Episode #129: Nail your niche
The riches are in the niches. Have you ever heard that expression before?
I remember the first time I heard it from my coach 4 years ago, I totally rolled my eyes. Granted, I was in a very different place and an entirely different business, but I wrote it off as a bunch of malarkey. I had a personal training business that was tanking and I couldn’t seem to find clients to save my life. I was certified and trained to serve a wide variety of clients so why would niching down when it comes to who I serve benefit me?
Wouldn’t that be limiting the amount of clients I could serve? And therefore, limiting my business?
So I continued to cast a wide net when it came to my marketing. I talked about geriatric fitness, fitness for special populations, postpartum fitness, and even strength training for athletes.
And yes, still no new clients.
Finally after 4 months of no new clients I decided to actually listen to my coach and niche down. My favorite clients were my postpartum clients, and being 1 year out from having my first kid and being in possibly the best shape of my entire life, I felt I could not only help postpartum women get amazing results, but I could also relate to them on a personal level.
So I created a post about postpartum fitness and how freaking hard it was. How fitting back into my pre-baby skinny jeans was hard, how the hunger pains from breastfeeding turned me into a hangry monster, and how working out seemed to calm my postpartum depression symptoms.
I figured I had literally nothing to lose (I already wasn’t booking clients) so let’s see what happened.
And y’all, I kid you not, within 3 days I was fully booked.
The reason why I’m telling you this is to show you what niching down can and will do for your business.
So let’s dive into why you should be niching down in your business, no matter how you serve your clients or what kind of business it is that you run. This is necessary for ALL businesses, no matter if you’re in network marketing, service-based, product-based, DIY, coaching, course creation. Whatever kind of business you own, you need to have a specific niche.
First, niching down makes you the go-to expert in your field.
If you want to become the industry leader that you know you’re capable of, your ideal clients have to understand that you actually understand them, their life, and what drives and motivates them. They have to understand that you can help them exactly where they are. With all of their obstacles, difficulties, fears, and hopes. They want to feel heard and seen, and part of that is being very specific in how you can serve them. So much so that if someone needs the services that you offer, that other people (regardless if you’ve worked with them or not) recommend you to them.
An example. You don’t go to your primary care doctor for your cancer treatment. You go to an oncologist! Sure, general doctors have been given some expertise when it comes to cancer treatment, but to get the specialized results that you want and need, you go to an oncologist. They are the experts in their fields and can help you in a bigger way because they are EXPERTS in their field.
So the same goes here for your business, you need to be the go-to expert in your field.
Second, it makes it easier to serve your clients.
Imagine how you’ll be able to serve your clients better if they all have the same pain point. If you have clients that are all over the place in terms of the kind of support they need, you’re going to be spreading yourself and your expertise.
Think about it like this, let’s use my personal training example. If you have 10 clients and 2 of them are special populations, one is an athlete, three are postpartum, and 4 are geriatric, you’re going to be constantly switching gears back and forth between the different considerations each client needs.
But if all 10 of your clients are postpartum, that’s the ONLY thing you’ll be focusing on. Sure, each will need different workouts based on her own individual postpartum experience, but you’ll be able to be a whole heck of a lot more thorough and will be able to go deeper with each client and her individual workouts because you won’t be switching gears constantly.
So despite being able to actually serve a wide variety of clients, you’re doing yourself a disservice by doing so. It spreads you too thin, and doesn’t allow you to go deeper into one area and to become an expert, just like you need to.
Niching down and niching down hard helps you to serve in a BIGGER way.
Third, it makes your marketing a whole heck of a lot easier because you know your clients better.
When you’ve done your market research you know EXACTLY what the pain points of your ideal clients are. And when you know that, it’s a whole heck of a lot easier to create marketing that speaks to your ideal client in a way that lets them know that you see, hear, and understand them in a way that maybe they haven’t been supported before. And when you do that, they become a life-er. Chalene Johnson talks about this a lot, about creating a tribe of life-ers around you and your business. She’s one of my favorite online personalities so head over to Instagram and follow her if you don’t already.
When it comes to marketing, entrepreneurs can start to create content so ridiculously targeted to their ideal client in a number of ways. Here are some things to start to think about:
What the words are that your ideal client is saying to describe his/her pain point?
How do they consume content? Live video? Static posts?
Where are they hanging out? Pinterest? Facebook? Instagram? InstaStories?
How are they motivated? What’s going to get them to click?
Do they love seeing stats? Befores and afters? Images of you and your kids? Professionally shot videos and/or photos? Testimonials?
BIG QUESTION: How can you help them to see themselves as one of your clients? Do they believe this transformation that you provide is possible for them?
That’s A LOT to think about, but truly, your ideal client is thinking more about it than you realize. Your ideal client is waiting for you to say the right thing that is going to get them to finally click your “Buy Now” button, so what is that for them?
And the truth of the matter here is that you won’t know until you test your marketing. You have to put it out there and see what happens as a result of it. And then you tweak and test. And then you tweak and test again. As an entrepreneur you have to be stubborn. You don’t give up. If you know that you can help people, if you know you can change their lives, you keep pushing until you find an answer and that’s when you can dive deep.
I look at our businesses like this, you OWE IT to your future clients not to give up. And so part of not giving up is nailing your marketing and showing up in a way that your ideal client so deeply needs.
And that starts with nailing your niche.
RESOURCES:
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