Award-winning business coach, Melitta Campbell, shares key ways you can secure sustainable growth in your coaching business in 2022. This issue: How can we niche with confidence?
Every business owner needs to understand their niche customer – those right-fit clients who value what you do, are ready and willing to pay, and who get great results from your work together.
Knowing your niche prevents you from falling into the trap of marketing your services to ‘everyone’. When you do this, you’ll struggle to create a meaningful connection with anyone, causing you to hustle hard for clients and compete on price alone.
Differentiating your offer and clearly articulating your value is particularly important in the executive coaching industry, where many coaches offer seemingly similar services. Here’s how to prevent your service becoming a commodity, helping you stand out from the crowd.
Nailing the niche
Coaching can be hard to market as it’s an intangible service. It’s not something people have a common understanding of or can easily visualise, like a car for example. The way around this is to communicate the outcomes of what you offer, and the value your ideal clients will walk away with after working with you.
When you know who your ideal client is, along with their concerns and ambitions, it becomes easier to express the value of what you offer from a perspective that they can quickly relate to and think: “Oh my gosh, I NEED that!” This saves you time, energy and resources, too. If you’re spending hours posting on social media, guesting on podcasts and networking, but aren’t growing your client base, it’s an indication that your message isn’t yet optimised for your niche. Check that you have one clear ideal client avatar and that your message speaks directly to them.
Niching with confidence
One of the barriers to niching is the fear of excluding potential customers, losing out on income, or being seen as a ‘one trick pony’. However, the reality is quite the opposite. Let’s take an example. If you were a female leader who had just accepted a new position in a different country, which coach would you call first?
- Joanne: Executive coach
- Debbie: Executive coach for female leaders
- Sandra: Executive coach for expatriated female leaders
When you articulate your offer in ways that speak directly to your ideal client, you instantly position yourself as their most obvious choice, attracting more of the right clients with less effort. And when your messaging is specific to their situation, you’ll attract other people outside your niche who also resonate with the challenges you help your clients resolve.
For example, when Sandra starts to talk about how it feels to be in a meeting room where you feel misunderstood or are afraid to speak up, you can bet she’s going to be speaking to (and attracting) female leaders outside her niche too.
Finding your niche
There are two parts to niching. One is understanding your ideal client’s demographic profile – the gender, age, location, income, education etc. The second part, which can be the most powerful for coaches, is to understand your clients on an emotional level. What are their biggest aspirations and concerns? Speak to that, and you’ll create messaging and coaching offers that get their attention.
You’ll also find some powerful clues as to your perfect niche from past clients. Think back to which clients you most enjoyed working with and who got the best results from your collaboration, then explore what they all had in common.
Testing your niche
Getting your niche right can take time. To test it, craft a business introduction, and see how people respond. Does it attract your ideal client? Networking events are great for this as you’ll get instant feedback and you can physically see people’s reaction and adjust and improve as you go. You might not get it right first time, but once you do, you’ll find it easier to attract right-fit clients and grow your business (and impact) exponentially.
- Next issue: Introducing your coaching business
- Listen to Melitta Campbell’s podcast, The Driven Female Entrepreneur, for more tips for conducting regular reviews:
www.melittacampbell.com/podcast - Melitta Campbell is an award-winning business coach who is passionate about helping business owners build and grow a profitable, and meaningful business. Her expertise comes from 25+ years of experience in communication, marketing, and leadership, including more than a decade of running her own successful business.
- For more information visit: www.melittacampbell.com