The million dollar question: do you niche down or do you appeal to the masses?

There is a popular internet marketing book released by the name of “100m Offers” by business icon Alex Hormozi. It created a craze in the internet marketing world on crafting “offers” so good that people are stupid to not buy. If everyone is shouting FREE, DISCOUNTS, MONEY BACK GUARANTEE… then may I know what separates you from the rest?

Your market more important than the offer itself.

In fact, if you dive into Alex Hormozi’s work and free online material. He too stresses that the market is more important than the offer.

Here’s an interesting graph providing a break down I chanced upon:

As you can see, even in weak markets, growth feels like playing on the hardest difficulty, regardless of how strong the founder is.

Hence the quote:

“When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”

– Warren Buffett.

You may be thinking, what has business got to do with lead generation and online sales? That’s the problem with most digital marketing agencies. Their focus is on click through rates, and not actual business outcomes.

Yes, you’ve been marketed to by run of the mill marketers, telling you that you can grow your business easily just by doing “X method or Y traffic source”.

No, if only it’s that simple.

Hence the Formula

Market > Product Market Fit > Offer > Technicals

Your leads aren’t qualified not because “Facebook ads”. It is because you aren’t perceived as a specialist to a certain market that has burning pains.

Firstly, specialists get paid more. Secondly, realistically you cannot serve everyone in the market. You can’t. It’s not possible. You aren’t going to trust a doctor that says he can do everything. You trust the oncologist because he specializes in cancer treatment.

Your unique selling propositions, services and products are going to appeal to different segments of the market.

For example, Singapore Airlines and Scoot Airlines appeal to different segments of a market, albeit being under the same group company. They appeal to entirely different segments with different spending power, willingness to spend and what they perceive as value to them.

The more niche your business is, the more specialized you are perceived to the market. The more niche you are, the more you cultivate true raving fans and customers.

The best heart doctor in town is able to command an absolutely high price. He is a specialist, and his messaging appeals to only a tiny subsection of the health and medical market.

Let’s take an opposite example: appealing to the masses.

You can’t sell heavily discounted snow to someone that lives in the Arctic. Even if you are to sell it for free, there’s no one that’s going to walk into your shop and take up your offer.

Isn’t “FREE” an irresistible offer?

On the other hand, you can sell water at ten thousand fold the price to someone who is thirsty walking through the desert. If you’re almost dying of thirst, and I offered to sell you a bottle of drinkable water at $10,000 that can help you survive for another day.

You’ll buy it, won’t you? Even if the cost a bottled water is $1.

Drinkable water is as good as free in Singapore. You can walk into any public washroom in Singapore and there’s drinkable tap water. Yet, under the right market conditions; if you’re dying of thirsty under the scorching Sahara sun, you’ll be willing to pay a hundred to thousands times the original price.

Here’s a story from legendary Gary Halbert, an advertising and copywriting legend.

He once asked a room of aspiring writers, “Imagine you’re opening a hamburger stand on the beach—what do you need most to succeed?”

Answers included, “secret sauce,” and “great location” and “quality meat.” Halbert replied:

“You missed the most important thing—A STARVING CROWD.”

Henceforth, being extremely clear on your market:

• Existing demand in your market
• How big it is,
• Who your ideal customers are and who your customers aren’t.

There are markets that are worth $100,000. There are markets worth one to ten million dollars. Then there are markets that are billion dollar markets.

Yes, the importance of defining your market even before spending a dollar on marketing is second to none.

So Marcus… how do I specialize and niche down you may ask?

The 2 Step Niching Down Immersion Exercise

Here’s a useful method on niching down in your market I use.

You should niche down using this two step formula.

“I help… [Audience Qualifier One] + [Audience Qualifier Two] achieve [Burning Desire] through [Specific Method/ Product You Provide]… without [Burning Pain Points/ Old Methods that Do Not Work]’

The key here is to use two qualifiers, to ensure you aren’t going too broad. Yes, actually write it down and practice it!

Examples for Service Professionals:

In 2025, I decided to niche down my marketing services to help lawyers and law firms in Singapore. Instead of saying, I help business owners (that’s reallly broad)… I niched down.

Law Firm:

“I help law firms in Singapore [audience qualifier 1 + 2] grow their sales and revenue [X desire] through our blended SEO and paid search model [specific method]… without wasting money on overpriced agencies that don’t deliver results or losing clients to competitors who dominate Google search [burning pain point].”

Physiotherapy Services:

“I help office workers suffering from chronic back pain [audience qualifier 1] regain mobility and comfort [X desire] through personalized rehabilitation plans and ergonomic assessments [specific method]… without the frustration of ongoing discomfort, dependency on painkillers, or long clinic wait times [burning pain points].”

Chiropractic Care:

“I help parents of young athletes [audience qualifier 1] keep their children injury-free and performing at their best [X desire] through specialized sports chiropractic care [specific method]… without the fear of recurring injuries, expensive treatments, or missing key games [burning pain points].”

Real Life Case Study:

For my dating advice for men’s coaching business, I didn’t want to compete with all other generic life coaches in Singapore. This is why I entered the dating coaching industry for professional men in their late twenties and thirties.

The majority of my clients are highly paid PMETs working for prestigious government linked corporations and multi nationals in Singapore.

That’s me as a dating coach, being featured on national TV in Singapore.

For the dating and relationships market, I can either go broad and teach general self help communication skills to help men improve their communication skills OR… I can niche down and teach dating skills for men in their late twenties to late thirties.

The former is broad messaging and the latter is niche messaging.

To give you an example of broad as opposed to niche messaging in your marketing messages:

I could say: “simply be yourself, be confident, think positive, love yourself and you’ll get a girlfriend”.

OR…

I could say: “here are two unique methods to position yourself in a better light through high-quality photos taken by a professional photographer for your online dating profiles. Then you got to compliment it with creative copywriting that helps your online dating profile stand out.”

How to Validate Market Demand: Google and the Basics

Here’s a rough way you can use to validate current demand. Google is one of the best sources of market research you can use to validate the demand of your market.

Go to Google Keyword Planner and search up whatever you are trying to teach and see if your idea has been done before, specifically for the audience you are trying to serve.

Search for keywords related to the specific legal services you provide. For example, if you specialize in family law, you might look up terms like “divorce lawyer Singapore” or “family law firm Singapore.” If there’s substantial search volume for these keywords, it’s a GREAT sign—there’s clearly a market for these services.

If there’s substantial search volume, then GREAT! There’s roughly a market for it. Secondly, if you see many advertisements and other businesses on Google’s search results for your particular market, it is a green flag!

That means that your business idea has a market because competition and saturation simply mean there is already an existing demand! You’ll simply have to position yourself differently from the rest!

There are also two traits of customers in a validated market with demand.

Trait 1: Affluent

The most important part of a business are paying customers. Henceforth, let’s suppose it’s better to start with affluent customers. Customers that have the willingness and ability to pay.

I could be selling pick up artist advice to broke 21 year olds running around in clubs trying to pick up girls.

However, I determined long ago that, that’s NOT my market.

I positioned my dating coaching business for men who are already high-performing in other areas of life, especially in their careers. Many of my clients are well-paid computer scientists and engineers, but they simply lack a fulfilling dating life!”

These prospects are already in well to do professional jobs with the ability to pay.

Trait 2: Willingness to Pay

Now, remember this?

Market > Product Market Fit > Offer > Technicals

Going into a market that has red hot demand should be the first qualifier. There is no need to worry about “saturation”.

One of my earlier biggest mistakes was to go into a market that needed a lot of persuasion from customers. It is like playing on hard mode.

Unfortunately that is the dating advice for men business in Singapore. It taught me a huge lessons. Eventually, I sold off my website that had SEO traffic to an American holdings company. Yet, despite that, in that business, I cranked more than $100,000 in sales. That’s because I niched down.

Real estate and insurance are markets that can be considered “over saturated”. Yet, there are many stories of real estate and insurance agents in both industries clocking million dollar commissions year after year.

That is because once you have a market, all you got to work on is differentiating your messaging for product market fit… and crafting out an “irresistible offer.”

Only then, you layer on the technicals:

• Direct Response Copywriting, Video scripting
• Creatives/ Visuals creation
• The Choice of Traffic/ Ad Platform: Facebook, SEM, SEO
• Website Design/ Funnel Creation
• Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics
• Backend Lead Management, Email marketing and Follow Ups

So on…and so forth.

In conclusion, I submit to you that you’ll need to niche down when you are starting out. Then broaden out from there.