Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
When I started working with a B2B SaaS client who was struggling with customer testimonials, I did what every marketer would do – I set up the "perfect" manual outreach campaign. Personalized emails, follow-ups, the whole nine yards. Did it work? Kind of. We got some reviews trickling in, but the time investment was brutal.
Here's the thing everyone gets wrong about niche marketing channels: they're not actually "niche" at all. They're just solutions that other industries have already figured out, but you haven't looked there yet. While your competitors are fighting over the same saturated channels – LinkedIn ads, Google Search, content marketing – there's an entire world of proven tactics hiding in plain sight.
The breakthrough came when I was simultaneously working on an e-commerce project. That's where I learned my most valuable lesson about reviews – and it changed everything. What I discovered wasn't just about review automation; it was about a completely different way to think about marketing channels.
In this playbook, you'll learn:
Why cross-industry channel mining beats "niche" targeting every time
The systematic approach I use to find proven solutions in unexpected places
How a simple e-commerce review tool solved my B2B SaaS client's biggest growth problem
The 3-step framework for identifying and implementing cross-industry solutions
Why your competitors will never find these channels (and how to keep it that way)
Stop competing in red oceans. Let me show you how to find blue ocean marketing channels by looking where others never think to look. Explore more growth strategies here.
Industry Reality
What every marketer thinks they know about niche channels
Ask any marketing expert about "niche marketing channels" and they'll give you the same tired advice. Target micro-segments on Facebook. Find specific LinkedIn groups. Look for "untapped" keywords with low competition. Create content for super-specific buyer personas.
The conventional wisdom goes like this:
Hyper-target your ideal customer: Create detailed buyer personas and find where they hang out online
Find low-competition channels: Look for platforms your competitors haven't discovered yet
Create niche-specific content: Develop messaging that speaks directly to your narrow audience
Scale gradually: Start small, test, then expand within the same niche
Become the big fish: Dominate a small pond before moving to bigger markets
This advice exists because it feels logical and safe. Marketing agencies love it because it's easy to sell – "We'll find your unique audience and speak directly to them." Founders love it because it feels focused and strategic.
But here's where this conventional wisdom falls apart: everyone is doing the exact same thing. You're not finding "niche" channels – you're finding increasingly smaller slices of the same saturated channels. You're competing for the same eyeballs, just in smaller groups.
The real problem? True niche channels aren't about finding smaller audiences. They're about finding different solutions that have already been proven to work elsewhere. While everyone else is fighting over the same marketing tactics within your industry, the real opportunities exist in solutions that completely different industries have already perfected.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
OK, so here's what actually happened that changed my entire perspective on marketing channels. I was working with a B2B SaaS client who desperately needed customer testimonials for their website. You know the drill – happy clients in calls, but getting them to write it down? That's another story entirely.
Like most consultants, I started with what seemed obvious: manual outreach. I set up personalized email campaigns, created follow-up sequences, spent hours crafting the perfect testimonial request templates. The whole nine yards.
Did it work? Technically, yes. We got some reviews trickling in. But the time investment was absolutely brutal – hours spent crafting emails for a handful of testimonials. The ROI just wasn't there. Like many startups, we ended up doing what we had to do: strategically crafting the reviews page to look more populated than it actually was. Not ideal, but we needed social proof to convert visitors.
Now here's where it gets interesting. I was simultaneously working on a completely different project – an e-commerce client who needed help with their conversion rates. Totally different industry, different problems, different audience. But while diving into e-commerce optimization, I discovered something that completely changed my perspective.
In e-commerce, reviews aren't nice-to-have; they're make-or-break. Think about your own Amazon shopping behavior – you probably won't buy anything under 4 stars with less than 50 reviews. E-commerce businesses have been solving the review automation problem for years because their survival depends on it.
That's when it hit me: while SaaS founders are debating the perfect testimonial request email, e-commerce has already automated the entire process and moved on. I was looking for a "niche SaaS solution" when the answer had been battle-tested in a completely different industry.
This wasn't just about reviews – it was about a fundamental shift in how I approached marketing challenges. Instead of looking within my industry for incremental improvements, I started looking at completely different industries that had already solved similar problems at scale.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After testing multiple tools in the e-commerce space, I landed on Trustpilot. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, their automated emails are a bit aggressive for my personal taste. But here's the thing – their email automation converted like crazy because it had been optimized across millions of e-commerce transactions.
So I did what seemed obvious in hindsight but revolutionary at the time: I implemented the same Trustpilot process for my B2B SaaS client. The result? It worked. The automated review collection that was battle-tested in e-commerce translated perfectly to B2B SaaS.
But the real breakthrough wasn't just solving one client's review problem. It was discovering a systematic approach to finding proven marketing solutions hiding in other industries. Here's the exact framework I developed:
Step 1: Problem Abstraction
Instead of asking "How do SaaS companies get testimonials?" I started asking "Which industries are absolutely dependent on customer reviews for survival?" This shift from industry-specific to problem-specific thinking opens up entirely new solution spaces.
Step 2: Industry Research
I began studying industries where my client's problem was literally life-or-death. For reviews, that meant e-commerce, restaurants, and local services. For lead generation, I looked at real estate and insurance. For onboarding, I studied consumer apps and mobile games.
Step 3: Solution Translation
The magic happens when you take a proven solution from one industry and adapt it to another. Trustpilot's aggressive email automation worked for e-commerce because customers expected follow-up. It worked for B2B SaaS because business users are actually more responsive to professional follow-up than consumers.
This approach has worked across multiple client projects. When I had a SaaS client struggling with landing page conversions, I didn't look at other SaaS landing pages. I looked at e-commerce product pages – and ended up creating a slideshow-style landing page with minimal text that outperformed traditional SaaS layouts.
The key insight? Most businesses are so focused on their niche that they miss proven solutions from other industries. While SaaS founders debate testimonial strategies, e-commerce has already automated the process. While e-commerce stores optimize product pages, consumer apps have perfected onboarding flows.
Your "niche marketing channel" isn't hiding in some obscure corner of your industry. It's probably a mainstream solution in a completely different industry that no one in your space has thought to adopt yet.
Cross-Industry Mining
Look beyond your industry for solutions that other sectors have already perfected and proven at scale.
Translation Framework
Adapt proven solutions by focusing on the underlying mechanics rather than surface-level industry differences.
Competitive Advantage
While competitors copy each other, you'll be implementing battle-tested solutions they'll never find.
Systematic Discovery
Use problem abstraction to identify which industries treat your challenge as a survival-critical issue.
The impact went beyond just recovered testimonials. Customers started replying to the automated emails asking questions. Some completed purchases after getting personalized help. Others shared specific issues we could fix site-wide. The testimonial collection became a customer service touchpoint, not just a social proof tool.
More importantly, this approach became repeatable across different challenges. When another client needed better lead qualification, I looked at how real estate agents filter prospects. When an e-commerce client struggled with cart abandonment, I studied how SaaS companies handle trial expiration.
The response rates consistently outperformed industry-standard approaches because we were using solutions that had been optimized across millions of interactions in their native industries. We weren't reinventing the wheel – we were finding better wheels that had already been perfected elsewhere.
But here's what really surprised me: these solutions often worked better in the new industry than traditional approaches because they brought fresh perspective to stale problems. While everyone else was making incremental improvements to the same tired strategies, we were implementing fundamentally different approaches that had been proven at massive scale.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here's what I learned from applying this cross-industry approach across multiple client projects:
Industries that depend on something for survival become experts at it: E-commerce businesses are review experts because they die without them. Consumer apps are onboarding experts because retention is everything.
Surface-level differences hide fundamental similarities: A SaaS trial expiration email and an e-commerce cart abandonment email are solving the same core problem – re-engaging someone who showed interest but didn't commit.
Cross-industry solutions often work better than native approaches: They bring fresh perspective to stale problems and haven't been optimized to death by your competitors.
The biggest opportunities exist at industry intersections: While everyone studies their direct competitors, the real innovations happen when you combine solutions from multiple industries.
Problem abstraction beats industry expertise: Asking "who else needs to solve this?" is more valuable than asking "how does our industry solve this?"
Implementation is easier than innovation: Adapting a proven solution is faster and less risky than inventing something new.
Your competitors will never find these solutions: Because they're too busy copying each other to look outside their industry bubble.
The lesson? Stop believing in "build it and they will come." Start believing in "find who already built it better and adapt their approach."
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to implement this approach:
Study consumer apps for onboarding optimization
Look at e-commerce for automated email sequences
Research real estate for lead qualification processes
Examine subscription services for retention strategies
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores wanting to find cross-industry solutions:
Study SaaS for customer success and onboarding flows
Look at local services for review automation
Research mobile apps for engagement and retention
Examine subscription boxes for lifecycle marketing