--- title: 'The Tide Check: 4 Questions to Fix Your Agency Niche' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=dINxka-jHi4' video_id: 'dINxka-jHi4' date: 2026-07-14 duration_sec: 0 --- # The Tide Check: 4 Questions to Fix Your Agency Niche > Source: [The Tide Check: 4 Questions to Fix Your Agency Niche](https://youtube.com/watch?v=dINxka-jHi4) ## Summary This video presents a framework called the 'Tide Check' to evaluate whether a business niche is viable for an agency. It consists of four criteria: Thickness of competition, Insider advantage, Deal size and willingness to pay, and Entry friction for competitors. The speaker argues that many struggling agencies fail because their niche fails these checks, and offers strategies to pivot or subniche down. ### Key Points - **The Tide Check Framework** [00:00] — Four questions to evaluate a niche: Thickness of competition, Insider advantage, Deal size, and Entry friction. If a niche fails more than one, it's likely the cause of struggle. - **Thickness of Competition** [00:15] — Search for your niche + agency on LinkedIn, check Meta's ad library, and see how many people post X threads aimed at the same buyer. A handful of operators with traction proves the market spends money, but dozens all saying the same thing means the offer is generic. - **Insider Advantage** [01:00] — You need a specific reason to serve this niche: past career, network, rare technical skill, or private data. Being passionate about fitness when pitching gym owners doesn't count. Example: 'I spent four years running paid media in-house for a regional healthcare system' earns attention. - **Deal Size and Willingness to Pay** [02:00] — Check if companies in the niche have dedicated marketing staff, run paid ads, attend conferences, or have other retainer-based service providers. If yes, the buyer is used to spending. If no, you'll spend sales calls justifying the cost. - **Entry Friction for Competitors** [03:00] — High entry friction comes from regulatory knowledge, technical depth, relationships, or data assets. A good verified prospect list in a specific vertical takes months to assemble. The tighter your list, the harder for generalists to compete. - **Example: E-commerce vs. Industrial B2B** [04:00] — E-commerce Facebook ads fails thickness, insider advantage, and entry friction. Industrial B2B paid media passes all four: thin competition, doable insider advantage, strong deal size, and steep barrier due to technical knowledge. - **Fixing a Saturated Niche** [05:00] — Two moves: subniche down (e.g., fashion e-commerce 1-5M revenue, <50 SKUs) and build a proof asset (one strong case study is worth more than 100 generic testimonials). ### Conclusion The Tide Check framework helps agencies identify whether their niche is viable. If a niche fails multiple checks, subniching down and building a proof asset can turn things around. The boring niches often win because generalists skip them. ## Transcript You wrote the cold email. The offer is built. You picked your niche. Nothing's working. Before you blame the copy one more time, run your niche through these four questions. Because if it fails more than one of them, you're building a sand castle at low tide. And if you're stuck, your niche is probably the culprit. If you're struggling, this might be why. I call it the tide check. T is thickness of competition. Spend 20 minutes searching your niche plus agency on LinkedIn. Check who's running ads in Meta's ad library and see how many people post X threads aimed at the same buyer. A handful of operators with traction proves the market spends money. But if you find dozens all saying the same thing to the same buyer, the offer's gone generic, and you'd be the 50th person pitching done for you email marketing for coaches, hoping your subject line saves you. I is insider advantage. Do you have a specific reason to be the person serving this niche? Past career in the vertical, a network of buyers you already built, a technical skill that's rare in the space, or a private data source competitors can't copy. What doesn't count is I'm passionate about fitness when you're pitching gym owners. Everyone does this and it's killing their results. I've coached over 14,000 agencies through Galadan Gold, and the ones who close fastest always have a line a general agency can't write. Something like, "I spent four years running paid media in-house for a regional healthcare system, so I already know how compliance review slows down ad approvals." That earns attention because it proves you won't waste their time explaining how their industry works. D is deal size and willingness to pay. Do companies in this niche have dedicated marketing staff? Do they run paid ads? Do they show up at conferences? Are there other service providers with retainer businesses here? If yes, the buyer's already used to spending. But if no, you're going to spend half your sales call explaining why the service is worth paying for it all. And that's a tax on your close rate that compounds over time. And before we move to E, there is one more thing you need to hear. Don't skip this part. Seriously. E is entry friction for competitors. If all someone needs to compete with you is a Canva template and a cold email account, you're going to have company fast. High entry friction comes from regulatory knowledge, technical depth that can't be faked, relationships that took years to build, or a data asset that's hard to copy. A good verified prospect list in a specific vertical takes months to assemble. So pull it from scraper city. Verified contacts, firmographic filters, and the ability to get granular. The tighter your list, the harder it is for a generalist to outexecute you. Run these four checks on two niches, and the difference is obvious. E-commerce, Facebook ads, general thickness fails immediately. I see this every week. Agencies pitching the same Facebook ad packages with identical case studies and identical funnels. Deal size is okay, but competition keeps prices low because anyone can start running these campaigns tomorrow. So that niche fails three of four checks. Now take paid media for industrial B2B manufacturers. agencies skip it since the buyer seems slow and boring, so thickness is thin. Insider advantage is doable if you've worked in manufacturing or supply chain. These companies have six-figure annual budgets and multi-year contracts. So, deal size is strong and you need to understand distributor relationships and technical product categories that general agencies won't bother learning, which keeps the barrier steep. So, it passes all four. The boring niches win because listical skip them. Maybe you picked a niche like that first one and you're already in it. If this sounds like you, don't worry, we'll fix it. If you're already stuck in a saturated niche, you've got two moves. First subniche down. E-commerce is saturated, but fashion e-commerce brands doing 1 to 5 million in revenue with fewer than 50 SKUs is a totally different conversation. Your cold email sounds like it was written for that one person because it was. Second, build a proof asset. One strong case study in a niche is worth more than a 100 generic testimonials. So go get that case study even if you take on one client at a reduced rate to build it. Then run outbound pointing at prospects who match that same client profile. If you need leads, check out Scraper City. For cold email coaching, check out Galedon Gold. And if you want to see my favorite tools to grow your business, go to alex berman.com/tools. The next video is coming up