What offline business niches respond best?

Hi Aaron -

Tough to say. This is off the very top of my head (not looking at my files). These are the industries I have worked with in my 3 years offline:

Home decor (first client)
Massage/skincare
Private preschool/kindergarten
Spa
Plumber
Roofing
Fencing
Center for Skin Cancer
Med-spa equipment
Occuloplastic surgery center
Garden center
Prosthetic Center
Painter
Wedding Planner
Many more I can't remember

So if I had to pick a general industry category, I'd say health care is a stand out for me. They tend to have high average customer values and are one-call conversions (not like a technology company, for example, that has a 6 month sales cycle). [EDIT - by this I mean the customer sales cycle. When a customer can see incremental sales quickly, attribution to SEO or PPC is much easier.]

That said, my real revenue has come from upstream clients. These include technology companies like wholesale consumer electronics, mobile security technology, eLearning platform, Education portal, Medical device manufacturer -

The difference is that the local service based companies I can charge between 350 and 750 per month. The upstream businesses I can charge 1500 to 300 per month, depending on what I'm doing. By "upstream" I mean companies say $50 Million plus, which interestingly is still considered a small business by SBA...

Also - I have read many blogs and posts here that talk about niche focus. I have never done that. I'm sure it works, but can't vouch for it personally. I take any client that I can help and it has worked for me...

I would also think about people who serve or service any type of Real Estate - Home Inspectors, etc. People are still buying, selling and of course, Fixing up.

And, oh my gosh, don't forget dentists!

JPB (Jelly & Peanut Butter)

Right! Dentists are good. But...

First, I have a dentist client - my sister...so I have a good bit of inside scoop here.

The toughest part for dentists or any doctor's office is getting to the doc. They all have front office staff who will never let you talk to the doctor or dentist - ever. You'll want to ask for the office manager. The office manager is a gatekeeper of the highest order. Everything that happens in the office goes through the office manager.

The problem is that the office manager won't necessarily care so much about the business in the same way the Dentist will. For example, the OM will have little idea about the value of a "chart" (a patient). So a pitch about incremental patients or the like will fall on deaf ears UNLESS the doc has instructed the OM to look for a solution.

Referrals are great in the medical community. Once you get one doc, you can get another merely by name dropping. A direct referral is even better.

I have a nice bucket of medical clients and solidly half of them came from referrals or name drops.

Cold calling is very tough for these types of offices. Better to use a direct mail, followed by a call ("I'm calling to see if Dr. Brooks received the information I sent him.")

I have worked 3 law firm clients:

Client 1: We did SEO for about 5 months. The client did not see the value. Although rankings and traffic increased a good bit, proper tracking (phone) was not set up. I could not prove effectiveness. Learning experience.

Client 2: Web design. Big mistake. The lead lawyer nitpicked EVERY tiny little on page element. It took 10x the time it should have, and for 1500 bucks it was not worth it at all. Worse - the arrogant sob always talked at us as though he knew best - would never listen to anything we said. Probably just a bad egg, but fit the jackass lawyer stereotype perfectly.

CLient 3: Started SEO over a year ago. This time with custom forms and phone tracking. The client loves us. One interesting thing happened... We do a periodic press release for them (link building, not PR). In one instance, we used the word "specializes in..." Little did we know that there is a legal definition of when a lawyer can claim "I specialize in.." I just didn't know. So...it was a big time fire drill to track down the offending Press Release after it was pushed out. The client is still happy.

So... I have mixed results with lawyers. Not a industry I like to target, but one I will engage if it looks like a good opportunity and I think I can help...

I have three offline businesses in my mind, however, didn't try any one of them as of now:

1. Academic Coaching
2. Video Mixing and animation
3. Supporting needy people with money and ask them to open their own business with my money of a 50% benefit sharing.

Those in the need are your best bets. And you can find them in every niche. But since people are sharing some infos, here goes my fast list:

Events
Tourism
Pool builders

Hi Arron, I would say that you should not do this for free, the offline world don't deserve anything for free because they can't put value on free and they use free all the time to get new customers.

Arron please trust me on this, I got you covered...

I can tell you exactly what to do with your boot camp idea and get paid well for it. You won't be concerned with anything but your boot camp content.

If you are doing this in person you would collect about $500.00 per business that attends your workshop and you will be able to repeat this as much as you choose.

You can contact me and we can talk, I must warn you, this will blow your mind!

Thanks so far for everyone's feedback on this. I'd love to hear if anyone has had any experience with offline niches and facebook training.

My thinking used to be what most people's were here a year ago but now I just go after everyone and see what comes up.

If I had to target, I would target just as I would keywords...find something that is not so competitive but has enough traffic to pay the bills. Then I would sell that local traffic to businesses. I've found sooooo many of those its not even funny. In other words, find out what people in your city are searching for, grab those leads and sell them to a business owner. Much easier sell then trying to get a dentist, plumber..etc. buy your services.

Nice list of niche guys. Thanks for the suggestions.

From my experience, I'd say something like Real estate, Home planning, Academic Work, Weddings etc. would work well for the kind of stuff you're looking for.