Developing a niche to grow your business

One of the challenges of small business owners, coaches and entrepreneurs is that the creativity that enables them to start their own business can also limit them later on when it comes to generating a consistent flow of clients. That “entrepreneurial creativity” often translates into shiny penny syndrome and seeing every new opportunity as an opportunity that should be pursued within their own business, limitless ideas that never translate into concrete follow through or simply what I call “business attention deficit disorder” - everything looks potentially interesting and yet you don’t know where to focus consistently or where to begin.

Those who are successful long term in business are those who have learned to harness their creativity and channel it into a marketable niche that generate incomes, clients and ongoing passion for their business.

Your own marketable niche can be found at the intersection of 3 things:

1. what you love to do (aka your passion)
2. the problem you help others solve (aka your purpose), and,
3. what clients are willing to invest in (your profit)

So why do many entrepreneurs struggle to define a clear niche?

If you’re new to business and to coaching others, then creating a niche can feel limiting at a time when you are struggling to get regular clients. It can feel scarey to be in a place of struggling to have a consistent flow of paying clients and then to consider limiting the field of possibilities even further. It seems that logically if you’re open to working with a broad base of clients, offering a wide range of services then it should naturally follow that you can easily attract clients.

The risk of trying to appeal to a broad base of clients is that you actually appeal to very few because your marketing messages are so generalised that potential clients don’t understand how you could truly help them.

Contrary to popular thinking, developing a niche is actually expansive and liberating. Read on to find the top 5 reasons why creating a niche that you are passionate about will ultimately help you to create a business that is lucrative and easily attracts more clients:

Tip #1: A niche enables you to reduce the “shin penny syndrome” by being able to more easily say no to opportunities that will not lead you to your ultimate vision for your business. When you can say “no” more often, your “yes” becomes even more valuable as you are no longer the “Jack or Jacqueline of all trades” but the specialist in your own niche.

Tip #2: When you are marketing to everyone, you are in fact marketing to no-one. We are exposed to numerous marketing message all day long and we need to be able to filter them out when they are not for us. We need to help people discern whether we are speaking to them or not - generalised, unspecific marketing messages that do not speak to  the core problems your clients are encountering will translate into few people signing up for your services, however transformative they may be.

Tip #3: When you don’t have a niche it’s like shouting out into a big crowd “hey you over there!” and nobody knowing if you’re talking to them or not. Your marketing messages need to be far more specific - speaking the language of your ideal clients, the problems they are experiencing regularly in their business or daily life and the solution you can provide

Tip #4: Developing your own niche provides numerous advantages for your business: you reduce competition as you are no longer competing with other “generalists”, you become known as the expert, trusted advisor or goto professional, others can easily refer new business to you because they can clearly articulate what you do, know how it helped them and identify potential ideal clients to you in the future plus it’s a lot easier to form strategic alliances with other professionals as a way of creating more value for clients rather than competing to attract similar clients.

Tip #5: A niche provides leverage within your business, allowing you to develop multiple streams of income because your core knowledge and content can be repurposed and delivered through multiple ways - individually, in group, home-study programmes, web-based learning, books, speaking engagements and live events to name but a few.

Contact us if you need some help getting started now.