Standardized industries are excellent at the top level and blunt at the bottom. Plenty of real niches have no industry label at all. Keywords fill that gap by matching what a company does rather than which box it was filed under.
- In People search, open the keyword field.
- Enter the terms your target companies would use to describe themselves.
- Preview the matches. Previews are free and redacted, and they are the fastest way to see whether a keyword pulls the right companies.
- Adjust and repeat until the preview reads like your customer list.
Good keywords describe an activity or a specialisation, not a generic quality. Terms like cold chain logistics, dental laboratory or contract manufacturing select a real population. Terms like innovative or leading select noise.
The strongest pattern is one broad industry plus one precise keyword. The industry keeps you in the right market, the keyword finds your niche inside it. That combination is almost always tighter than stacking many narrow industries, and it is easier to reason about when you later need to explain why a list looks the way it does.
Always confirm keywords with a preview before you spend anything. Reading twenty redacted rows costs nothing and prevents most bad lists.