Many Solopreneurs are opposed to narrowing their niche because of fears associated with the whole concept. The fear of eliminating people combined with the fear of not wanting to leave anyone out, and limiting your possibilities is one of them. Another one is the fear of picking the wrong niche.
I'll address these fears so if you have one or more of them, I'm going to show you how to move through them and then you'll get two simple exercises for selecting a specific niche that works for you.
Let's talk first about WHY you should pick a narrow niche, or if you already have one, why you should narrow your niche. There are 2 main reasons why you should narrow your niche. Let's go over them.
1) Provide a gateway gets more clients
If you want to find a niche that successfully and dramatically increases your chances of success, you need to find out what people need that they're not getting and then create products or services that meet that need.
Eban Pagan gives a wonderful example of why you should narrow your niche. He says imagine going to a drugstore with a headache and going to the pain reliever aisle. You will most likely buy a product for curing a headache. You would not buy a product that just says, "Medicine." No. Almost everyone buys products that have a specific solution to fix a specific problem.
So that's the first reason to narrow your niche or choose a specialty — to attract the ideal clients that you can serve best and attract more of them. You see, if you have a wide niche, you may actually attract fewer potential clients because you are not addressing a particular urgent need. As in the example above, many people need medicine, but they will respond only to marketing that addresses their specific ailment.
Choosing a specialty actually empowers you and opens the door for more opportunities for you to do more of what you're put here on Earth to do. By narrowing your niche, you will actually attract more clients because they are responding to something they urgently need. And that's going to be you — with the solution to their problem.
A narrow niche serves as an attractive gateway. By offering a specific tribe a specific solution to an urgent problem, you're simply helping them walk through a door or gateway, and then inside that gateway you can show them all the different other ways you can help them. But if they can not see that that door is for them in the first place, they'll never even consider walking through it.
Once you are seen by your ideal clients as offering a specific solution to their problem, you will discover that they are attracted to you for all kinds of other reasons too. However, you need to get them through the gateway first. Inside that gateway are all the great breakthroughs and transformations your client needs to make. That's where it all happens.
There are many examples of solopreneurs who have branded themselves in a specific niche even though they offered many other solutions too. One of them is Fabienne Fredrickson. She is a small business coach but her "gateway" is client attraction. She zeroes in on those small business owners who want to attract more clients. Then once they enroll in her program, they are taught all kinds of things that will not only help them get more clients, but also increase their productivity and effectiveness as a business owner.
Another high-profile coach who has a narrow niche gateway is Lisa Sasevich. Her gateway is "The Invisible Close," or how to make sales without appearing or feeling salesy.
Another example is of a health coach whose niche is women who want to lose weight and are vegetarians. Once they enroll they are also coached on the psychology of weight-gain and weight-loss, and how to improve their lifestyle choices, and reduce stress.
The possibility to create transformation for your ideal clients is really unlimited when you specialize, because by narrowing your niche to something specific, you are creating that door for them to walk through.
So by attracting your truly ideal clients, you dissipate the fear of eliminating people. The only ones you are eliminating are the ones that are not ideal.
2) Specialists / Experts make more money than generalists
The second reason to narrow your niche is because when you solve a specific problem of a specific group of people, you have a better chance of being seen as the expert. And experts can charge more for their services than generalists. We know this to be true in the medical profession. A General Practitioner does not make as much money as a Neurosurgeon, for example. Post why? Because the perceived value is greater. Specialists usually have more advanced training that is specialized and they usually have more experience in a particular situation.
So when you narrow your niche you increase your chances of being perceived as the expert and consequently you will attract more clients and be able to raise your fees.
Here's what Robert Porte, best-selling author of "Book Yourself Solid" has to say about narrowing your niche:
"While narrowing your market to gain more clients may seem counterintuitive, that's exactly what you need to do to successfully book yourself solid."
Think of it this way — would you rather be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond? If you are a true entrepreneur you will pick the latter. It's easier to create a lucrative business with a specific target market that has specific problems you can solve. People want to go to an expert and that's what you will be perceived as when you narrow your niche.
So this should eliminate the fear of limiting your possibilities because once they consider you the expert and become a raving fan, they will continue to buy your products.
Here are two exercises you can do to help determine your narrow niche. This is the first step that any life coach needs to make because everything else will depend on it.
1) Answer these questions
The first method is to answer the following questions. The answers can help you choose a niche: (use the accompanying template to record your answers)
1) What do you consider yourself to be an expert at?
2) What have you had the most experience with?
3) What's the biggest struggle or painful problem you've had to overcome personally?
4) If you were told to write a "how-to" book in a week, what subject would you choose?
5) What are some of your past jobs / careers?
6) What obstacles have you successfully overcome in life, and how did you do it?
7) Which of your life experiences could others learn from?
8) What are some areas where people keep asking you for your advice AND you feel confident and knowledgeable giving answers?
9) What dramatic / extraordinary / traumatic / life-changing experiences have you had in your life that had a major impact?
10) What are you passionate about?
11) What specialized training do you have?
Then once you have these answers, determine the common theme. What is a common thread that keeps popping up?
2) Drill down these categories
You can also narrow your niche by drilling down categories. You start by determining the overall category that your work is in. The four areas listed below are the ones where you will find the most people spending money on solving problems.
– Health & Fitness
– Relationships
– Money & Business
– Transformation
Next, you start narrowing down possible niches into subcategories until you come to one that is most specific but still has enough people in it to make it profitable.
Examples:
1. Health & Fitness – Losing weight – Losing 30 pounds
2. Relationships – Parenting – Parenting teens – Parenting teens with a drinking problem
3. Money & Business – Marketing – Online Marketing – Social Media Marketing – getting clients through LinkedIn
4. Transformation – Money Mindset issues – Removing money blocks tool
Summary
Once you have decided on a niche, you can define who will benefit the most from what problems you solve and what solutions you offer. It all starts with your niche.
Niching Is An Essential Marketing Strategy
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