4 things to know from this article
- Nobody lands on your page and works out which of your four things you're best at. They just leave.
- There's a test for choosing between them that takes about ten minutes and needs no grid.
- Picking one doesn't cost you the other three. They stay in the work, they just leave the page.
- One level down still isn't far enough, and four out of five markets prove it.
You're good at four things, and your homepage is trying to say all four at once.
In this article I'm showing you how to pick one without giving the other three up.
Plenty of the coaches whose sites I read aren't undecided at all. They know exactly who they help. They just know it about four different groups, so they've written one page trying to serve the lot. Then a woman lands on it, can't work out which of the four you're best at, decides you're a bit of everything, and goes back to Google.
Being good at several things is normal. We found 117 main coaching markets and almost 1,000 smaller ones underneath them, by reading what people buy on Amazon. Nobody sensible picks one of those and never thinks about anything else again.
Which one do you pick?
The one where you can quote somebody without making the quote up.
Take your four. For each one, write down what was going through a person's head on the morning they started looking for help. Not what they needed. What they were actually thinking.
For one of the four it'll come straight out, because you've heard a real person say it. "I've been off work three weeks and I still can't face the car park." For the others you'll find yourself reaching for adjectives, or writing what you reckon they ought to be feeling.
Pick the one you could quote. It takes about ten minutes and it beats any exercise involving a grid.
What happens to the other three?
Nothing at all. They stay in the work.
Your niche decides what the homepage says, and the homepage decides who walks through the door. What happens once she's sat down is between the two of you, and a good chunk of that will be the other three things.
I've read coaches who pick a niche and then write as though they've signed something promising never to mention anything else again. The page has one job, which is getting the right stranger to believe you understand her particular problem. Once she's booked, the narrow bit has done what it was for.
Does this mean building four websites?
No. One page that gets specific, and everything else stays where it is.
The expensive version is the other way round: four things on one homepage, all given the same weight, so whoever lands has to work out for herself which one you're best at. A few will bother. The rest have another tab open already.
If you genuinely serve two markets that never meet, two pages is fair enough. By four, nobody can find your front door.
What if I pick wrong?
Then you change it. This is a test, not a vow.
Feeling sure and being right aren't the same thing, and three months of a live page will tell you which one you had. Write it to one market. Leave it alone. If nobody in that market recognises themselves in it, you've learned something you could never have reasoned your way to at the kitchen table.
Changing a homepage costs you an afternoon. Not choosing costs you everybody who couldn't tell what you do.
Go one level down before you commit
Almost every niche splits. Of the 918 smaller markets we read, 733 want something the bigger one above them doesn't cover.
So "anxiety" isn't a choice yet. Postnatal anxiety is. Social anxiety is. They want different things, from different drives, and the same page can't speak to both.
Pick the market, then pick the room inside it.
Does this tell me who I'm allowed to work with?
No. This is about what your page says and nothing else. Which clients you take, and what you're qualified for, is between you and your professional body.
Is the list complete? Probably not. We built it from markets where people are already buying on Amazon, so anything with no publishing behind it won't be on there. That doesn't mean nobody wants it. It means we had nothing to read.
If you want to know whether the choice you already made is landing, you can have your homepage read the way a stranger reads it.
Questions coaches ask about this
Can I have more than one coaching niche?
In your practice, yes. On one page, no. A page speaking to two markets speaks to the average of them, and nobody is the average.
How narrow is too narrow?
When you can't find fifteen people talking about the problem in public, in their own words. If the conversation isn't happening anywhere you can read it, the market is probably too small to find you.
Do I have to put my niche in my job title?
No. It has to be in the first thing a stranger reads on the page, which is usually the headline. Whether it's also in your title is a branding question, not a search one.
What if I have no clients yet and can't quote anyone?
Then read instead. Fifteen reviews of the best-selling books in the market will give you the buyer's own words, which is where our own research started.