At some point, every agency hits that inevitable fork in the road: Do we go all-in on a niche, or is there a smarter way to stand out that doesn't involve handcuffing ourselves to dentists or SaaS companies forever?
The conventional wisdom screams "pick a lane and stay in it."
But here's what they don't tell you: industry niching can turn your creative team into zombies who dream in stock photography of handshakes and conference rooms. Sure, your messaging gets snappier when you only talk to orthodontists, but what happens when your best strategist starts questioning why they went to design school just to optimize appointment booking funnels for the rest of their career?
Meanwhile, staying "full-service" keeps the creative juices flowing but often leaves you swimming in a beige ocean of agencies that all sound like they were written by the same tired copywriter.
Here's the plot twist: You don't need to niche by industry to stand out.
Many agencies are finding ways to be memorable without limiting their playground. They're positioning around what they do best, not who they do it for. And they're building businesses that their teams actually want to work for.
What Is an Agency Niche Strategy (And Why Most Advice Gets It Wrong)?
"Niche down!" they yell from every agency advice thread. Usually, that means picking the smallest possible industry and camping there until you either dominate or die of boredom.
But standing out isn't about making yourself smaller. It's about making your value clearer.
The agencies crushing it right now aren't necessarily the ones serving only pet grooming businesses. They're the ones who've figured out how to communicate what makes them different in a way that actually matters to buyers. Some do focus on verticals, sure. But others are killing it with completely different approaches that give them way more flexibility and a lot more fun.
Think of positioning like dating. You don't need to only date accountants to find the right person. You just need to know what you bring to the table and communicate it well enough that the right people swipe right.
And while my advice is to niche into a vertical, horizontal, and problem-focused target, there’s no one way to do anything. So here are other options.
1. Problem-Based Positioning: Lead with the Pain You Solve
If you want clients to care, start with what's keeping them up at night (it’s not your service menu).
People aren't buying your agency because you "offer strategy and execution across platforms." They're hiring you to make a specific pain point disappear. The agencies that get this lead with problems, not solutions.
Instead of listing your capabilities like a resume, flip the script. What if your homepage said "We turn your invisible brand into the one everyone's talking about" instead of "Brand strategy, creative development, and integrated marketing solutions"? One makes me lean in. The other makes me reach for coffee.
The more specific you get about the problem, the more you sound like someone who's actually solved it before. When a CEO with a stagnant pipeline reads "We help B2B companies go from best-kept secret to industry leader in 90 days," they don't see another agency pitch. They see a potential lifeline.
This works because problem-focused positioning makes your expertise feel relevant immediately. You're not asking prospects to connect dots between what you do and what they need—you're putting their exact headache in the headline.
2. Horizontal Positioning: Become Known for Serving a Specific Role
You don’t have to niche by industry. You can niche by who you help inside the company.
Horizontal positioning is about becoming the go-to partner for a specific job function, no matter the vertical. You might specialize in supporting Heads of Growth who need faster experiments, or CMOs who want clearer messaging and stronger creative. Maybe you're the team that every Sales Enablement leader calls when their deck isn’t converting.
The magic of this approach is that it travels. Your clients can be SaaS, eComm, or professional services, but you're always talking to the same type of stakeholder, solving the same class of problems. That focus builds speed, trust, and relevance quickly. You become “the growth partner,” “the CMO’s secret weapon,” or “the RevOps whisperers,” not just “another agency.”
Here’s what it looks like in practice:
- A VP of Marketing at a FinTech company needs help telling a clearer brand story.
- A Head of Sales at a logistics SaaS wants better lead conversion workflows.
- A Director of Demand Gen at a DTC brand wants better funnel performance.
Three industries. One stakeholder: the person tasked with driving growth.
Your team stays sharp. Your insights deepen. Your testimonials stack. And your offer sounds like a direct hit instead of a vague menu.
The key is to avoid positioning around what you do. Instead, position around who you empower.
3. Vertical Positioning: When You Do Niche, Be Strategic About It
If you are going to pick an industry niche, make sure you've got the receipts to back it up.
Let's be real: industry niching can be incredibly powerful when it's done for the right reasons. But "some guru told me to" isn't the right reason. Neither is "we worked with two fintech companies once."
Vertical positioning makes sense when you've developed genuine expertise in an industry's unique challenges, regulations, buying cycles, or success metrics. When you can walk into a room of healthcare executives and immediately understand their compliance nightmares, their buyer personas, and their typical conversion timelines without a briefing deck.
The best vertical specialists don't just serve an industry, they become part of its ecosystem. They speak at industry conferences, contribute to trade publications, and develop proprietary benchmarks that competitors can't match. They're not just agencies that work with SaaS companies; they're the agency that understands PLG motion, freemium conversion optimization, and churn prevention better than their clients' internal teams.
But here's the catch: this level of specialization takes time, intentionality, and often some luck with early clients who become great case studies. If you're not there yet, don't fake it. Focus on building real expertise first, positioning second.
4. Messaging That Actually Owns Your Angle
Most agency messaging is like elevator music—technically functional but instantly forgettable.
If your pitch includes phrases like "data-driven solutions" or "holistic growth strategies," congratulations, you sound exactly like every other agency that hired the same copywriter from Upwork.
Great messaging makes your positioning impossible to ignore and your value impossible to misunderstand. It's specific enough that the right people immediately think "that's exactly what I need" and clear enough that the wrong people immediately think "that's not for me."
Compare these two approaches: "We help brands grow through integrated digital marketing strategies" versus "We turn boring B2B companies into the brands their industry actually wants to buy from." One could describe 10,000 agencies. The other makes you curious about the process.
The best agency messaging often includes a subtle challenge or perspective that makes prospects reconsider their current approach. Instead of promising to "optimize your funnel," try "We fix the funnel problems your current agency doesn't see." Instead of "comprehensive brand strategy," try "We figure out why your brand isn't memorable and fix it."
This kind of messaging works because it demonstrates insight, not just capability. It suggests you understand something about their world that they might not even realize yet.
5. Proactive Positioning Beats Reactive Referrals
If your pipeline depends on hoping someone remembers to recommend you at exactly the right moment, you don't have a business strategy; you have a prayer.
Referral business feels great because it's warm, it converts well, and it validates that you're doing good work. But it's also completely outside your control, tends to send you feast-or-famine revenue cycles, and often attracts clients who aren't quite the right fit but come through someone you couldn't say no to.
Proactive positioning means you're not just sitting around waiting to be discovered. You're actively shaping how your market sees you, what problems they associate with your name, and what kind of opportunities land in your inbox.
This looks like creating content that addresses the specific problems you solve best. Building landing pages that speak directly to those pain points. Developing small products or assessments that demonstrate your thinking and process. Speaking at events where your ideal clients hang out. Building partnerships with complementary service providers who see your work regularly.
The goal is to supplement referrals with prospects who are actively looking for what you do best. These inbound leads often convert faster, fit better, and value your expertise more highly because they sought you out specifically.
The Multi-Positioning Approach: Why You Don't Have to Pick Just One
Plot twist: the most successful agencies often combine multiple positioning strategies instead of betting everything on one approach.
Here's what most positioning advice gets wrong: it assumes you have to pick one lane and stay there forever. But the agencies that are really crushing it often layer multiple approaches strategically.
You might be known for a specific skill (conversion optimization) applied to a particular problem (turning website traffic into qualified leads) packaged as a concrete offer (90-Day Conversion Acceleration Program). That's vertical, horizontal, amnd problem-based positioning working together.
Or you might serve three different industries but be known for the same transformative outcome in each one. Your healthcare clients know you as the team that makes complex medical devices feel approachable. Your fintech clients know you as the team that makes investing platforms feel trustworthy. Your SaaS clients know you as the team that makes technical products feel essential. Same core skill, different applications, multiple positioning angles.
The key is making sure your different angles reinforce each other instead of creating confusion. Your website, case studies, and content should tell a coherent story about what you do best, even if that story has multiple chapters.
Content Strategy That Reinforces Your Position
Your positioning is only as strong as the content that proves it's real.
Positioning without proof is just aspiration. The agencies that make their positioning stick are the ones who consistently create content that demonstrates their expertise, shares their perspective, and gives prospects a preview of what it's like to work with them.
If you're positioning around problem-solving, create content that diagnoses the problems you see most often and offers actionable solutions. If you're positioning around a specific skill, share case studies, frameworks, and behind-the-scenes looks at your process. If you're positioning around industry expertise, contribute insights about trends, regulations, and opportunities that only an insider would know.
The best positioning-focused content doesn't feel like marketing. It feels like consulting. It gives prospects a taste of your thinking and leaves them wanting more. A conversion-focused agency might publish detailed teardowns of high-converting landing pages. A brand messaging specialist might share before-and-after examples of positioning transformations. A B2B content team might create templates and frameworks that demonstrate their strategic approach.
This content serves multiple purposes: it attracts the right prospects, repels the wrong ones, and gives you something to talk about besides your service offerings. It turns your expertise into a lead generation engine that works while you sleep.
Measuring Positioning Success Beyond Revenue
If you can't measure your positioning, you can't improve it.
Most agencies judge their positioning purely by revenue, but that's like judging a movie by its box office. It’s important, but not the whole story. Strong positioning creates multiple benefits that compound over time.
Look at the quality of your inbound leads. Are people reaching out for exactly the thing you want to be known for? Are they coming in with realistic budgets and timelines? Do they seem to understand your value before you even talk to them?
Pay attention to how people describe your work. When clients refer you, what do they emphasize? When you're introduced at networking events, what do people say you do? If there's a disconnect between how you want to be positioned and how people actually talk about you, that's valuable data.
Track your content engagement, but focus on quality over quantity. Are the right people engaging with your positioning-focused content? Are you getting invited to speak at relevant events? Are other agencies starting to position themselves similarly? (That's actually a good sign. It means you're onto something.)
Revenue should increase over time, but more importantly, it should become more predictable and come from better-fit clients who value your work appropriately.
You Don't Need to Niche—You Need to Be Memorable
Here's the truth that most positioning advice misses: memorable beats narrow every time. A vertical niche won't save you if your messaging is boring, your work is mediocre, or your process feels like every other agency's.
The agencies that stand out—whether they serve one industry or twenty—are the ones who've figured out how to make their value immediately obvious and their approach genuinely differentiated. They lead with insight, not just execution. They solve real problems, not just deliver services. They have a point of view, not just a portfolio.
Don't shrink your agency to grow your business. Instead, get ruthlessly clear about what you do best and relentlessly consistent about communicating it. Own the problem you solve, the skill you've mastered, or the outcome you deliver. Make it so obvious that prospects can't help but remember you.
Need a straight-shooting framework to audit your positioning? Check out the Dynamic Agency OS framework. It's free, it's useful, it doesn't tell you to "follow your passion."
Building Your Positioning Strategy: A Practical Starting Point
Ready to stop blending in? Here's where to start.
First, audit your current positioning honestly. Look at your website, your proposals, your case studies. If someone had thirty seconds to understand what makes you different, would they get it? If your answer involves phrases like "it's complicated" or "we do lots of things," you've got work to do.
Next, inventory your best work. Not your biggest clients or longest projects—your best outcomes. What results are you genuinely proud of? What processes do you execute better than anyone? What problems do you solve that clients remember months later? These are clues to your positioning goldmine.
Then, test your positioning in real conversations. Don't just workshop it in internal meetings—try it on prospects, partners, and even competitors. Pay attention to which explanations make people lean in and which ones make their eyes glaze over.
Finally, commit to consistency. Great positioning takes time to stick, and it only works if you apply it everywhere—your website, your content, your networking conversations, your proposals. Half-hearted positioning is worse than no positioning because it creates confusion instead of clarity.
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