3 reasons for finding your ideal coaching nichepar Steph Chreifi
When marketing our services as Coaches, we generally don't want to come across like an advertisement billboard. If you feel like you have to sales pitch your services as a Coach and it feels unnatural and a bit of a struggle, then you might be in need of an ideal Coaching niche. It will focus your efforts, enable you to help others and be authentic in your marketing.
A niche is more than just another word for target market. It’s also about how you approach your target market, the specific area you help with and the unique gifts you bring forward as a Coach. These elements combined together define a niche. Consequently, the secret ingredient of an ideal niche, and what most resources out there don’t tell you, is that you are the key element. Without understanding your gifts, niche marketing is harder to achieve and not truly authentic. You don’t want to have a Coaching business that’s merely set up to be a marketing & sales machine. Because let’s face it, it’s a bit purposeless if, as a Coach, you cannot connect to your work, the people you want to help and your growth as an individual. By aiming for an ideal Coaching niche, you’ll be aligned with your values and be of service with your gifts.
Finding your ideal niche can result in a marked advantage for your Coaching business and here are 3 reasons why:
1- Accessibility and Visibility
You don’t want people to have to create the link between your services and their needs. What you do and how you can help, must be clear and the dots have to be connected beforehand.
If you keep in mind that people usually look for specific solutions to specific problems, you’ll understand that being too general with your Coaching services is a pitfall to avoid.
Also, people tend to define their problems by what they really are and not by the category they belong to. If someone has marital problems caused by working too much, they will not necessarily think they need work-life balance Coaching but they might find you if you’re a Coach that markets yourself as “helping individuals with marital problems”.
In the event that this individual speaks to a friend about their life situation and the friend knows a work-life balance Coach, they may fail to recommend the Coach to the potential client. The reason is that they may not necessarily make the link, between the Coach’s work-life balance services, and their friend’s marital and work problems. Unless the Coach specifically mentions helping people with that particular problem, it will be hard for others to infer the scope or nature of the Coach’s work.
2- Marketing is easier
By choosing a niche, you will have to connect with your gifts, know what tangible value you want to add as a Coach, who you want to help, how you want to help and what problems you’ll address. This means that your marketing message becomes focused, consistent and clear.
With the amount of resources out there, you want to create an impact that will get your potential clients hooked. On the internet, statistics say that a visitor’s first 10 seconds of a webpage visit is vital in either the person staying or bouncing away. So if your potential clients cannot see the value right away, they will not stay and they won’t be back. However, if you have a clear, targeted and compelling message, your chances are, without a doubt, better. A common tendency for Coaches is to think that having a niche limits our scope of work, when in fact it creates the opportunities to be seen, help and serve best.
3- You’ll stand out
By being clear about who you are as a Coach and having an ideal niche, you’ll position yourself as an expert in a specific area. You’ll be helping people with a specific and urgent issue they need help on. You’ll also have an easier time reaching potential clients because you’ll know who they are, what their needs are and where to find them online or offline. You can network where they are, do presentations, write articles, post videos, be active on social media and market yourself directly to the people you want to help and be visible to.
You might not have everything right the first time you go out and niche market yourself. Don’t be afraid to be bold and to be who you are. Trust that you will learn, and most importantly, you will be in touch with yourself as a Coach and how you can truly be of service to others. You’ll also have a more solid foundation for the success of your Coaching business.
