4 things to know from this article
- Faith decides the buying in six markets, and they've almost nothing else in common.
- One of those buyers is frightened of the post. Another is answering a calling. Same faith.
- "Christian life coach" tells a stranger your beliefs and nothing about what you fix.
- There's a way to word it that says both, and the order matters more than the words.
Search for a Christian life coach and you'll get hundreds of people describing themselves exactly that way. Hardly any of them say what they'd actually help you with.
In this article I'm showing you why that costs them, and what to write instead.
Christian coaching works as a layer over a market rather than as a market of its own. We found that by reading what people buy on Amazon across 117 coaching markets and almost 1,000 smaller ones underneath. Faith came back as the deciding thing in six of them, and those six sit under six completely different parent markets.
Which matters, because the man in one of them wants nothing like what the woman in another wants, and they'd both call themselves Christian.
The six faith markets
Christian and faith-based spirituality. Under spirituality and meaning. The buyer is already inside a faith tradition and isn't looking to be convinced of anything. They want peace, grounding and a sense of purpose. Doctrine and community carry more weight here than any credential you hold.
Faith-based debt freedom. Under getting out of debt. The drive is fear, not ambition. They want out fast, without going deeper, and they want the discipline to stop it happening again. This market follows named teachers inside a church community. So belonging is the strongest lever in it.
Faith-based adoption and orphan care. Under adoption and foster care. The buyer is answering a calling and wants to do it well. The drive is protecting a child, with the approval of their community close behind.
Faith and reconciling sexuality. Under LGBTQ and coming out. The conflict here is reconciling a faith and a sexuality without losing God, the community, or themselves. Telling people is the easy half. That's a different job. And a coach who treats it as coming out will lose them.
Religious and scrupulosity OCD. Under OCD and intrusive thoughts. They want relief from religious and moral obsessions without losing their faith in the process, which is the fear that keeps them out of ordinary therapy.
Faith and recovery. Under bipolar disorder. Faith is added to a clinical picture rather than replacing it. They want meaning and stability alongside managing the condition.
Why the parent market matters more than the faith
Because they share the faith and they don't share the problem.
Take two of them. There's a man who's frightened of the post, who hasn't opened the last three envelopes, and who wants out from under it without borrowing again. And there's a couple who've decided to adopt because they believe they're meant to, and who want to do it properly.
Both Christian. Both would read a page saying "Christian life coaching" and find nothing on it about them.
Write "faith-based coaching for Christians" on your homepage and you've said what you believe and nothing about what you fix. Same hole as "I help women over 40", with a different word sitting in it.
What this means for your page
Name the market first and the faith second.
"Getting out of debt, for Christian families who want to do it without borrowing again." That tells the man with the unopened envelopes what you do and whose language you'll do it in. He knows from one line whether to carry on reading.
"Christian life coach" tells him half of it and leaves him guessing the rest. He won't guess. He'll go back to the search results.
One fair exception. If you work in spirituality and meaning itself, then the faith is the market, so naming it does say what the job is. That's one of the six, not all six.
Could there be more than six?
Almost certainly. Six is what our reading supported, not a full map of faith in coaching. Show me a seventh and I'll add it.
Does it cover other faiths? No, and I'd rather say so than let you assume it does. What we read was what people buy on Amazon, and faith publishing leans heavily towards a handful of traditions, so what came back leans the same way. Everything above is about Christian buyers, because that's who the evidence was about.
If you want to check whether your market or your faith is landing first on your own page, you can see how it reads to a stranger.
Questions coaches ask about this
Is Christian life coaching a niche?
Not on its own. It's a frame that sits on top of a market, and the market is what decides what the buyer wants. We found faith as the deciding factor in six different markets.
What is the biggest Christian coaching niche?
Of the six, faith-based spirituality comes under the largest parent market, with 207 books behind spirituality and meaning. That also makes it the one with the most existing voices in it.
Should I say I'm a Christian coach on my homepage?
Say what you help with first. The faith is how you'll do the work and whose language it will be in, and it belongs on the page. It just doesn't work as the only thing on it.
Do these buyers want a Christian coach or a coach who is Christian?
It depends which of the six. In faith-based spirituality and in scrupulosity OCD, the faith is inside the problem itself. In debt freedom and adoption, the community matters more than the coach's own faith does.