There is a growing amount of videos, articles and posts online discussing AI Automation Agency (AAA) niches and asking, "What is the best niche for AAAs?". However, there is a fundamental difference between niches for AAAs and niches in the traditional business sense that you MUST understand.
A lot of the AAA material posted online fails to discuss or explain this difference, overlooking the intricate mechanics of the AI tools, models, and data that an AAA utilizes.
In this article, I will explain a "niche" for an AAA and show how it differs from a traditional niche. Let's start by looking at what a niche means in the traditional business sense.
Traditional Business Niches
A traditional 'niche' generally refers to a business catering to a specific subset of consumers who share certain characteristics and are likely to buy a particular product or service. A niche comprises small, highly specific groups within a broader target market you may be trying to reach.
A hotel, for example, might specialize in luxury experiences for high-income couples (no children allowed). Or a personal trainer may cater to women above the age of 40. Both businesses focus their offerings on a narrowly defined market or niche.
AI Automation Agency Niches
It might seem natural to think a niche for an AAA would be similarly specific - where you should focus on AI products & services for hotels or AI products & services for personal trainers. However, this is wrong, and it is one area where AAAs differ significantly from traditional businesses.
For an AAA, the niche isn't defined by the industry in which the technology is deployed. Instead, an AAA's niche is tied to the specific AI product or service it offers and the particular problem this offering solves.
Consider the example of creating AI chatbots for answering customer service queries. These chatbots can be 'taught' to understand and answer questions about any subject, whether it's hotel facilities, personal training plans, or anything else that can be captured in text. In doing so, they solve the problem of humans being required to answer these often repetitive and time-consuming questions.
In this example, an AAA's niche isn't the hotel or personal training industry; it's solving the problem of handling customer inquiries across any business sector. So, while a 'niche' in a traditional business focuses on a segment of consumers who share similar characteristics, in an AAA, it focuses on a specific product/service that solves a particular problem or pain point a business has.
Let's look at an example below of an AAA that created a luxury hotel chatbot. I will demonstrate how the niche, in this case, is chatbots rather than luxury hotels.
Example Case - A Chatbot Built for a Luxury Hotel
Imagine you run an AAA and have just created and rolled out a chatbot for a luxury hotel. The chatbot has been trained to understand and respond to various hotel-related queries, from room availability and rates to restaurant dining options and check-in procedures. Clients can access the chatbot via the hotel's website or by message on the hotel's Whatsapp, Facebook or Telegram.
Importantly, to the chatbot, it perceives the hotel information it was trained on merely as 'data'. The chatbot doesn't understand or care about the content of the data, whether it's about room availability, restaurant dining options, personal training, or any other subject. It is programmed, using machine learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and complex AI algorithms, to analyze and respond to the data it is trained on, regardless of what it represents.
Deep Industry Knowledge Isn't Crucial for AAAs
Interestingly, the AAA owner or the AAA employees who created the chatbot are not concerned with the specifics of the hotel's data either. They only care about how the AI chatbot processes and interacts with that data. For the AAA, this data merely serves as the raw material to train the chatbot.
Whereas a business owner in a traditional niche needs to have in-depth knowledge of their specific sector, a luxury hotel in this example, an AAA's expertise lies in the AI technology itself. The subject matter of the data their AI technology deals with is secondary.
The AAA team that built the chatbot might not be well-versed in the intricacies of the luxury hotel industry, but that's irrelevant to their work. They are experts at creating AI chatbots that can answer customer queries automatically without any humans being needed. This AI expertise is why the hotel bought their product, not because of their knowledge of the luxury hotel market.
A Personal Recommendation
Suppose the chatbot has been successful and well-received by the hotel owner and staff. It operates round the clock, quickly responding to guests' questions. It has improved customer service while reducing the number of repetitive questions staff must answer. Using the chatbot has resulted in higher customer satisfaction and a happier, more engaged team.
As a result, the hotel owner has recommended the AAA to a friend who runs a personal training company for women over 40. The owner of the personal training company has a problem, as many different clients repeatedly ask the same few questions to his trainers. He thinks a chatbot trained with the data needed to answer these repetitive questions could solve his problem and save his trainers a considerable amount of time.
The AAA's Real Niche: Problem-Solving Capabilities
A traditional firm would niche down and either understand the market for luxury hotels or the market for personal trainers with female clients over 40. An AAA can serve both clients without having a deep understanding of either.
For the AAA who created the chatbot for the hotel, the same chatbot can be repurposed with ease for the personal training company. The hotel data the chatbot was trained on is replaced with data relevant to personal training. Once the chatbot has analyzed this new personal training data, it can answer questions about exercise routines, nutrition advice, or appointment schedules as effectively as it did for hotel-related queries.
The versatility of AI chatbot technology, applicable across various industries, underscores an AAA's actual 'niche': the unique systems, processes or workflows it employs and the broad spectrum of issues its products or services can address across different sectors.
What's the takeaway for AAA owners
Shift your focus to the issues and pain points your AI can solve for clients instead of getting wrapped up in their specific industries or demographics.
Suppose you create a product or service around systems, processes and workflows that solve a company's problems. In that case, it can then be sold to other companies experiencing the same problem, regardless of their industry.