Defining your niche is a business strategy.
What is a niche exactly?
The word niche is a French word meaning “place” or “alcove,” and in marketing, your niche is a strategic position you take in business that allows people to immediately identify how you can serve them and why you are the perfect person to do so.
Many of us feel trapped by the idea of narrowing down our offerings and services to one particular area. I can empathize! As a multi-passionate idea-centric entrepreneur, I know how hard it is to decide on WHAT you want to do in your business: you’re constantly being pulled in a million directions by the Idea Factory called your brain. However, this step—just like finding your Ideal Client—is crucial to your professional success as a conscious entrepreneur.
Because once you know WHO you want to serve, you have to discover HOW you can best serve them. This involves looking at WHAT you—uniquely—have to offer your community and customers. The exciting thing about niching is that it helps the perfect-for-you clients immediately identify YOU as the perfect-for-them transformational service provider or conscious business.
In the beginning, niching is mostly about YOU and what it is that you bring to the marketplace.
Are you ready to find your niche?
Take some time with the questions below: the answers are the first step to discovering your niche.
What do you love to do, that people already (or may in the future) pay you for?
What unique experiences, skills and talents do have to share with the world?
Who do you love to work with?
What do they need?
Who seeks you out but isn’t someone who you feel you can truly help?
How do you work best? (Alone, in a group, as a guide, providing one-on-one support, as an educator)
Is there an unspoken need in your industry that your experience, talents, and skills can fill?
That last question is particularly important because it forces you to hone in on what differentiates you from your peers.
In the age of instant connection and information saturation, standing out from the crowd is a strategy for capturing your Ideal Client’s attention.
People (including your potential customers) are weary of bland, watered-down, copycat, or sugar-coated businesses and brands. Now more than ever, people want to connect—they want authenticity, integrity, and originality. They want unicorns.
Good thing YOU are a unicorn.
Let me explain:
Whether you’re selling transformative yoga sessions, integrative psychotherapy, wellness coaching or chakra alignment sessions, there’s a deeper reason behind your business. Sure, on the surface, you are providing [insert the obvious thing you’re providing], but why you’re really providing that is much deeper. How you do that is different than everyone else, too.
That deeper reason (your why) paired with your unique magic (your how) is what clients are really paying you for.
Avoid copycats and cookie-cutter formulas by being the unique unicorn you already are!
Take some time to think and write about your niche. Start with bullet points that pinpoint what you do and how you’re doing it differently. Then try to create a rough mission statement.
Here are some examples:
“I am deeply empathetic Reiki healer who specializes in treating reproductive disorders and personal trauma in young to middle-aged women.”
“My work as an acupuncturist focuses on helping older clients with severe or rheumatoid arthritis regain mobility in their arms, hands, legs, and feet.”
“Through targeted sessions and ongoing consultations, I use my Feng Shui expertise to unblock trapped energy in the offices of small- and medium-sized business client offices.”
Now you! As you write, try to capture the generalities of your business but also how you deliver your services, who benefits most from them, and how.
Once you have this information, it should inform all of your marketing efforts, influence how you speak about your business, and inform the direction of your overall business strategy.
Excited to focus more intently on your niche, but longing for a bit more structure and guidance?
Join us for the Holistic Business Blueprint —a step-by-step guide to creating your very own flexible, personal, long-term strategy for your conscious business, or work with me for customized strategy.
XO,
Kellie Adkins, Holistic Business Coach + Yoga Therapist
