Do you need a niche as a small business? (the answer might surprise you)

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:: 00:00

One of the most unhelpful pieces of marketing advice I see being she had is create your ideal client, avatar. This idea that you sit down and make a list of all of the qualities of your ideal clients, where he or she shops, what kind of car they drive, where they go on holiday. When the truth is your ideal client is someone who will pay you money to help them solve a specific problem or solve it for them.

:: 00:24

Which means if you're already in business and people have already paid you money to solve a specific problem, that's a much better indicator of your ideal client or customer than a fantasy list of attributes. I'm Janet Murray. I'm a content and online business strategist. And in this episode of the courageous content podcast, I'll share why I believe that you can't use a niche for your small business and what you should do.

:: 00:46

Instead, if you need to bring more money into your business in the short term, the best place to start is with your existing customer or client base, not by picking a new niche that you have no context and no track record. So if you need to bring more money into your business in the short term, the best place to start is with your existing customer or client base,

:: 01:12

not by picking a new niche where you have no contacts and you have no track record. If your business is new, don't worry. We'll get to you in a sec. But first off, I need to share something really important on finding your niche because the thing is you can't always have it all with your niche. Your ideal niche is an area where you can find enough people who will pay you money to solve a specific problem.

:: 01:36

And ideally your niche will combine three things. And there is an infographic which demonstrates this beautifully. So these three things are things you love doing things you're good at and things people will pay you for, but it's not always possible to get all three. And often two is about as good as you're going to get. So things you love and things people will pay you for or things you're good at.

:: 01:59

And things people will pay you for. The one non-negotiable is things people will pay you for. You can love doing something with all of your heart and be really passionate about topic, but if people don't want to pay you for it, it's not a good business proposition. And this is a mistake. I see so many new business owners making, especially in the coaching space.

:: 02:20

Now, if you're a coach, this might be a bit uncomfortable to hear, but if you take it on board, I promise you it could change your business and it could change it fast. So I just want to talk for a second about the coach niche problem, because coaches commonly make the decision to move into coaching because of some kind of personal or professional transformation.

:: 02:42

So perhaps they've left a career or a relationship that isn't serving them typically they'll then decide they want to help others in the same situation to have the same kind of epiphany. But what they often overlook is that just because they were willing to pay for coaching to achieve this particular transformation, that doesn't mean other people or want to pay them for that transformation, or certainly enough people for them to turn it into a sustainable business.

:: 03:07

This means they typically ends up frustrated because they're not attracting enough clients. And they often feel like the problem is that marketing, when the real problem is that offer, they're trying to sell something. People just don't want to buy, which is the quickest route to a failing business or not getting your new coaching business off the ground. Even if you're not a coach,

:: 03:29

I hate that that message comes across loud and clear the quickest route to your business failing or not getting off the ground is trying to sell things. People don't want to buy it, no matter how many emails you send, how many social media posts you do, if your offer isn't right. If it doesn't solve a problem, if it doesn't give people some kind of transformation,

:: 03:51

some kind of desired outcome, they will not buy. It is good to have a niche there because people love specialists. But do you remember that you don't have to have a forever niche and choosing the quickest and easiest group of people or niche. If you want to call it that to serve the one that will help you make money today and can give you the financial freedom,

:: 04:14

you need to explore other potential niche as well. That is the smartest moves that you can make. For example, when I started my coaching and consultancy business, I actually specialize in helping people get press and PR. I even wrote a book on that topic. My clients were mainly in the education and not for profit sector because as a former education journalist,

:: 04:33

this was an area where I had expert knowledge, but also a network of ideal clients. Now, just to be clear, this was not my ideal niche. I did not want to teach press and PR. I didn't want to teach people how to write, press releases or do that kind of consultancy. But serving that niche was the quickest and easiest way for me to pay my bills at the time,

:: 04:55

because people were practically queuing up to give me money, to teach them how to do their stuff. And going with that niche gave me the financial freedom. I needed to work on building my item niche, which was working with entrepreneurs on the side. I wanted to finish out with a final and very important word on niches. You can't really pick a niche anyway,

:: 05:17

because your niche will pick you seriously. I've seen this play out with clients time and time again, often it's that thing that they are resisting. The thing people are trying to pay them for over and over again, but they refuse to acknowledge this because they're too busy trying to sell services. They want to sell, but people don't want to buy. So stay alert because your niche will find you.

:: 05:39

In fact, it may already have found you. You're just not listening hard enough. And if you're a new business owner or have a completely new service to sell the same advice applies instead of picking a completely new niche, start by considering who you already have in your network, who may want to buy your service. So for if you're a former teacher who has recently quantified as a life coach,

:: 06:01

think about how you can use those skills to serve an industry. You already have connections with and be realistic about the easiest ways for you to get paid. For example, if you recently left teaching because you were feeling burnt out, you may think it makes sense to sell life coaching, to burn out teachers, but do they have the budget to pay for your life coaching and do they know they need it?

:: 06:22

And how much time would you have to spend building an audience of stressed out teachers to sell your coaching to a small to move would be to sell coaching and training directly to schools for, for example, newly qualified teachers or middle managers. This would mean that you could still reach these people. These burnt out teachers and get paid much more for your time.

:: 06:43

But with someone else picking up the tab, they'd be far more likely to participate. Remember they, the organizations will only pay for services to solve a problem. So when you're writing your service offer, you need to think about the impact your service could have on an organization. So for example, in the case of teaching, if you were coaching teachers to help them manage stress and avoid burnout,

:: 07:06

the impact could be reduced sickness, improved retention of staff, better morale. And the impact of all of those can be measured with real data, which means it's going to be attractive to schools. So I hope you found this episode useful as ever. I do love hearing from you say, dig, get in touch on Instagram, finding your business niche is one of the topics covered in my new business basics content camp.

:: 07:31

The kit contains templates for creating a coaching and consultancy offer sales page, copy poaching and consultancy packages, social media bios, and the about page for your website. I'll add a link in the show notes of this podcast episode.