When you fully commit to your coaching niche, some serious magic happens. Niche marketing for coaches is all about understanding your client so that you can attract raving fans, grow your business month over month, and become THE thought leader in your field.
Our growth started exploding the moment we decided to help women coaches with their online presences. A year into our pivot, we’re up 200%+ on all our platforms, 150%+ in sales, and 2,200%+ in web traffic.
Niching and owning it changed our lives, and I’m going to share our four-step niche marketing for coaches strategy with you. Inside this blog post, you will learn:
✔️ How to conduct a marketing analysis for your coaching niche.
✔️ The power of speaking your ideal client’s language.
✔️ How to earn trust and become the go-to thought leader in your coaching niche.
Step 1 – Conduct a Niche Marketing for Coaches Analysis
Niche marketing for coaches begins with understanding your niche. If you skip this step you could make decisions based on your assumptions about your ideal clients. That’s the biggest mistake you can make. Failure to analyze your coaching niche can lead to years of bad decisions.
For example, an executive coach may think a CEO cares only about performance, and build their business on that belief when, in fact, emotional intelligence and thought leadership are their real content triggers.
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How do we do this research? Ask questions. That’s what coaches do best! A true coaching niche market analysis will answer the following questions:
Who would be your deep niche coaching clients?
You may have several ideal target niche clients depending on your coaching niche. Let’s say you’re a health coach, and your niche is for new moms with full-time jobs. Within your niche, you might have executive moms, Silicon Valley moms, and entrepreneur moms.
Make a list of your deep niche clients, and then describe them and give them a name so it’s easy to know who you’re going after with each new offer.
How does your ideal client choose a coach?
Basically, what marketing calls the “buying journey” is how and why people hire you. Understand the different stages so you can tailor your content accordingly.For example, if your ideal niche coaching clients spend all their time on Pinterest, but you only spend your time on LinkedIn, you’re missing the mark.
What is the size of your coaching niche?
When you don’t know how many people there are out there who need your coaching, how can you be sure you’ll be able to earn enough money? How much to charge depends on many factors, including how many people you are able to attract as well as how much time you are willing to spend coaching them.
How much are your ideal clients willing to pay for coaching?
Having a clear understanding of who your niche in coaching is will also reveal to you how to price your coaching packages. Knowing what keeps them up at night will prove invaluable to you.
Who are your competitors and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
Understanding your competition is also helpful, especially if you don’t have any clients yet. Almost everything you need to know about potential clients you can learn by studying them.
Get the info by doing market research. That means you need to research your ideal clients before you start a coaching business, and you need to keep researching them consistently.Clients may stay the same demographically, but their principles and values can change over time.
Step 2 – Speak Your Niche’s Language
When you want to dominate a particular coaching niche it’s important to learn their special terms and words. The spiritual coaching niche, for instance, uses words such as inner child, spirit, human design, and so on. But every niche has its own terms that are used to describe feelings and activities.
Learn your coaching niche’s special vocabulary, and you’ll be able to connect with your audience better.
Consume their content and listen online.
So many coaches spend a lot of time looking at content from their competitors, thought leaders, and their teachers. As a result, they have no idea what’s going on with their actual audience.
Don’t bet that coach. Instead, take the time to get to know your niche before you start marketing to them. Pay attention to concerns they have and how they resolve them. Notice how they celebrate and what makes them celebrate.
Observe them in their natural habitat.
Observe your client based on the behavior they display when they are being themselves. Everyone has that space where they feel like they can be themselves, and that’s where you want to be.
One way to do it? Niche Facebook groups. People are more open on Facebook and they let down their walls. Look for groups where your audience is and just observe, screenshot, and pay attention. Make notes about what they said, what they replied with, and how they interacted, so you can come up with better content for your audience.
Now, take all of that and focus on what they want through niche marketing for coaches content.
As you get to know them, focus on their needs and give them what they need. If they ask questions, answer them on your blog, in your podcast, on social media or live on video.
But let go of technical & formal language. Using terminology that’s too technical and formal can turn people off. While it’s true that the people in your niche may use jargon among themselves regularly, it may make your audience feel left out. So, try to use less formal language while also using new words that your audience will use to discover you.
When you learn more about your audience, the content you create will be a lot more valuable and helpful. These tips will help you connect with your audience in a way that feels genuine.
Step 3 – Earn Your Niche’s Trust
People like social media communities because we like to be part of a group. However, we don’t like outsiders coming into our territory and sounding like experts about stuff they don’t know.
You have to spend time engaging so you can earn your niche’s trust. You have to prove you’ve been where they are. You have to prove you know the process, and that you know how to help them with real-life solutions that really work.
Here are a few niche trust-building tips:
Stay true to yourself
You have to be real and honest to gain trust within your niche, otherwise people can see through the hype. If you want your audience to admire you, be trustworthy by being humble and real. Don’t put on fake smiles and fake triumphs. Just be you.
Make sure you’re responsive
I cannot stress enough how important it is that you respond when you get comments, status updates, emails, and anything else. Your response will show your audience just who you are, what you believe in, and what values you stand for. Don’t pass up opportunities for people to connect with you.
Respect them as real people.
You show respect to your audience when you don’t treat them as money makers and wallets. It shows in what you do, it shows in what you say, and it shows in the work you do for and with your community. This isn’t’ just about growing your business. Coaching is about helping people have life-changing breakthroughs.
Make yourself a resource.
Whether or not it makes financial sense for you, if you can help your clients, it’s important to do so even if it means sending them to someone else. People will see you as more expert-like and trust you even more when you show them you’re a resource.
Get them inspired and motivated.
When the situation arises, you can use your knowledge and enthusiasm to encourage others within your niche. Being a cheerleader for others and enabling them to reach their own potential will make you someone who is respected, liked, and looked up to.
Share your stuff openly.
As a business person, you will want to keep some things to yourself, but as far as your niche and your audience is concerned, try to be more open about where you’ve been and where you’re going.
Show proof that you are an expert.
Niche newbies need to understand that sometimes people will not trust you right away. But if you take the time to get to know people, and prove to them who you are, it can go a long way. You’re going to be that much more likely to succeed if you are able to connect with your niche and show them where you’ve been. Because people automatically trust someone they can relate to.
Step 4 – Be Consistent
Consistency is almost like a magic power that can transform your coaching business.It doesn’t have glamour and glitz, but it’s key to dominating your niche.
Consistency means doing the same thing over and over again. That’s what niche dominance is all about, showing up every day, imperfectly. They start to trust you when they see you share your thoughts, tips, strategies, and advice week after week.
Don’t be the coach who shows up for a couple of weeks and then disappears.
And don’t get distracted by vanity metrics. No likes? Still show up. No comments? Still show up. No industry recognition? Still show up.
That’s the real secret to success.
Coaching the Coach: Final Thoughts on Niche Marketing for Coaches + More Resources
Thanks for reading! Are you ready to start niche marketing for coaches? Here are some pro tips, templates, and resources to get you started:
1 – Implement what you find. Don’t just do all this work for nothing. Use the information you gather. Once you’ve collected the data and analyzed it, make changes based on the facts. Then do it all again. And Again.
2 – Test your assumptions. Once in a blue moon, your assumptions may be right, and your research confirms it, but often assumptions can be wrong. Always match your assumptions with the metrics and data that show the truth.
3 – Be patient when developing marketing copy. It takes time to learn the words and language that the niche audience uses. Time to get to know them, time for them to get to know you, and time for you to learn how to communicate using these words correctly.
Free templates to help you with niche marketing for coaches from our resource library:
Our library of resources has everything you need to start and grow your coaching business – and it’s free! Here are few downloads you can use to help you on your niche marketing for coaches journey:
- Ideal Client Avatar Worksheet: This worksheet will help you outline your ideal client’s hopes and dreams, and give you an idea of how to talk to them.
- Marketing Research Workbook: A step-by-step workbook to guide you through the essential steps of market research to put a coaching business on the map.
Save yourself hours of stress and get the above templates for free here: https://lovelyimpact.com/free-resource-library-for-coaches >>
More blogs related to niche marketing for coaches to read:
Our blog is a great resource! Get more tips about niche marketing for coaches here:
- Do I Have to Have a Coaching Niche? What Should it Be? >>
- Understanding Your Coaching Clients’ Pain Points >>
Suggested books:
Here are a few books we’ve read and recommend to help you with your niche marketing for coaches journey:
- Niche Marketing for Coaches by Hannah McNamara >>
- The Business and Practice of Coaching: Finding Your Niche, Making Money, & Attracting Ideal Clients by Wendy Allen Ph.D. >>
About The Author
Hey! I’m Tee, a Certified Business Coach and a Co-Founder at Lovely Impact. I help coaches grow and scale their coaching businesses. Here on our blog, my content focuses on web design, marketing, business, and social media strategy.