When just starting a coaching career, most new coaches question and doubt whether they’re working in the right coaching niche. How do you know you’ve picked the right coaching niche? What methodology is used? How do you give your clients a unique experience as a coach within a niche that may have other coaches?
Rest easy; we’re here to help you with all of this.
Why You Need A Coaching Niche
Choosing a niche narrows down your ideal customer and makes your life easier. You can focus your time, energy and efforts on activities that will yield the most results with your ideal clients.
You should have a coaching niche for many reasons, but most importantly, it makes running your coaching business smooth and easy. For example,
- Finding a niche allows you to go deeper and better serve your target market than generalists or part-timers.
- Finding a niche will bring clarity to you as a coach. It helps you remember a specific client type when creating your coaching methodology.
- Marketing why your service is essential to a specific group becomes easier than addressing a general audience.
- Identifying your ideal client’s pain points and showing how your coaching service truly solves their unique problems can allow you to charge a higher price.
How To Find Your Coaching Niche
Picking a coaching niche doesn’t mean avoiding other subjects or topics completely. Once you enter a coaching niche market and start developing specific, targeted coaching classes and methodologies, you appreciate all the information sources that lie outside the box. You have clarity on what to teach, what to avoid, what to write about, and how to approach it.
Instead, you can focus on mastering your strengths and favorite topics.
To carve out a solid niche that makes you happy, you can try some of the most popular and profitable coaching niches, or find and consider a niche specifically tailored to your skills and talents.
Here are thirteen questions to help you flesh out your interests and work experience to find interesting coaching niches that you may not have considered in the past.
- What do you like to do?
- What topic excites you most when talking to others?
- What makes you perfectly happy?
- What is it that really bothers you?
- What are your innate skills?
- What skills do others always compliment you about?
- What professional experience do you already have?
- What is your hobby?
- What are you already an expert in?
- What are you most proud of having achieved in your life?
- What experiences and expertise match what you enjoy most?
- What professional association do you belong to?
- What roles do you play in your life (e.g., as parents, business owners, etc.)?
Now, follow these steps:
Step 1: Which is your favorite one? Review your responses and list your best skills/expertise/passions. Aim for a list of about 10-20 items.
Step 2: Examine your answers and make a list of the main types of people you fully understand and with whom you fully identify. Narrow your list down to those among them who would need coaching. Aim for a list of about 5-10 different types of people.
Now all that's left is to create different combinations of the two lists.
Let’s take a systematic approach!
Step 3: Combine your best skills/expertise/passion with the first type of person on the list. This is a coaching niche to explore.
Step 4: Now combine the same top skills/expertise/passion with the second type of person on the list. That’s another coaching niche you take up.
Step 5: Continue until you have tested the best skills/expertise/passion for each type of person on your list. Then move on to the next top skill/expertise/passion. And so, on until you try each top skill/expertise/passion with each type of person.
This will effectively point out coaching niches where you are already skilled and know who could benefit the most from your coaching.
If You Still Can’t Narrow Down Your Coaching Niche…
You’ve probably spent hours thinking about your specific coaching niche.
You've brainstormed, asked for advice on Facebook groups, and narrowed things down.
But if you're still struggling to find your niche after doing a lot of market research and pinpointing your ideal client, it's probably a matter of your mindset.
Fear comes in many forms in our business, especially when making big decisions.
Ask yourself:
- What is stopping you from choosing a niche?
- What do you think will happen if you choose a niche?
Beware of fear-based reactions like...
- I won't be able to do other cool things I want to do.
- My options will be limited.
If you dig deep to find the underlying beliefs of your taciturnity about your niche, you can understand and paraphrase it. As a professional coach, you already know this, but you must change your underlying beliefs before you can get what you want.
Also, don’t worry - coaching niches are ever-evolving.
If one does not fit your needs or coaching style, you can move on and try another one. As the coach evolves, so do their coaching niches.
Mistakes To Avoid While Picking Your Coaching Niche
There are a few mistakes to avoid when defining your coaching niche.
1. Don’t Be Too Vague
If you try to pick a very vague coaching niche, for example, general life coaching, people will not understand the specific value you create in their lives. People love their specifics. And make sure you understand your clients well, the languages they speak, the problems they face, the solutions they seek, etc.
2. Don’t Choose Low-Demand Niches
Some niche coaches make more profit than others, and some niche coaches make very little profit. Some people are so passionate about a particular topic that they choose it as their coaching niche. Passion is an important criterion, but you must ensure your passion is marketable. You may be passionate about something that people are reluctant to pay for!
3. Don’t Choose A Niche You're Not Committed To
Some people want to start a coaching business just because they want to quit their jobs and make more money. But the thing is, you can't be a successful go-to coach if you're not involved in the subject matter you're coaching. For your client’s sake - and your own well-being - select a coaching niche that is aligned with your passion and interests.
Factors to Consider While Picking The Right Coaching Niche
Finding a niche early in your career may seem like a smart decision, but it shouldn't be an arbitrary decision. Here are some things to consider when narrowing down to a narrow niche:
- Is the coaching niche in demand? Is it (or will it be) profitable?
- Is the niche well represented? If there is demand and you have a few trainers practicing, it might be a good choice.
- Are people willing to pay for niche-specific services? Are they able to afford your prices? See if other companies with similar niches are running successful businesses.
- Is there a specific customer profile/industry I can target first?
- Do you have access to this target market? Do you know where to find your ideal clients?
Doing Your Research About A Potential Coaching Niche
When it comes to finding more information about a coaching niche, the Internet is your best friend.
However, do keep these points in mind.
- Talk to potential customers and learn about their requirements.
- Identify competitors and learn more about them.
- Determine a rough structure and pricing plan for your coaching service.
Profitable Coaching Niches To Explore In 2023
While there are several popular coaching niches like life coaching, business coaching, communications coaching, etc. Plenty of niches still have very few players in the market.
We’ve prepared a handy list of coaching niches for you to consider!
1. Lifestyle Improvement Coaching
Life coaching as a niche is too broad, but lifestyle improvement coaching narrows it further. This coaching niche is all about working on short-term improvements in your client’s life. What is the goal you are trying to help them with? What problems are you solving? This is your lifestyle improvement coaching niche.
2. Relationship Coaching
Relationship coaching - or dating coaching - is about helping people find the right partner or nurture their love relationships to be happier and healthier.
3. Public Speaking Coaching
Public Speaking Coaching helps clients improve their speaking skills.
4. Financial Coaching
As a financial coach, you can help people improve their finances. This can be done by guiding people on spending, investing, or making more money. It can help them overcome limiting beliefs and achieve their financial goals.
5. Stress Coaching
As a stress coach, you would be helping clients successfully deal with stress and anxiety and manage their work-life balance.
6. Intimacy Coaching
Intimacy Coaching helps people better express intimacy in their interpersonal relationships.
7. Resilience Coaching
People deal with all kinds of life challenges. As a resilience coach, you can help them overcome these obstacles faster and help them bounce back onto their feet.
8. Emotional Intelligence Coaching
Many people experience challenges with understanding and managing their emotions. Emotional intelligence coaches help them navigate their emotions better to improve their lives and relationships.
9. Life Direction Coaching
Sometimes, people may feel like they have lost their direction in life regarding their goals and dreams. They may lack clarity about their options or opportunities and may need help finding the right direction to move in. Life direction coaches help them with this.
10. Cultural Coaching
Companies with branches in different countries face cross-cultural challenges. A culture coach can help them work better together as a global team.
11. Wellness Coaching
Wellness coaching helps people improve their health in many ways, from eating better to helping them stick to a health plan.
12. Career Coaching
At some point in their lives, many people wonder if they chose the right career or are ready to transition jobs. Career coaching helps them to transition careers or identify what could be the next best step for their career growth.
13. Spiritual Coaching
Spiritual coaching helps people improve their spiritual lives so they are more soul-aligned, happier, and fulfilled.
14. High-Performance Coaching
As a high-performance coach, you could help people improve their energy levels and boost their productivity and performance at work.
Coaching niches are ever-flexible. No rule says you have to stick to just one, so experiment and try different things. As a coach, one of the biggest things to remember is that we are also students, forever growing, learning, and evolving. It is okay if our fields of interest change as well.
Still not sure what coaching niche to choose?
Take our brand-new coaching niche quiz to gain insights that will point you in the right direction - helping you get unstuck and begin experimenting with the niche that resonates with your passion and strengths.
