We think “I already know my niche. I’m a executive coach!” (or health coach, or mindset coach – I could go on). We’ve decided what kind of coaching we do, so we’ve niched, haven’t we?
No, because those aren’t niches, they’re job titles.
What A Niche Actually Is
A niche is a chosen focus, a target audience, a sub-section of the population that we choose and to whom we focus our marketing. It’s not about the type of coaching we deliver, it’s about the type of people we’re marketing to.
Executive (health, etc) coaching isn’t a niche. It’s a description of what happens in the coaching conversation, and it sits entirely on the delivery side of our business. A niche sits on the client acquisition side – it’s about marketing, not about delivery.
This distinction matters enormously, but many of us don’t realise it exists.
This Confusion Causes Problems
When we think our ‘flavour’ of coaching is our niche, we believe we’ve already done the work of choosing a focus. We think we don’t need to narrow down further because we’ve already narrowed to “executive coaching” or “career coaching” or “health and wellness coaching.”
So when we’re still struggling to find clients, we’re confused because a) we have a niche, b) we’re clear about what we do so c) why isn’t it working?
I’ve had so many conversations with coaches who said they didn’t realise that they were not their niche, or that actually understanding what a niche is would mean they would find client acquisition easier. As far as they were concerned, they knew their niche and were still having client acquisition problems, so clearly niching wasn’t the answer. They’d decided they didn’t need to join something like my Nail Your Niche Challenge because they already knew their niche, and yet were still having trouble finding clients because no one understands what they do, or they just don’t seem interested.
The problem isn’t that no one understands what they do. The problem is that they’re trying to market a type of coaching rather than marketing to a type of person.
The Two Sides Of Your Business
Our coaching businesses have two separate sides, and they require completely different skill sets. On one side sits coaching delivery – all the skills we learned in our training. This is where our coaching delivery lives. This is where mindset coach or executive coach or career coach matters.
On the other side sits client acquisition – all the skills we didn’t learn in our training. This is where our niche lives. This is where we need to focus on a specific type of person with specific challenges that our coaching can help resolve.
When we confuse the two sides, when we think our delivery description is also our marketing focus, we end up with vague marketing that doesn’t speak to anyone specific. We write content about mindset or executive presence or career transitions, and we wonder why potential clients aren’t responding.
They’re not responding because we’re talking about coaching concepts they don’t understand (or care about) not about things they do care about, like the actual problems they have that coaching with us could resolve.
What Changes When We Get This Right
Once we understand that niching is about our client acquisition rather than our coaching, everything changes. For a start, we realise why we might want a target audience and understand what having one means. We realise that we can have a strategy for marketing rather than a haphazard fingers-crossed approach.
Instead of saying I’m a mindset coach and trying to figure out how to market that, we can say (for example) I work with newly promoted managers in the NHS who are struggling with imposter syndrome and the overwhelming responsibility of their new role. Suddenly they know who they’re talking to, what problems those people have, where those people might be found, what language those people use to describe their situation and even where to find them.
Instead of posting about the power of mindset work, we can write about the specific challenges of stepping up to management in an under-resourced health service where everyone is exhausted and you’re terrified you’re going to let your team down.
One is about coaching. The other is about a real problem that real people are experiencing.
Your Niche Doesn’t Limit You
What coaches worry about when they start to understand this is that they think that choosing a target audience means they can only ever coach that type of person. That if they market to newly promoted NHS managers, they can’t accept a client who’s a charity CEO or a tech entrepreneur.
But that’s not how it works at all.
We can coach anyone who comes our way. Our coaching delivery skills apply to any client with any challenge. What we’re choosing is who we’re going to market to, not who we’re going to coach. We’re choosing where to focus our client acquisition efforts, not limiting our coaching practice.
When we market to a specific target audience, we’re making it easy for that particular group of people to recognise that we understand them and can help them. We’re not putting up a sign saying “no one else allowed.” We’re just making ourselves visible and relevant to one specific group, because that’s how marketing actually works.
We Resist This Understanding
We resist understanding that niching is about our target audience, not our coaching, because it feels like we’re giving something up. If we’re “just” a mindset coach, we can theoretically work with anyone. If we narrow to newly promoted NHS managers, we’re choosing one small group.
However the theoretical ability to work with anyone is useless if no one is actually hiring us. The small group we choose becomes the gateway to building a sustainable business, because focused marketing actually works while vague marketing doesn’t.
We also resist because it requires us to do work we haven’t done yet. Choosing a kind of coaching feels complete – we’ve decided what we do, we’re done. Choosing a target audience is just the beginning – we then need to understand that audience deeply, learn their language, identify their challenges, and create marketing that speaks directly to them and that’s real work. It’s easier to pretend we’ve already done it by calling ourselves mindset coaches and hoping that’s enough.
What You Might Not Know
You might not know that you’ve got the wrong idea about what a niche is. You might genuinely believe that being a career coach or an executive coach or a wellness coach is the same thing as having chosen a niche.
It’s not your fault – the coaching profession is terrible at explaining this distinction, and most of the advice we receive confuses the two sides of our business. We’re told to “find our niche” without being told that our niche has nothing to do with our coaching methodology and everything to do with who we’re marketing to.
If you’ve been struggling to find clients despite thinking you have a clear niche, this might be why. If you’ve been wondering why your focused coaching isn’t translating into focused marketing, this is the answer. If you’ve been posting about mindset or leadership or career development and wondering why it’s not bringing enquiries, this is what’s missing.
Your coaching type isn’t your niche. Your niche is the specific group of people you’re choosing to focus your marketing on. Until you understand that distinction and choose an actual target audience, your marketing will stay vague and your client acquisition will stay difficult.
It might be worth finding out a bit more about what a niche actually is, and how choosing one – a real one, not a job title – might change everything about how you market your coaching business.
An Opportunity
If you’d like the chance for a robust conversation about this – or to just flat-out tell me why I’m wrong – why not join my next free challenge, Nail Your Niche? We run it several times a year and there’s even an option to upgrade to a VIP version, which gives you 3 x 60-minute group mentoring sessions with me for just £99 (inc VAT) – that provides us with time for a lot of robust conversations!
Are you ready to learn why having a focus for your coaching business will make all the difference to your client acquisition efforts? Register for the challenge by clicking here.
Recent Comments