by: Melinda Cohan, July 29th, 2016
You’ve heard it a million times before: “Choose a Niche.”
It’s common—and solid—advice. I know, it can be so annoying when you hear it. In fact, that advice used to make me want to punch someone in the face! But when I changed my perspective, I began leveraging the power of the niche, and I was able to grow my business and make a bigger impact.
Why?
Choosing a niche allows you to fine-tune your marketing, to make it laser-focused and effective. It enables you to support your clients on a deeper level.
But …
So many new coaches misinterpret this advice and believe that choosing a niche means they’re confined to supporting a certain type of person; that they’re forever limited in how they can use their coaching gifts. Further, it may seem like choosing a niche forever limits your revenue. (I know, I’ve experienced this mindset, myself.)
As a result, many new coaches decide not to select a niche, believing their passion is bigger than that. (Incidentally, this is a Hobbyist’s mindset, which doesn’t work once you’ve moved up to the next rung of the ladder on the entrepreneurial scale.)
The root of this problem is in how people define “niche.”
So often, coaches mistakenly come up with a client avatar, and call it a niche (for example, if you’re a relationship coach, you may believe your niche is 30-year- old men on the brink of divorce, who earn a certain amount and have 3.2 children).
If that’s not a niche, then what is?
The dictionary defines “niche” as a specialized but profitable corner of the market.
To take it one step further, we consider a niche a set of challenges a common group of people face … and the results they desire.
When it comes to nailing your niche, then, you must identify a specific set of challenges your coaching can overcome, and results it can achieve. Then, you must find the most common collection of people who face these challenges and desire these results.
From this perspective, you can focus on a select group to make your marketing laser-focused, but you can still attract different types of people from many areas.
For example, TCC helps people overcome these challenges: not making money, struggling to get clients, and overwhelm. The results they most want: to get more clients, earn more money, and make a huge impact. When we look at all the people in this niche, we zero in on coaches. Our marketing is geared toward coaches, but we also attract many others in this niche, including nutritionists, personal trainers, consultants, massage therapists and more.
Let’s go back to the relationship coach example.
It’s your passion to support people in relationships. But your niche is not the men, or the women, or the couple. Your niche focuses on the top 3 challenges those men, women, and/or couples face when they’re in relationships … and the top 3 results they desire.
Make sense?
What’s really awesome about defining a niche in this way is that it actually frees you up to work with more types of people.
You’re not tied down to marketing to men, OR women, OR couples. Instead, your marketing focuses on all the people experiencing the top challenges and desiring the top results you previously identified.
In other words, may actually have the chance to work with men and women and couples!
Here’s where it gets even better: when you can clearly articulate your niche according to challenges and desired results, you can create more effective marketing copy for your website, sales pages, program descriptions, email campaigns, and more.
Because you’ve dialed in on those challenges and desired results, you can use the same language your ideal clients use. This conveys the message that you understand what they’re facing and can help them.
Your marketing becomes laser-focused. And when your marketing is laser-focused, it attracts, engages, and converts potential clients.
So, yes – nailing your niche is a must! It’s a key foundation to your marketing success, no matter which marketing strategy you use. (And, as a huge benefit, it will help you avoid failed marketing attempts that cost you time, money, and energy!)
How confident are you that you’re able to deliver what you’ve promised in your marketing … that you’re able to help your clients solve their challenges and achieve the results they desire?
Thanks for that powerful article Melinda. This resonates with what I believe in. It makes complete SEO sense too. People mostly google their pain points and not their demographics. Awesome post!
This explanation of defining your niche is so clearly explained and makes so much sense to me Melissa. As someone who is just getting started, I am so grateful for all the pearls of wisdom you have shared and I feel blesed to have you as a mentor. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Pauline, you are so welcome. I’m glad your finding it helpful on your journey! And this just scratches the surface! There is so much more to share with you and it’s important to get clarity around it, be able to easily articulate it and confirm it all with specific market research because when you do coming up with content, material messaging, emails, title, tagline, all of that “stuff” becomes not only easier but also effective so folks are opening your emails, your click-through rates are good and your conversions are optimized… not to mention when you’re out networking locally you can talk to others in a way that they get it and either (a) enroll themselves or (b) know of folks immediately that they can refer to you! This is a game changer and I’m glad you’re heading down the path of really getting this! When I have more time with folks, like in our Bootcamp Program, we can go deep into this. I dedicate an entire Live Clinic Call and hot seat coaching to this one topic because it’s that important. Too often folks skip over this step and it just makes their job and life WAY harder! Keep going, you’re doing GREAT!
Great blog, Melinda! I know these distinctions will help so many coaches who don’t have clarity about a niche…
Thanks for this. As a coach, trainer and speaker I have studied a TON on how to define and target an ideal niche. But this approach by far makes the most sense to me. It gives a distinct section of the market to focus on, with very specific challenges,but without that feeling of limitation. Thank you.