories to those segments at the right times, and that we understand deeply, their motivations. We're getting involved in our organization. One of the first things we do in that exercise is try and identify who is the kind of segment that relies on our organization's work most, right? Is there a primary segment of that target audience strategy? So we don't necessarily frame it in the way of if we were to disappear, who would experience the most pain. But I actually quite like that framing because I think it helps get to the core of that audience.

Jonathan Hicken [07:47]:

I mean, just as an example, if you're an organization that say, serves parents in your community, parents with young kids who need childcare, let's say, I think one of the challenges that we often face as social impact leaders is we want to be inclusive. We want to make sure that we're serving anybody who wants or needs our service. And at the same time, defining your audience is inherently an exclusionary process. You are saying it's these people, it's these parents say, who need the help. And if you don't have small kids, we don't really exist for you. And that needs to be okay. You are welcome to participate. But as leaders wanting to create inclusive spaces and inclusive organizations, which I think most of us want to do, it can be a challenging exercise to say also who you are not for. But I think that's an equally important step in this particular process.

Eric Ressler [08:42]:

I would totally agree, and I understand that especially as we're all working to be more inclusive in who we serve and how we show up for our communities, there's a natural kind of tension there, and I think that tension is healthy, but I don't think the answer is to just say, well, we're for everyone because you're not and you shouldn't be. And I think that you need to be comfortable putting down some strong kind of boundaries around who you serve and who you don't.

Jonathan Hicken [09:17]:

Question number three, what is your unique solution to solve this problem or to use the disappearance framing, if you disappeared tomorrow, would the problem still be solvable? And is that other solution better or worse than yours?

Eric Ressler [09:34]:

So this is really kind of getting to the heart of your approach in my mind. So you've identified the problem. Now this is about how are you solving that problem? And what I'm kind of inferring from how you're saying that is, are you uniquely positioned to solve that problem in a way that's different or better than other people also working across that problem? Because in my experience, there's very few issues that only one organization is focusing on, especially if we're talking about social impact issues, there's usually different parts of the problem that different organizations are serving. There's some natural overlap, I think, between the problem that you're solving and the problem, or let's call it the sub problem that you're solving and the sub problem that organization X, Y, Z is solving. So I think this is why getting clear about your niche is so important because it allows you to say, this is our lane.

[10:25]:

This is what we're uniquely positioned to do better than everyone else because of reason X, Y, Z, because of our team, because of our resources, whatever the reason might be, and really focusing on doing that really, really well. And the more that you can focus, the easier it becomes to know, yes, this isn't our lane, or no, this isn't. Yes, this is for us. No, this isn't for us. And it allows you to just get better. You do more reps across the same thing over time instead of having to learn how to solve all these new problems or spin up these new teams. Now of course, the world's changing. It's not a static thing. So the nature of the problem is fluid. It's usually not static. So you have to be responsive to that. But I think getting that clarity of purpose around your unique strengths, your unique model that you can bring to the table differently or better than anyone else, is just so crucial.

Jonathan Hicken [11:15]:

I mean, the organization I run is a small aquarium science center, and so we often overlap with environmental educators and other environmental nonprofits, and we all have the same outcome in mind, which is some version of environmental education or conservation, but we all have our different contributions to that work. And actually, I think it's a strength, it's a benefit, especially in collaborative impact environments, collective impact situations. The better defined your unique solution is the more fruitful a collaboration can be because it's really clear where you fit in the journey of impact, whether it's for an individual or the broader impact overall. So I think that actually some listeners might listen to this and say, Hey, this is about competition. This is about one upping someone else in your space. And I would actually say on the contrary, this is a way to strengthen collaborations and collective impact

Eric Ressler [12:16]:

And lift everyone up. It makes it more clear for everyone working in this ecosystem. I would agree.

Jonathan Hicken [12:31]:

Question four, what are the ramifications for not solving the problem? Or if you disappear tomorrow, how would your audience feel the pain?

Eric Ressler [12:42]:

Yeah, so this is kind of the reverse vision statement in a way, right?

Jonathan Hicken [12:46]:

Yeah.

Eric Ressler [12:47]:

It is. Oftentimes we're working with clients to kind of help them paint a realistic vision for a better future. What are they working towards at a meta level? And this is kind of the opposite of that, which is like if you didn't exist as an organization, what would be the ramifications of you disappearing at large, not even just for the population that you're helping? The space that comes to mind that's maybe done the best job at this, and you could argue whether or not it's been effective, is the climate action space constantly reminding us of if we don't take action, what are the ramifications of that? So there's a balance here, in my opinion, because if all you do in your messaging and your communication, I don't think you're suggesting you do this, but let's just go with this for a second. If all you do in your messaging and communication is talk about how horrible things will be if we don't solve this problem, you risk demotivating your supporters. People will move away from a space of action into a space of apathy. Like, oh my gosh, this thing is just so large and intractable. What's even the point? So I think you have to be careful around making a case both for the ramifications of not solving the problem, but even more importantly, the benefit of solving it to humanity at large.

Jonathan Hicken [13:57]:

Yeah, I hear you talking about how we're projecting the answer to this question outwards, which I think in some cases is a powerful move. The way I think about that question is actually just like a tool to help me hone my answers to the first three questions, right? If I'm imagining, oh, if my organization literally the one I run today, if this one disappeared tomorrow, then what are the ramifications of that? And that answer helps me understand where I'm having impact. Yeah,

Eric Ressler [14:25]:

So I think especially using it as a litmus test for internal strategy, totally on board with that. I would just caution about maybe not using that as your main messaging strategy,

Jonathan Hicken [14:38]:

But the doom and gloom strategy only works for so long, that's for sure. All right, question number five, who are your competitors or your impact collaborators and how are you different? So this is similar to the question around your unique solution, but with the disappearance framing, if you disappear tomorrow, who would your audience turn to? That's another way of thinking about this. I think about this with my organization. If we disappeared, where would our audience go? What would they do instead? And that helps me understand my position. Is this a question that you think is fruitful for testing your niche?

Eric Ressler [15:24]:

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think the way we do this is one of the first things that we'll do when we bring a new client on is a landscape review, which is essentially our way of getting up to speed with who else is working in this issue area. So we can start to identify where there are gaps in the landscape and how to help our clients further differentiate and kind of own and claim a niche within the ecosystem. It's really helpful to see both who else is out there doing this work and how are they positioning themselves? How are they talking about themselves? The challenge is that not everyone's very good at that, and so you'll start to see a lot of people in the space using similar language. I think that's a challenge in my work personally, trying to advise our clients on how to differentiate.

[16:09]:

But even when you think about it more broadly to supporters like, well, who should I support? Everyone kind of sounds the same. Everyone's working on this issue, how do I know who's doing it better or worse? And then people start to fall back on either social proof or whatever other ways they make those decisions. So I agree that for your internal team to just look at the landscape, look at other competitors, think about if we were to disappear, who would kind of take up our portion of the work is a good way to start to test the boundaries of your niche and see where they might be bouncing against other similar organizations.

Jonathan Hicken [16:54]:

I am going to repeat these five questions, and I'm going to ask you, which of these do your clients have the most challenging time answering, and which one do your clients typically get? Right? So they are, what specific problem do you solve? Which individual or group has the problem? What is your unique solution to solve the problem? What are the ramifications for not solving the problem? And who are your competitors, your collaborators, and how are you different? So which of these dear clients answer really well typically, and which one do they struggle to answer?

Eric Ressler [17:31]:

There's not too many patterns here, to be honest. I can't point in my experience to a clear trend. The one exception to that might be, I think people struggle most with figuring out how to articulate their unique differentiation as an organization, because that work is just frankly, really hard to do. And even if you have sat down to do that, or maybe you haven't, getting that articulated in a way that's clear and meaningful and authentic is really hard. And frankly, sometimes people aren't all that different from other organizations doing similar work. And so that unearths a whole nother set of issues to work through. But I've seen organizations struggle with all five of these questions in different ways. I can't point to a particular trend around these types of organizations struggle here or these here. I think it's so context dependent on how the organization was started. Is it a global or local organization? What's the leadership team look like? There's so many factors at play with these five questions. Honestly, I can't point to any one as being the main one that people struggle with other than maybe the differentiation question. So Eric,

Jonathan Hicken [18:36]:

You've been working with social impact organizations and doing design work for 15 years running cosmic. What are some of your takeaways from this conversation so far?

Eric Ressler [18:46]:

I mean, I really like these five questions. As I mentioned, they're not exactly the way that we ask them, but I always love hearing new ways of framing things because I feel like how you frame questions can have a huge impact on the answers or the insights that you get from these questions. So I'm definitely going to be re-listening to these and referencing these questions in my work. We do a lot of niche work with clients. I believe so strongly that really clearly identifying and owning a niche is like a superpower for a social impact organization, and one that I wish more social impact organizations spent time working and solving. So having this kind of five part question list I think could be really helpful for our listeners. I'm definitely going to use them in my work, and hopefully we'll help people just really start to test their niche and realize that their niche work is not ever done. It’s something that you have to constantly evolve as the landscape changes, as the nature of the problem changes, and just as the world continues to evolve.

Jonathan Hicken [19:42]:

Eric, even as I was preparing for today's episode and outlining these questions, I started asking myself the questions and answering them. And so it's actually helped me hone my thinking about the niche that my organization's in. So thanks for being down to do this with me today.

Eric Ressler [19:57]:

Yeah, thanks for putting the questions together.