Struggling to pick a niche? Do this instead
Let me introduce you to the niching conundrum. It’s one I see sooo many of my clients grappling with when we talk about them picking a niche.
You offer a service which could actually benefit a whole load of people.
You quickly learn that it's pretty hard (impossible) to market your service to everyone.
Why? Because your message ends up super vague and watered down. You can’t speak to specifics because the specifics are different for everyone. You struggle to create content which really speaks to the heart of your ideal clients' struggles and desires because you're not just speaking to one person - you're trying to speak to a whole bunch of people. And so no one really understands what you do and it’s hard to attract clients.
But you don’t want to niche. You like the variety. You like working with lots of different people.
The idea of sticking to one thing is bloody terrifying because honestly, you don’t know where you want to focus. What if you get it wrong and then you’re back to square one?
Sound familiar?
That’s why I approach niching in a completely different way with my clients. In this blog, I’m going to show you exactly how.
The truth about niching
First, there are some truths you need to know about niching:
You learn your niche by doing, not by thinking. Contrary to the advice in all those free guides sitting in your inbox (you know the ones I’m talking about) you can’t complete a client avatar exercise and suddenly know exactly who you want to work with. You learn it through working with people and spotting patterns. Which clients had the biggest wins? Which ones felt like really hard work, and which were a dream to speak to each time? Which ones gave you mind-blowing testimonials? Figure out the answers to these, then plot what they all had in common.
You can get by in your business with a pretty vague niche up to a point. But when it comes to scaling, niching becomes essential. You don’t want to hop on a call with everyone and find that half the people aren’t really the type of person you want to serve. So don’t stress about having your niche totally figured out from Day 1. Take small steps every day (like the ones listed below) and you’ll be going in the right direction.
Niching is more than who you want to work with. It’s about the problem you solve, the way you solve it and the result you deliver. It’s the type of people that will most benefit from your approach. It’s about your values, point of view and more. When you get all this stuff nailed, the right kind of clients come to you (you know, the ones that energise and excite you rather than drain the life out of you). So stop focusing purely on the who, and instead get obsessed with every element of your offer and your message. Keep refining it until it feels great, and then refine it even more.
It is no one's responsibility but your own to niche and attract the type of clients you want. If you ever hear yourself say, “no one will pay my rates”, or “my clients are tyre kickers and don’t take action” this all comes back to your message and your niche.
What to do instead of niching
Picking a niche for your whole business can feel terrifying, especially if you’re not sure of the direction you want to go in.
Instead, the huge opportunity to niche lies with your offers.
Here’s the rough steps:
1. Take a look at your current niche - where you’re serving right now, however vague that might be.
2. Look for patterns. What shared characteristics do your clients have? Do you have a lot of clients from one particular industry? Do they all have a particular background or shared life experience? Is there one problem that comes up time and time again? List out any patterns. You tend to get a light bulb moment or gut feel around this point. And the voices might also start, “but I don’t only want to serve xx”. That’s OK. Ride with it.
3. Looking at your patterns ask yourself this: who is in the most pain? Other ways to investigate this: who has the greatest desire to achieve xx? Who has the most to lose if they don’t solve this problem or gain if they do solve this problem? Where is the opportunity to provide the biggest and deepest transformation? And who has the resources to pay?
4. Look within you. Where do you have the most credibility and experience? (You don’t have to focus here but it’s a good question to ask). Can you see similarities between the patterns you identified in step 2 and yourself? Often our ideal client is a previous version of ourselves. Where are you excited to serve? Which clients align best with your values?
A viable, profitable offer is buried in this data. The likelihood is there's more than one. And that's cool, because you might have more than one offer.
But for this exercise, let’s park those ideas and pick one to get started with. Which one feels the most exciting? Based on the data, is there one idea in particular that seems like a complete no-brainer? Let’s run with that.
Now take imperfect action and get your idea out there
The first step is to take that exciting, no-brainer idea and create ONE super specific niched offer. It needs to solve a specific problem for a specific group of people and deliver a specific result.
Then go and validate your offer before you've put a whole tonne of work into it.
A simple way to do this is to go to your audience and say...
I’m creating a new offer which helps [who] who are struggling with [problem] to [result].
This is perfect for you if [enter all the specific niche stuff you’ve come up with for this offer].
I’m looking for 3 people to beta test this with me. You’ll get a heavily discounted price and in return I’ll be asking for feedback as we work together.
If you’re interested, just comment below or send me a DM.
You get the idea. You can play around and make it more detailed such as including stuff like ‘here’s what we’d work on’ if you like.
The key is to test it before you do anything else. That way you don’t do a whole load of work only to find your offer just doesn’t strike the right chord.
Everything you do should be driven by your market - your audience. They decide whether or not your offer is hitting the spot. So take on board the response you get and let your next steps be driven by it.
(Don’t have an audience yet? Put the offer out to your friends and family).
Your niche won’t ever be ‘finished’
Final piece on niching from me - there's no end point. Your niche evolves as you and your business evolve. Don't chase your niche. Get out there and serve. Your niche will follow.
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