Why Niching Doesn’t Work for Web Designers (and What To Do Instead)

Shannon Mattern is a pricing expert and creator of The Package Matrix™ Method that helps freelancers, fractional execs, consultants, agencies and service providers stop undercharging, overdelivering and overworking by using pricing, proposal and sales strategies backed by behavioral economics and sales psychology.

“Choose a niche,” they say. “The riches are in the niches,” they say. So you did, and you’re still struggling to get web design clients.

So what do you do when all the other web designers have chosen the niche you chose (female entrepreneurs, for example)? What do you do when everyone’s “fishing in the same pond“?

Well my friend, today I’m breaking down why niching doesn’t work for web designers (and what to do instead).

Maybe you’ve heard (or even thought) things like, “The market is saturated and web designers are a dime a dozen.”

Conventional business wisdom tells you to niche down, right?

Instead of doing web design for EVERYONE, you niche down into business owners. And then down further to women entrepreneurs, and then one more step down to mompreneurs. 

And you start thinking… “I see tons of web designers in Facebook Groups for mompreneurs, so I’m gonna niche down even further so I’m not fishing in the same pond, so how about mompreneurs who are health coaches…” 

Now you’re in all these Facebook groups talking about how you’re a web designer for mompreneurs who are health coaches…

You start to see other people going, “So am I! Me too! Yep, I build websites for health coaches who are busy moms too!”

And now you’re all finishing in the same pond, offering the same thing and it’s a race to the bottom because you all start competing on price.

Here’s where you have a choice…

You either decide the market is saturated and you give up…

…or you change niches and run into the same problem all over again…

…or you change the conversation.

I prefer option three 🙂

Instead of marketing web design to moms who are health coaches, you figure out their biggest business problems and how those problems are negatively impacting Mom’s life, and you talk about how your website is the solution to her problems.

So if I’m a busy mompreneur health coach and Web Designer A’s marketing says “I do web design for busy mompreneurs who are health coaches” and Web Designer B’s marketing says something like, “Imagine a life where new client consults magically get booked only when you’re actually working and the money shows up in your PayPal account while you’re driving the kids to school – all without you having to open up your inbox.”

Who are you going to pay more attention to? 

Just choosing who you want to work with and then saying it isn’t enough.

It doesn’t set you apart from everybody else. 

What does work is understanding exactly how what you do solves a problem for your ideal client – and then talking about what you do as a solution to a problem, and not a THING. 

When it comes to web design, we solve a ton of problems for our clients. 

Recently I was talking to one of our brand new Web Designer Academy students and I asked her to tell me some of the things she’d done in the past that she’s really proud of. 

And she goes “Well, I don’t want to toot my own horn, but, I helped one of my clients go from idea all the way to a multi-million dollar business.” 

She was able to take their idea and translate it into a website that solved their business problems. She set up all the systems that client needed to be able to scale to the point where they could sell millions of dollars worth of stuff.

What a website does for a client is it breaks the ‘time for money’ barrier.

And I think that as web designers, you often do not realize how valuable what you do is, and how powerful what you do is, and how transformational it is for your clients. 

I am on a MISSION to help web designers stop undercharging, stop overdelivering, start seeing their value, start charging their value, and start working with clients who appreciate their value. 

And the way that you do that is not by niching in the way that people traditionally tell you to niche based on demographics, but based on current pain points and future goals, hopes and dreams.

You’ll have an easier time getting clients, and you’ll be able to charge way more than people who are just selling “web design.”

So I wanna invite you to watch a replay of a Pricing Mindset Workshop I recently hosted just for web designers – and you can sign up to watch the replay NOW! 

After watching you’ll:

  • Know exactly how much you need to charge to make a full-time living as a web designer.
  • Understand how to apply the Rule of 10 to figure out the true value of a website to your clients.
  • Have an upgraded belief system around all the reasons you think you can’t charge that much, you know… things like “I need more experience… I’m self-taught… my clients can’t afford to pay more…”
  • Be aware of the 3 most common places web design businesses break down and leak time and money (and what to do to prevent or fix it).

It’s a totally free training where we talk about all of the mindset stuff that keeps you undercharging, overdelivering, not doing outreach, not booking clients, working for free, working for way too little, and fix that… 

….because you don’t even know how valuable you are. You don’t even know how many clients out there need you to be charging sustainably so that you can serve them at the level that they deserve to be served.

So go sign up for that free training now!

And here are some other blog posts for web designers you might like!

Pricing, Proposal & Sales Strategy For Freelancers, Fractional Execs & Consultants

ANCHOR HIGH™ PODCAST

Pricing Strategy for Service Providers & Consultants

If you sell your expertise and hands-on implementation, deliver solid work and have happy clients – but you’re maxed out and feel like you’ve hit an income ceiling, this show is for you.

Each short episode breaks down how pricing psychology and proposal strategy influence prospects’ decision-making and helps you rethink everything you thought you knew about how much you can really charge for your services and expertise.

THE PACKAGE MATRIX™ METHOD

The Package Matrix™ Method is a pricing framework built on behavioral economics, sales psychology and a decade of results. It strategically designs a value-based decision for your clients, so you stop pricing based on what you think they can afford and start pricing based on the value they can create by working with you.

How It Works ⟶

ANCHOR HIGH™ CERTIFICATION

If you’re a business coach or consultant who’s an expert at helping your clients grow their businesses and reach their goals – but you don’t have a strategic pricing and sales framework to help your clients confidently close more proposals at higher prices (without working harder), our Anchor High™ Certification program might just be the missing piece of your coaching methodology.

Learn More Here ⟶

ABOUT SHANNON MATTERN

Shannon Mattern is a pricing expert who helps Freelancers, Fractional Execs, Consultants and Creative & Professional Service Providers stop undercharging, overdelivering and overworking by using pricing, proposal and sales strategies backed by behavioral economics and sales psychology.

She helps other business coaches and consultants integrate her pricing and sales methodologies into their coaching, group programs and consultancies so they can help their clients make more without burning out. 

She’s also the founder of Web Designer Academy, where she has spent a decade helping women web designers move from undercharging to premium pricing, and where she developed the offer framework now used by service providers across industries.

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