141 - Marketing for Life Coaches, Part 1: Understanding Your Niche

Many of the coaches I speak with have the same question - do you really need a niche for your business? 

In today’s episode of the Life Coach Business Building Podcast, I’m addressing the niche doubts you might have and answering many of the most frequently asked questions. 

This episode is the first installment of my all new 8-part business marketing series.  In this marketing series I’ll be sharing everything you need to know about how to market your life coaching business organically. (Organic market is FREE marketing.)

In my first two episodes, I will be discussing the “pre-marketing” activities that will set you up for success. I’ll talk about my recommended niche research so you can better understand your niche. Knowing your niche will help you create an enticing marketing message that people can relate to and connect to. I want you to speak to a specific demographic,  and address their unique problems 

If you’re curious about how having a clear niche will help you grow your life coaching business, tune in and join the conversation where I will be sharing all the important details!

Transcript

Somebody might say, I need to learn how to get clients. I know that you guys have said that, but that could mean a variety of things. So when we talk about getting clients, it's like, all right, what does that mean? Is it because you don't know your offer?

Is it because you don't know how to sell? Is it because you don't know where to find your people because you don't know your marketing message? So they could have a problem and there could be multiple ways to explain that. All right, then you wanna ask what do they want? What is their deepest desire? Not your deepest desire, but also what was their deepest desire?

Hello, I'm Debbie Shadid, the host of the Life Coach Business Building podcast. If you are ready to have more clients in your life coach business, then you're in the right spot. Each week I'm gonna teach you super simple strategies to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and without spending money on paid ads. If that sounds interesting. Stick around and let's get started.

Welcome to the podcast. We're gonna be talking about marketing, and I know you guys are interested in this because as I look back over the episodes that are the most popular episodes, those are episodes where we talk about marketing. Also, the second most popular episodes are ones where we interview clients.

And let me tell you what, we're gonna have a combination of both of those in this upcoming marketing podcast series. So I've taken the time to look at the ways that you can market your life coaching business. And let me first say that I talk about organic marketing. Organic marketing is where you are not spending money on ads.

It's the process of you going out to find people or organically connecting with people. So it's more of an authentic connection, which I believe is the best way to build your coaching business. And by the way, the fastest way to grow your coaching business. So the eight different ways that I'm gonna talk to you about marketing your business in this series are not going to include paid ads.

You won't have to spend any money. You just have to spend some energy. You have to get over your own fear, your own concerns about marketing. That's where you have to break through barriers, but you don't have to break into your pocketbook. So in this eight part series, I'm gonna give you the step by step explanation of what to do and how to do it.

We're gonna take a deep dive, look into marketing your coaching business. All right. If you are not already subscribed to this podcast, I want you to follow the podcast. If you're on your iPhone, you can click up to the top, there's three dots, and just click follow. Then you'll be notified when I have a new episode, which those drop every single Wednesday.

We're gonna be covering you guys everything from niche, which I'm gonna talk about today. I'm gonna talk about mastering your marketing message. We're going to be talking about finding your people and talking to people. Another big hangup, I know that sounds simple, but that's the networking with people.

We're gonna be talking about email opt-ins. We are gonna be talking about email marketing, social media, workshops and speaking, making a marketing plan. We're also gonna be talking about, so many other ways that clients that I work with have marketed their business. All right. Today we're gonna be talking about niche, and before we get started on how I want you to understand your niche.

This is like pre-marketing, all right? This is before we actually market. The first two episodes that I talked to you guys about this week and next week are going to be the pre-marketing. It's the research time. Should you have a niche or should you not? I'm in favor of it, and let me tell you why. Because when you understand your niche, you can create a marketing message that people connect to.

I believe we're not at a point yet. I think we're close, but we're not yet at a point where people understand the value of a life coach. Now we're coaches and sometimes we forget that once we've bought coaching, you know, as life coaches, we've all bought plenty of coaching. Then we see what a transformation it's created for us.

And we're very quick to buy coaching again. So if somebody has bought coaching once, they're gonna buy it again. But so much of the population has not bought coaching. They don't really understand what a life coach is. They think a life coach is somebody who's gonna help 'em reach their goals, and that's about it.

And so I'd like for you to have a niche to where you can speak to specific problems and speak to specific people so that when somebody reads your marketing, they say, oh, she's talking to me, I get it. Or, oh, she knows my problem, and she's saying she has a way to fix that problem. That is what having a niche will do for you.

Let me also address that front. If you have a niche, you will not miss out on other people. You'll actually call in more people again, because people will identify themselves as your client. In a recent workshop I talked about pre-selling people so that before they come to the consultation, they're already sold on your coaching.

And you do that by having a really targeted marketing message, which we're gonna talk about next week. But you target your marketing message by knowing your niche. That's what we're talking about today. I will tell you that I have a very specific niche. I help coaches in the early stages of their business who have not yet earned a hundred thousand dollars in their business.

Some are just beginning, some have sold some coaching, and they're like, I don't know how to get past this point. Some are trying to simplify their business, so I have a specific age group of women mostly that I coach, that are, you know, 40 to 60 plus. Do I coach some in the thirties? I do. And this is one of the things about niche is that you can speak to a problem, you can speak to an emotion, you can speak to an age.

We'll talk about all that. So I wanna mention that I had a client, her name's Leslie Mihail. Hey Leslie, if you're listening. She was a general life coach and the training that she had had and the coaching that she had had prior to working with me was that general life coaching was the best way. Just be a general life coach.

Talked to lots of people, helped lots of people, and that was all great. But I told her, I said, you know, if we can get your message narrowed down, I promise you your business will work better and you'll sell faster. So she wasn't really ready to decide, is it men or women? Is it kids? Is it teens? Is it, she didn't want to do that.

So I said, all right. How about you tell me what the most common emotion is that you coach on? And she was like, you know, everybody talks about anxiety. And I said, all right, so we can focus your marketing message without narrowing it down too far. We can talk about the pain points of anxiety. So if you are not wanting to have a really narrow niche, you can do something like that.

Today though, let me take you through the steps of really being able to understand your person. And honestly, you should do this work whether you decide to have a narrow niche or a broad niche. Either way, you should do this work. I want you to understand what it is people other than you and other than coach peers, what people think about coaching, what they think about their problems.

So let's start with you identifying who your people are. Maybe most of you guys think you know who your person is because your person is you. You came to coaching for a particular reason. You had a desire, a need that needed to be solved, and now you are passionate about helping other people, that's the best niche to have, by the way, because you've experienced transformation and you can sell it so much easier.

But let's talk a little bit further about how you would go ahead and do research, even if you think you know your niche. So let's talk about who they are. What is the demographic? What is the age group and what are their interests? So I'm talking about could be religion, it could be race, it could be age, it could be gender.

It could be specific to a region of the world. Like there's broad categories like that. They could have common interests. It could be a lifestyle thing, it could be career, family, health. You know, when you think about health, my goodness, it doesn't have to be just weight loss. There's many, many, many health conditions.

Like you could be a coach for people who have ra, rheumatoid arthritis. So there's all kinds of categories of health coaching, for example. So maybe there's an interest, maybe there's an emotion, maybe there's some thinking that needs to be changed.

That would be kind of the demographic of your person as you explain them. For me, the key demographic of my coaching is females only that are in the beginning stages of their coaching business. They haven't earned a hundred thousand dollars yet, and they are frustrated with technology. They don't know how to market their business.

Very passionate about what they do. I know all of these things, by the way, because I've interviewed people just like you. And I get all of the common words that you say, and that becomes part of my marketing. So who are they? The second thing is, what is their problem? Now you might have a specific problem that you coach on, but there's multiple ways to talk about that.

Somebody might come to me and say like, I'm frustrated with my business and I don't know how to put it together. I need a system. They actually might be talking about some technology. Somebody else might say, I'm terrible at tech. So they are talking about technology in a different way. You see what I'm saying?

Somebody's talking about system, or I just need to learn how to be in business. somebody might say, I need to learn how to get clients. I know that you guys have said that, but that could mean a variety of things. So when we talk about getting clients, it's like, all right, what does that mean? Is it because you don't know your offer?

Is it because you don't know how to sell? Is it because you don't know where to find your people because you don't know your marketing message? So they could have a problem and there could be multiple ways to explain that. All right, then you wanna ask what do they want? What is their deepest desire? Not your deepest desire, but also what was their deepest desire?

I would guess that there's going to be a common denominator there. Your deepest desire as coaches. Is to really make a difference. The women that I work with, they feel very passionate about what it is they do. They think, you know what? I've gotten to this point in my life. I wanna do something that's really meaningful.

I wanna make a difference. And that's the language that my person speaks. They also wanna have freedom in their schedule. They also wanna have control over their paycheck. So what is your person's deepest desire? and how would they explain it? If I just said to you, I work with coaches who want freedom, like that's too vague, you guys. 

Freedom could be defined in many different ways. So I would say freedom in your schedule. So you have the flexibility to take care of loved ones. You know, many of you guys are taking care of aging parents. Many of you are taking care of my granddaughter. Some of you still have children at home.

So that would be like freedom in your schedule to do those things. Or freedom in your schedule to travel because your husband's retired, or freedom with your income because you want to be able to make more money than you do per hour on your job. So that would be a way that I might talk about freedom. You wanna be able to really paint this picture of desire.

If I talk about you having freedom in your schedule, which was important to me. And I said, I know that you wanna be able to take care of your loved ones. I could say to you in a compelling way, like, I never, ever again wanted to ever ask a boss. Or explained to a boss that I needed to be off because my grandmother was dying.

I never wanted to have to do that, or I never wanted to explain to my boss that my two-year-old at the time, I've worked for myself, you guys a long time, and it's because of this thing right here. I thought I'm not gonna go in and ask a boss if I can take off if my child is sick. I need to have control over that.

And I know many of you guys can relate to that. So that is how I would paint the picture of my deepest desire. So what is a way that you would paint the picture, you know, poking at the pain, like those two examples? Being able to take care of your sick child, being able to take care of a family member who's maybe sick.

Right? Being able to tend to the needs of your family, especially, I thought, gosh, I'm a hard worker. I'm an overachiever. I'm a top performer. I should not have to go in there and beg to be off work. So that would be my story. All right, why don't they have what it is that you're painting? So this picture, if we were talking about me being able to, you know, leave work, why don't I have the ability to do that?

So I would be addressing, well, I don't have that because I don't know what to do next. I don't know what the next career move would be because I'm not in a financial position to leave my job because I am too scared that I am not qualified to make it on my own. So you wanna know what somebody has tried?

What are their worries? What are their concerns? If they have tried some things like you guys with weight loss coaching, why hasn't it worked? Because I know with weight loss coaching, If you're here, you have a secret that most people don't know about, and that's the mindset part to weight loss coaching.

So you wanna be saying, look, you've already tried this, this, this, this, like all of the many diets, and you've already done this for multiple years and it never works. And you wanna say why it hasn't worked for them? Because there's one thing you're missing, right? That's how you wanna explain it. So why don't you have what it is you want?

Go through all of the mindset obstacles that get in their way. So back to my example, like if I didn't leave my job to work for myself, Why didn't I? Well, it's because I was scared. I was worried about having a secure paycheck. I didn't believe it was possible that I could do it. I wasn't sure right. I was overwhelmed with all the, that I might have to do.

I wasn't sure if I could work for myself. I knew I could do all those things, but those would be objections. That would be mindset obstacles that would get in somebody's way. All right. You wanna talk about what changes for them when you help them. Now I know for sure in coaching there is that key transformation that you guys are selling.

Again, that's really why it helps to know your niche. It helps to be able to explain what it is that it looks like after they work with you. Invest money in me to have this. That's why that's important. What's interesting though, is there's often a cascade of effects. So if you change anxiety for me through the coaching that you do, what else happens in my life?

Well, I'll stop yelling at my kids. So my relationship with my kids improves. I begin to travel with my husband because I'm not worried about flying anymore. So my relationship with my husband improves and I create memories with him. I do things at work that I wouldn't normally do. I speak up for myself and I get a raise.

So that's like the cascade effect of what it is that you could offer to coach them on. It's a cascade effect of the result that you are selling. That's the benefit of investing in coaching, and that's why you wanna get super clear on that. All right, now we wanna talk about urgency. How urgent is this problem?

And let me just tell you, I don't want you to be dishonest about the urgency of it because, look, so sincere about being truthful about what it is you do. Do not promise something you cannot deliver. But here's the deal. If I had anxiety, how urgent would it be for you to help me solve it? This is when you can start to explain what the cost is for them not solving it.

If we go back to the example I just had, it would be like because you're not standing up for yourself at work, you know you're getting passed over for career advancements. You're not getting raises, your boss is making passes at you. People are talking down to you, right? That is the cost of not solving the problem.

If you are yelling at your kids because you have anxiety, what is the cost of that? You have to explain that to them. That is why it's urgent. Like, you don't wanna waste another day in a broken relationship with your kids because you have anxiety and you come home and scream at your kids. You wanna be able to explain to them the cost of the problem.

You wanna talk about all the other areas that are impacted by this situation. Again, I mentioned that it would be like relationship stress. Anxiety keeps you from living your life. Maybe you talk about time management issues. A lot of you guys are coaching on things like that. If they have time management issues and they can't get to work on time, then they can't advance in their career.

That would be the cost of not being able to manage their schedule, let's say. Let me go back over those questions one more time so you can write these down. All right. Pause this right now if you are not driving it and go get a pencil or a pen or open your notepad on your iPhone and I'm gonna give you this list of questions again.

Alright, the first question was, who are they? That was the demographic question. What are the common denominators? Question number two was, what is their problem and what are the multiple ways to explain it? Question number three. What do they want? What is their deepest desire? Question number four, why don't they have it?

This is the part where you're saying, here's what you've tried, here's why it hasn't worked, and here's the mindset issues that are getting in the way. All right. Question number five, what changes for them when you help them? What is the result of your coaching? Question number six is how urgent is this issue?

That's it. Six questions you guys that you can start today really working on understanding your niche, understanding your client, getting clear on that. Take those six questions and go start interviewing people. Go start talking to other people to get the words that they say about what it is that you wanna coach on, and then you guys, next week we're gonna talk about how you can use that again as part of this pre-marketing, getting prepared to market to master your marketing message.

All right. I'm so excited to have you guys on this journey. Again, make sure you subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already, so that you can hear all of the eight parts to this Marketing your Coaching Business podcast series. Hope you guys have an amazing week. We'll talk to you soon.

Bye-bye.

Okay ladies, that is it for today. Before we go, I want to invite you to head over to debbieshadid.com. I have this incredible Canva training, specifically designed for life coaches where I'm gonna teach you how to use Canva to create beautiful graphics to market your life coaching. All right. Have an amazing week.

I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye.