Coaching niche

[Alexop]

As a coach you need to find your niche. I am a health expert and I want my work to be around helping people with their health, but there are so many factors that afftect your health and are not identified as health topics. For ex. a shit job that makes you depressed will make you binge eat, so we NEED to talk about the root causes of your bad health not just what to eat and shit. I cam up with "life-quality" coaching but I think people will be a bit confused about it. Any suggestions?

Other niche ideas came up to me: mindset, habit coaching, wellness coaching

Edited May 27 by Alexop

[Verg0]

Deciding on a niche is only good for your clarity on who you are targeting with your marketing. 

People don`t buy "coaching" and do not care what your coaching is called. Coaching clients don`t buy the coaching process, they buy the outcome / results. 

A niche is a specific target audience, not a coaching speciality. 

Try to formulate your offer in this way: 

"I solve this type of problem for this specific type of person in this unique counter-intuitive way that reverses their deepest fear”

"I help X, achieve Y, so they can Z" 

"Helping who with what specifically"

→ Join your target market and speciality together in one concise phrase that identifies your most-wanted target group and the problems or goals you address for them. 

(“Career transitioning for midlife woman”) 

Hope that helps, I am in that process myslef. 

A good book is "A coaching business in a book" by Sarah Short. 

[Michael569]

It helps to use something that people are already likely to be familiar with. Either that or focusing on specific words for the SEO to pick up your website. With the inclusion of AI in the search engine, the simple keywords won't be enough tho, the Google crawlers are now analysing the tone you use, the style of voice, the theme of your website and whether that matches the client's profile, the use of profanity, the use of evidence when making claims (e.g. lack of references) etc. 

So if you want to be found by your ideal client you first need to understand them. Rather than figuring out the perfect name for your profession, consider what do people who are already looking for you, want? 

• what is the average avatar of your ideal client? - are you crystal clear on this? 
• what is their age bracket? 
• what is their lifestyle like? 
• what is their profession / likely income / industry of work? 
• what are they looking for? 
• what do they google? 
  • do they even use google or are they more likely to use other platforms like Tic Tock? 
• what are they experiencing right now? 
• How do they talk about their problems? (for example a depressed person may not be refering to themselves as "depressed" but could be looking for "how can I be happier") 
• what are their pains? 
• what are their fears and anxieties? 
• what is likely to discourage them on a health website? 
• what are their major obstacles to getting better? 
• where do they hang out? 
• how do they talk? 
• do you need to adjust your branding and voice guidelines to match their language? 

On 27/05/2024 at 8:34 AM, Alexop said:

but I think people will be a bit confused about it.

if you think it is confusing then multiple that confusion in the eyes of a client by 10. Lack of clarity kills any sale. 

Consider that the average visitor will leave your website in about 8-12 seconds unless they IMMEDIATELY find what they are looking for. Also consider that your average client / visitor is likely to be extremely overwhelmed, easily discouraged, potentially have ADHD, focus problems, mood problems, motivation problems so anything you can simplify - simplify. 

Get to the point asap wherever you can. 

Get rid of any fluff, anything where you use overly technical language, talk about yourself too much, are being vague, too salesy or too woo woo. 

Describe your services rather than trying to persuade the client to buy. 

Avoding patronising language or positioning yourself as a guru. 

Also some general minefields that Google hates: using unlicensed fonts, using too many fonts, colours that are not colour-blind friendly, sloppy use of language, making too many grammatical mistakes, text sizing all over the place, using pirated pictures and photos, broken links, copying others without referencing ..and stuff like that will generally destroy your SEO rating. 

 

Btw I am myself struggling with this as a nutritional therapist. I'm rebuilding my entire website and changing everything from the foundations around brand, brand tone, brand voice, values, USP, vision & mission, creating guidelines, colours,  marketing strategy, handouts, learning about indexing and SEO etc. It is a bitch when you don't have money to pay a professional. 

I've learned that without being specific, targeting a particular client and understanding their needs and desires, people just won't be interested because there is already too much noise out there and they are looking for simplicity and clarity rather than more confusion. 

It is a longer answer than you asked for but perhaps some food for thoughts as you go deeper into this. 

Edited May 28 by Michael569

[DianaFr]

Life quality, mindset, habit, wellness coaching - these are not niches.

"I help overworked mothers regain confidence about their bodies" 
"Is your 9 to 5 sucking all the life out of you? I help you improve your vitality so you never run out of energy for what truly matters" 

A few silly examples of how a niche of a health expert could sound like. A specific target audience + their pain + their gain.
People are never going to buy coaching. It's not food, they don't need it. They will, however, buy a solution to their pain or problem. That's what you have to sell. 

[Alexop]

@Michael569 Appreciate!

 

16 hours ago, DianaFr said:

Life quality, mindset, habit, wellness coaching - these are not niches.

 

Yes those are niches.

16 hours ago, DianaFr said:

"I help overworked mothers regain confidence about their bodies" 
"Is your 9 to 5 sucking all the life out of you? I help you improve your vitality so you never run out of energy for what truly matters" 

This is a more clear explanation of what exactly you work with, and that is a good point. This will be clear and big on my website.

 

Edited May 29 by Alexop

[DianaFr]

9 hours ago, Alexop said:

Yes those are niches.

No, they are not  I've literally taken multiple courses for coaches on niching and this is what I've learned. Took a while to wrap my brain around it. A niche is a specific group of people you serve with your ideal client being one particular person within that group. You end up creating all your content with that one person in mind. A niche helps you narrow down your client search - if you want to serve, let's say, white collar office workers, you market yourself in places they hang around the most. If you would consider life quality coaching as your niche, you could theoretically target every single person on the planet which would make your marketing efforts futile. Nobody will hear you because nobody will feel specifically addressed by your message. That's the point of a niche - to help people hear you amongst the myriads of messages they receive every day. You achieve that by targeting a specific demographic by talking to them in their language.

Edited May 29 by DianaFr

[Alexop]

2 hours ago, DianaFr said:

No, they are not  I've literally taken multiple courses for coaches on niching and this is what I've learned. Took a while to wrap my brain around it. A niche is a specific group of people you serve with your ideal client being one particular person within that group. You end up creating all your content with that one person in mind. A niche helps you narrow down your client search - if you want to serve, let's say, white collar office workers, you market yourself in places they hang around the most. If you would consider life quality coaching as your niche, you could theoretically target every single person on the planet which would make your marketing efforts futile. Nobody will hear you because nobody will feel specifically addressed by your message. That's the point of a niche - to help people hear you amongst the myriads of messages they receive every day. You achieve that by targeting a specific demographic by talking to them in their language.

yes, life-quality is silly, I said that already

[universe]

You have to cater to what people know.

So you could for example be the binge eating coach, that helps people stop binge eating.

And you do that by working with them on their life quality. That's what you are doing on the backend, during the coaching. In the phase before they become your client you speak with them on the binge eating situation. How everything they have tried failed and how bad their life will end up with if they continue to have this problem. And how wonderful their life will be when they stop binge eating.

[Alexop]

On 6/7/2024 at 0:14 AM, universe said:

You have to cater to what people know.

So you could for example be the binge eating coach, that helps people stop binge eating.

And you do that by working with them on their life quality. That's what you are doing on the backend, during the coaching. In the phase before they become your client you speak with them on the binge eating situation. How everything they have tried failed and how bad their life will end up with if they continue to have this problem. And how wonderful their life will be when they stop binge eating.

brilliant, thanks!

[petar8p]

On 5/27/2024 at 9:34 AM, Alexop said:

As a coach you need to find your niche. I am a health expert and I want my work to be around helping people with their health, but there are so many factors that afftect your health and are not identified as health topics. For ex. a shit job that makes you depressed will make you binge eat, so we NEED to talk about the root causes of your bad health not just what to eat and shit. I cam up with "life-quality" coaching but I think people will be a bit confused about it. Any suggestions?

Other niche ideas came up to me: mindset, habit coaching, wellness coaching

You need to specify target audience. People that have shitty jobs are not the ones ypu look for. Find entreprenuers or someone that loves what he does but is stuck on health problems..

 

Most important is knowing people that are not satisfying your coaching criterium and realizing ASAP so you don't have to waste your time with them.

 

Specify futher who you really wanna help and research into what kind of problems those people experience/why they are not already there and find out how you can bridge that..