Niche marketing: stand out from the crowd and attract your ideal students
Let’s drop a cliché to open this article: if you do many things at once, you can do them just fine. But when you narrow your focus - you’re in for the win! 💪
Our stance is clear: specialization is a great thing both for you and for your students. In this article, we want to explore niche marketing’s ins and outs. We hope to convince you how essential it is to your school’s further development, especially in the madness of the current market of language teaching.
Let’s delve into it!
Shortcuts:
Niching down is a strategic decision that impacts all your marketing ventures
Examples of niches in the market of language teaching for expats
What is niche marketing?
Niche market is a piece of larger market which can be characterized by its specific needs, features and quite narrow, shared identity of its customers. Niche marketing, then, is all about picking a particular group of clients and serving their distinct needs in the best way possible. It’s about choosing a specialization instead of being a generalist and serving everyone.
Example? There you go: we are not a marketing agency. We are a marketing agency working specifically with language schools. Even more specifically: language schools that teach their own native language. This niching down allows us to stay in touch with ALL the marketing news relevant to teaching languages to expats. We do marketing research among language schools and their clients. We test new solutions with one language school and implement them across all of our clients. It’s a win-win situation – we can stay razor-sharp, and our clients are getting highly specialized knowledge and solutions tested on their own market.
Get access to our library of free marketing guides, trackers, and templates for expat language schools:
Niching down is a strategic decision that impacts all your marketing ventures
Choosing one specific group within the expat community defines the ways in which you communicate with your prospective students and how you make them perceive your school as a perfect fit for people like them.
You can start defining your niche by focusing on demographic characteristics of your potential customers (e.g. age, gender, income level, education level, etc.), psychographics (e.g. values they share, their interests and attitudes), or geographics (where do they live – in a specific country, city or neighborhood?).
Those traits are directly linked with their needs that you should focus on (because you want to cater to them). They may concern the price expats are willing/able to pay for the course, the skills they expect to develop the most (e.g. writing, speaking, reading, etc.), or the type of vocabulary they want to focus on (e.g. every day, specifically linked with the field in which they work, or around their hobby).
You might focus on a specific subgroup like the expat partners, or dig deeper and focus on a subgroup of a subgroup – expat partners who are stay-at-home parents or expat partners who are trying to find a job. You might focus on expats interested in getting the nationality or wanting to pass a certain level of language exams.
Finding a niche requires not only paying close attention to the market but mostly making a bold, brave decision - yes, we know it might be scary to focus only on a small piece of the market instead of trying to sell your school to everyone. But trust us, it is worth it for SO many reasons.
Why should you focus on a niche?
We’re sure you’re well aware that the market of language teaching for expats has gone through a far-reaching transformation due to the pandemic.
Adaptation is the key to survival now (we explored that issue in our previous articles: Adapt or cease to exist. Reinventing your school for the new market [PART 1] and Accept the challenge! Adaptation and reinventing your school for the new market [PART 2] ). Niching down could be then your way of adapting and getting ahead of your competition (we wrote about the new reality of the market here: The new competitive landscape in language learning for expats).
Moreover, becoming a specialist in teaching one specific group of expats will establish your school’s position as “the go to for XYZ” on the market. As a consequence, it might help in fixing some (presumptive) damages from the last year’s period (like your sales, for example- you can read our January analysis here: How did the pandemic affect your January sales?)
Let’s be clear: the days when you could target everybody and anybody are over. In the constant turmoil of the internet, where everyone is being bombarded with ads all the time - your school has to stand out from the other schools as the perfect choice for that specific one person.
It’s simple: you can offer much better courses to a specific group of expats when you get to know them and their unique needs thoroughly. You’ll be able to speak to them directly in your marketing and they would feel more invited to become your students. Satisfaction guaranteed!
Also: people like being surrounded by people like them. They are more likely to buy/ do/ be in places, where the people they see themselves as equal or aspirational are. Not sure about this idea? Look at your own buying choices. Which grocery shop/ clothing brand/ after-work activities are you choosing and why? See where this is going? 😉
“People like us do things like this. There is no more powerful tribal marketing connection than this.
More than features, more than benefits, we are driven to become a member in good standing of the tribe. We want to be respected by those we aspire to connect with, we want to know what we ought to do to be part of that circle.
Not the norms of mass, but the norms of our chosen tribe.”
- Seth Godin
Get access to our library of free marketing guides, trackers, and templates for expat language schools:
Examples of niches in the market of language teaching for expats
Let us give you some examples of niches in which your language school could specialize. Of course, they differ depending on the characteristics of the city/ country you’re based in, so you’ll still need to do your proper research. Anyway, for the sake of juicing up your imagination, let’s have a look at the possibilities!
Niches are as diverse as the group of expats is. So, by observing, who your potential students are, you can focus on fulfilling the needs of:
expats from a specific nationality,
expat partners who want to find a job or expat partners who don't want to find a job but want to have the best possible experience of living abroad,
expat partners with a local partner, who want to connect to their partners family and friends,
expats who want to get better jobs (here you can niche down as well – white-collar, blue-collar, seasonal jobs?),
teenagers,
tourists who are traveling to your city for the immersive language learning experience,
expats/ expat families preparing for the move (still outside of the country you’re based in, but coming soon),
sports enthusiasts, cooking enthusiasts, art enthusiasts (any kind of enthusiasts!)
international students…
See? The list is probably never-ending, especially that the social reality is changing all the time! Just be an avid observer and choose your niche!
Evaluating your niche market ideas
Before actually investing in amending your school’s offer, you might want to assess whether your niche idea roots from a real demand and an actual need in expat’s community or maybe it’s mostly your imagination that made it up.
There are several ways to evaluate your idea and one of them is “sampling” your courses in the guise of a workshop or a free webinar. It’s a brilliant way to evaluate whether your audience is really interested in your niched-down offer, or not.
A great idea would also be evaluating it afterward with a SHORT survey (3-5 simple questions that people would be willing to answer, preferably at the end of the webinar, so that they don’t put it aside for later and that you actually get the answers). Remember to get your old students involved – make sure they appear at the workshop and that they give you genuine feedback.
Moreover, you have to investigate your niche idea as thoroughly as possible. You need to dig deep to get the information you need – analyze blogs and social media, check out the influencers in this field, think of other key areas in your niche to gain an understanding of it. Should you encounter a problem that appears over and over again, ask yourself a question: are you able to solve it? If the answer is “yes” – go for it!
Consumer trends are also a thing you should be well aware of. For instance, you might observe expat Facebook groups and the movement inside of them. Also, you may simply subscribe to our newsletter to keep yourself updated 😉 We’re expats ourselves, we’re part of these groups and we keep our eyes and ears open to all the new trends.
What’s next?
Once you’ll decide on your niche, you should have a good look at your branding. You have to make sure whether the way your school looks and feels will resonate with your specific target audience. Quick example: you will talk and show up differently for expats who want to find better white-collar jobs than international students.
Obviously, it will affect your marketing strategies, too, including social media you’ll use as the main communication channel. For instance, expats preparing for the move will hang out more on LinkedIn and inside Facebook groups, whereas cooking enthusiasts - on Instagram
Niche down right now
We hope we’ve managed to wheel you into the world of niche marketing and that you feel a bit more inclined to introduce the changes we suggest. It’s way better to become the go-to school in your niche of choice, rather than remaining yet another language school in your city, really!
We know it might sound a bit confusing at the beginning and that to the whole idea of limiting your client pool may appear overwhelming but trust us, it’s worth both the risk and the effort!
We’ll be more than happy to be able to join your school’s transformation so if you're baffled and need help - reach out and schedule a free call.
Talk to you soon! 💛
