How to Find Your Coaching Niche: A Coach’s Guide

So you’ve got a passion for helping people. That’s amazing!

There’s only one problem – you have no idea how to find your coaching niche and start coaching people in a way that will not only help them, but also fulfill you, too.

That’s the wonderful thing about coaching! You’re your own boss, and you can choose to let your passion guide what you do. Of course, it’s important to consider the market as well.

Here’s how you can find your coaching niche, to start a profitable and fulfilling coaching business that attracts your dream clients!

What is a Niche?

A niche is a form of specialization. Think of it this way – when you think of the term ‘coach’, what comes to mind?

Probably a ton.

Coaches all have one thing in common – they help clients overcome challenges and improve themselves in specific areas of their life.

The area you choose a coaching niche in will depend on the challenges you want to help your clients overcome.

There are several profitable life coaching niches to choose from, including but not limited to:

  • Leadership coaching
  • Executive coaching
  • Accountability coaching
  • Career coaching
  • Sales coaching
  • Personal development coaching
  • Financial coaching
  • Goal achievement coaching (personal goals, business goals, financial goals)
  • Health coaching
  • Wellness coaching
  • Relationship coaching
  • Mindset coaching
  • Spiritual coaching
  • Family life coaching

The list goes on, there are so many different types of coaching you can choose from!

A niche can also be a subset of your audience! For instance, some coaches only work with targeted niches which could be a demographic or age group within the niche. 

One thing is clear – you NEED to find your niche, especially as a coach

Why Does Finding a Coaching Niche Matter So Much?

Let’s paint a picture.

Let’s say you want to hire a career coach to help you kick your own business coaching off the ground. You stumble on a business coach‘s website, and you find out she also coaches fitness, relationships, mindset, healthy eating habits, and oh, let’s not forget parenting.

Eek. I don’t think so.

Most likely, you’re looking for business coaching from someone who is considered one of the top business coaches. But the more generalized your niche, the less likely you are to be the BEST at that niche. Offering coaching in multiple niches is not a good sign.

And although many of us wish we could be the best at everything, we’re only human!

The more you niche down, the more you will attract a qualified audience while repelling the clients you don’t really want to work with.

Because the reality is that you won’t be able to serve everyone, you need a work-life balance after all. As a life coach, if you want to deeply serve your clients on a level that will help them experience profound change, you need to focus on a subset of potential clients and a specific area you can help them with.

The more focused you are, the better you will serve your clients. And isn’t that the best part of being a coach?

Of course, finding your niche isn’t exactly an easy feat. Some people already know how they want to serve, but if you’re reading this post, you’re most likely like the majority of us who (shhh, don’t tell anyone) don’t have everything 100% figured out.

But once you do find your niche, you’ll bring more passion into your coaching, and as a result, you’ll hone your coaching skills and find it easier to attract clients willing to pay for your expertise. Choosing a niche means you can start building your successful coaching business.

How to Find Your Coaching Niche

So now, let’s figure out how to find your niche!

4 steps on how to find your life coaching niche

1. List Your Skills and Passions

Becoming a life coach starts with you. Before you can start your successful business to help others, you need to know who you are and what drives you. Knowing yourself well will also help a lot when it comes to building your brand and marketing strategy.

It’s important to spend as much time as necessary on this step because you are what makes you unique. No other coach can bring what you have to the life coaching market.

But in order to bring this to the market, you need to know what you’re working with!

What lights you up? What type of life coach can you see yourself being?

What are some of the things you do that make time fly and have you saying, “Oh shoot, it’s 3 a.m. ALREADY? Maybe I should go to bed… just when I finish this one thing.”

What could you see yourself doing for hours on end without getting bored?

Take out your notebook, bullet journal, or note-taking software on your smartphone and list it all out.

Even if it doesn’t seem like a coaching niche at first, write it down!

Even if you’re not particularly skilled, you should still write it down!

Once this step is complete, it’s time to list out what you’re really skilled at doing. Consider enlisting the help of your friends and family for this step. Many of us tend to underestimate our own skills, so you could be your own blindspot without even realizing it.

Ask people close to you – and whom you trust – what they consider to be your best qualities and skills. What they tell you may surprise you, but write it all down.

And if you are currently working with a coach yourself, definitely ask them where they think your biggest strengths lie.

At the end of these exercises, you should end up with a list of both skills and passions to help kickstart your search for your profitable coaching niche.

Now it’s time to see where your unique strengths fit in the coaching market to decide which of the profitable coaching niches suits you best.

2. Find Niche Market Keywords to Work With

Keywords are a huge part of marketing your coaching business.

By finding niche market keywords, you can check out the most profitable coaching niches on your list. This research will involve checking out how often people search for that specific life coaching niche each month. Then you can start to dig into user intent.

User intent is the purpose that drives people who search terms in a search engine. For example, if I search for ‘how to budget’, I’m most likely looking for specific instructions or guidance on how to start and upkeep a budget to lead a more financially healthy lifestyle. I’m probably not looking for executive coaches or a relationship coach.

If you’re not sure what the user intent could be for a specific keyword, you can read the most high-ranking posts to see how they answer the query. This will help you figure out what potential clients in this niche could be searching for in terms of help.

So now it’s time to find these coaching keywords!

Unless you are dead-set on a niche already based on the exercise above… in which case, you should consider researching that specific niche idea instead, to see if there’s a healthy market for it.

Google has a free keyword research tool: Google Keyword Planner. In order to use it, you’ll need a Google Ads account first, but it’s free to start, and there is no need to run ads. 

Start searching for terms based on your list of skills and passions. The keyword planner will spit out keyword suggestions and tell you how many searches a month those keywords get.

Note down the keywords that get at least 1000 searches a month globally – fewer than that, and you won’t have enough of an audience to run a profitable business!

For example, say you want to be a health coach. This niche is too wide to use the keyword “health coach”. You’ll need to do some research about the specific type of coach you want to be; maybe you only want to help women who are in their 40s looking to transition to a plant-based diet. You can search potential keywords around this topic to discover whether or not it’s a profitable niche to pursue.

3. Check the Competitiveness of Those Keywords

Time to scope out the competition in the life coaching niches you’ve narrowed down.

For each keyword, you can take the following two steps: get a bid estimate, and search the top-ranking posts.

Use Google Keyword Planner to get a bid estimate

A bid estimate defines how expensive it can be to get a click on a single Google Ad, for a given keyword.

If you’re just starting your business, thinking of Google Ads may seem a bit premature, but the bid estimate can give you an idea of how competitive this niche can be.

For example, the content marketing space can cost between $5 to $30 per click depending on the keyword, whereas fitness coaching can vary from $3 to $10.

Hint: the more niched down, the less competitive the keywords will be.

Search on Google to see the top-ranking posts for your potential niche

If you want to be able to generate traffic for your small business without paying for ads, using free methods of traffic – like SEO – will be important. You can also use additional SERP tools that can simplify the search engine optimization process, such as Google serp api. These tools will make it easier for you to find the information you need (keywords, images, ads, etc.).

By looking through the search results for your keywords, you can see what the top-ranking posts have in common, so that you can evaluate whether or not you can realistically outrank them.

Note down:

  • How long is the average post is your life coach niche
  • What type of media they use (images, infographics, videos, etc.)
  • How they’re structured
  • What headers they’re using

If you go through these posts and imagine yourself creating similar – or better – content, then you may have a profitable coaching niche in hand. Look for gaps in the content that already exists, and think about how you could add more value to helping clients.

If there’s a lot of information missing in your chosen topic, you’ll know you’ve found the right coaching niche!

Eliminate

By this point, you probably have a huge list of potential keywords that match your skills and interests.

You can’t possibly be a coach for all of these niches, so it’s time for an elimination process!

Start by cross-referencing which keywords have the highest search volume with the lowest level of competition. For example, if the keyword ‘how to master my mindset’ has a search volume of 3000 per month and is less competitive than ‘how to get fit’ with 4000 searches per month. While they are both profitable niches, the former would probably be an easier niche to establish yourself in.

Eliminate keywords that have lower search volumes but high competitiveness. 

However, keep in mind that how you feel about each keyword matters! If there’s a keyword that’s quite competitive, but that you feel strongly drawn toward, you don’t necessarily need to eliminate it.

Your passion and dedication to your niche will be an important factor in your success. Why settle for a niche you like less, if it won’t light you up as much as a more competitive niche?

4. Define Your Target Audience

Last but not least, it’s time to decide who you want to serve so that you can establish the right strategy to get your first coaching clients. In other words, you need to define your target market.

Let’s say you want to become a business coach. Many types of people want to start and grow their businesses, but that doesn’t mean you should be a business coach for all these people.

Perhaps you get along better with people who are at the college level and are trying to figure out who they want to be, or perhaps you prefer working with older, more established people, or maybe you’re interested in leadership development.

It’s a good idea to do some competitor research in your chosen niche, to see who your competition is targeting. However, most coaching niches will have audiences that are made up of people from all walks of life, since no one is too young or too old to need a coach!

The more targeted your audience, the more you can tailor your marketing strategy to find clients who are the perfect fit for you.

Create some customer personas, so you have on paper who your ideal clients are. This will help you not to work with people who aren’t a great fit.

You’ve Got Your Coaching Niche – Now Go Build Your Empire

And that’s it! Now you should have a solid idea of not only your niche but the specific ideal client you want to niche down for as well.

With your plan in hand, you’re finally ready to launch your coaching business and build a brand you love. You can make your coaching journey even easier with the right scheduling and billing software, too!

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By Charlene Boutin
Charlene is an email marketing and content strategy coach for small business owners and freelancers. Over the past 5 years, she has helped and coached 50+ small business owners to increase their traffic with blog content and grow their email subscribers.
February 27, 2023

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