To Niche or Multi-Niche?

What's your niche?

Niche Marketing: Defined by entrepreneur.com as:
A portion of a market that you've identified as having some special characteristic and that's worth marketing to

A lot of business owners find that selecting a niche is one of the most challeging steps in developing their business, and many like me, resist niching into just one area.

Who do you want to work with? Who are your services most appealing and beneficial for?

Over the years I have remained multi-niched and serve a small handful of different groups around specific topics(business owners, teams, coaches on topics ranging from business success and performance to teamwork to group program issues). I must admit that it has been a little more challenging and more work than if I just worked with one niche AND it is very important for me to have diversity in my work. It's who I am and my professional background has always involved delivering/creating programs to very diverse groups on different topics.

Niching is very important as at the end of the day it's hard (if not impossible) to be all things to all people. Staking a claim on working with a certain group makes your marketing and program development work that much more meaningful for clients and focused.

In fact, Knowing Your Client, is a central theme and best practice of group coaching. As in individual coaching, holding the client's agenda is a central concept. Without knowing who our group coaching clients are, what their needs are, and what their agenda is, our program can either be ineffective, or more like a workshop than group coaching.

To support group coaches in Getting To Know their client, I developed the Group Coaching Client Assessment template a few years ago which is avaialble as part of the Group Coaching Essentials program, as well as in the soon to be released Group Program Toolkit. It's also a topic I cover in the BizSuccessVirtual Retreat (next dates June 9th and 23rd from 7-10pm EST).

If you are one of the many coaches or business owners working on discovering their niche, here are some great resources for you:

Entrepreur.com's Niche Marketing Article with tips and questions
Small Business Info Canada on Niche Marketing
US Small Business Association info on niche marketing

What other resources do recommend on niches?

Have a great week!

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CHRP, CPT
Potentials Realized
Group Coaching Essentials
Toll Free: 1-866-217-1960
Email: jennifer{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com