This is a guest post written by Matt Rosenblum. Want to contribute? Check out the 2018 publishing calendar.

So you realized crafting a niche is essential to standing out and marketing your business as a life coach. Now, how do you actually identify and craft your niche? It shouldn't be complicated and overwhelming. In fact, I bet you should be able to craft a niche just by reading and applying the five or so steps in this article.

Crafting a niche begins with identifying your target customer, which after all is who your business is about. If you already have clients you enjoy working with, identifying a target customer becomes a little easier. You can start by making a profile of one of your current customers. To do this, simply list this person’s demographics and psychographics in a few sentences. Start by listing everything you can, but don’t worry, you’ll narrow down and refine the most important demographics and psychographics afterwards.

Your profile should look something like this: female, 30, lives in NYC, fashion entrepreneur, likes indie music festivals, going to movies, reads dystopian fiction.

Don't overthink it! Just describe a current client you like in this list-like way.

If you don’t have any clients or any clients you want to be the focus of your niche, think of a real person you want to work with and start listing their demographics and psychographics in a list-like way. Don't start with demographics and psychographics and try to create a fictional avatar out of that, instead make sure you start with a real person and then create a fictional profile. This way you know your customer is based in reality.

Once you’ve completed this exercise, you should have a list of your ideal customers demographics and psychographics. This isn’t yet your niche, which is a more refined and simple version of this profile plus your specific offering and result.

How to refine your target customer

Once you have a list of your target customers demographics and psychographics, you can refine and simplify your target customer. As a general rule, your target customer only needs to have two qualifiers (adjectives/descriptions) for it to be specific enough. For example, your target customer can be "fashion entrepreneurs."

If you have more than two qualifiers, you might be getting too specific. If you have less than two qualifiers, you most certainly don’t have a specific enough target customer, like entrepreneurs. If your target customer is anyone interested in self-improvement or women, in general, for example, it’s not specific enough.

What are the two most important demographics and/or psychographics you listed that make the most sense for what you’re offering? There are tens of thousands of combinations you can go with here, just pick the two that are most important, exciting and logical for you.

What outcome are you trying to help them achieve?

The second part of crafting your niche is about your offer. Based on the pain points your target customer has, how can you help them resolve these pains? Based on your training and knowledge, what do you have the ability to help them do?

It’s really important to get specific here about the exact concrete result you want to help them achieve. Likely, you help them achieve a whole range of results, but you want to choose the most important one to frame your niche around.

How do you know if your outcome is strong enough?

The result you offer should be specific, but not too specific. A good rule of thumb is again, two adjectives/qualifiers for the outcome you’re trying to help them achieve. Make sure the result connects with your target customers pains and problems. Ultimately, your target customer and outcome must seamlessly integrate and connect for your niche to work.

Putting your niche all together

Put together your two adjective target customer and your two adjective outcome to get your niche. You should be able to communicate your niche in one sentence. The niche I came up with while writing this article is "influencer networking for fashion entrepreneurs." Practice saying it out-loud to make sure you like it.  

Keep it simple, but refined. Congratulations, you should now have a niche coaching client! You can always refine and adjust more later, but creating one that's good enough for now is the first thing you need to do to move forward.

About Matt Rosenblum

Matt Rosenblum is the owner of Advanced Life Coach Marketing, which helps life coaches get new clients, become famous in their niche, and make online courses. He has a wealth of knowledge about self-improvement & marketing. If you want life coach marketing help, be sure to check out Advanced Life Coach Marketing’s Free 6 Page Report to Growing Your Life Coaching Practice.

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