378 | The Power of a Niche

If you are a coach or service provider of some kind, having a niche is critical. You cannot have “okay” marketing and sell coaching and other kinds of services well. You just can't, because as a consumer, you can't really clearly tell what it is or if it’s for you. For example, what result is it going to  get for me? Often the coaching services are positioned in such a vanilla, neutral way that it doesn't grab someone's attention. It doesn't hit them in the heart or the soul to say, “I need this.” It just ends up feeling like everyone else's coaching services out there.

I know you see it, I see it all the time. You could be falling into this trap as well. When you see marketing messaging like “I help you have an abundant life and a more prosperous life,” or “I can help you get clarity in your purpose.” It sounds good, and you'll probably get good feedback. People will say things like, “Oh, that's amazing what you do,” but they're probably not signing up for a consult with you. They're not wanting to know more about what you have to sell, and it's because it's not speaking directly to them. So, you could have very nice messaging, very nice feel-good marketing messaging, but if it doesn't hit someone squarely in the soul, squarely in the heart with the words that you use, they won't take the next step with you. That's the difference between a service and a product. You can show the jeans on a model and it's going to hit the heart and soul of someone that wants to buy them.

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I'm going to use products as a way to help you see how this works. When you can physically see a product, you're using your senses like your eyes to see the product, or if you’re in a store you can physically touch the product. By looking at or touching a product, you have a reaction. It's like an emotional reaction. Either it's a “heck yes,” or it's a “heck no.” When it comes to selling coaching services, getting someone to have that kind of reaction is not easy.

Your goal in your marketing should be to get people to think “heck yes” or “heck no.” We want that polarization. We want that definitive response. Instead, we tend to keep our marketing messaging very vanilla. What happens when we do this is people don’t have a strong reaction and they just keep scrolling. 

The Hardest Part About Business is Marketing

I want to be really clear that marketing is a big word with a lot of components to it. I don't mean all marketing strategy and all things marketing. I mean, what you say and to who you're saying it to – your message. That is the crux of everything. I had this visual the other day. I was thinking about how all the different marketing strategies and things that you do in your business when it comes to marketing are kind of like the pieces of a car that you put together to become the car that you drive. I've used this analogy before, but we're going to use it very specific to marketing.

Let's say you're using LinkedIn, Instagram and you're using email. You've got to write emails and you've got to write posts. You also may be a guest on other peoples’ podcasts. YMaybe you even have your own podcast. You’re putting content together for speaking engagements and for other peoples’ Facebook groups. There are so many different marketing tactics and strategies, right? Let's put all of that together and say that's your marketing plan, that's your car. The car is put together with all the pieces, but the car cannot move without fuel. It needs gasoline in the tank, or it's just a pretty car that's sitting there. It's not going anywhere. It also needs to know where it's going, so it needs a driver with a purpose like GPS coordinates. Otherwise it's just a car that will just sit there. That’s what I see happen all the time.

The car just sits there. The business isn't really going anywhere. Why? Because it doesn't have the fuel and it doesn't have the driver with a purpose. The fuel is your marketing message. It's what you say, the words you use, it's about your niche. Who are you specifically helping achieve what result, and how do you do it? That's the core message. That's the fuel. And that's what most people don't spend enough time on. Or, they get advice outside of themself for what their niche should be. I also see entrepreneurs pick a niche they think they should go after. In doing all of that, they literally cut themselves off from being able to have success because a niche is an inside job. If you have a services based business, choosing your niche, choosing your message, choosing who you're serving, how you're going to serve them, the deep message you're going to bring out into the world – It's all an inside job.

Marketing is an Inside Job

It can only come from within you. This is the piece that people miss. Now, couple that with needing a driver with a purpose. You have to be up for the challenge of being the face of the brand. You are the brand. You are the business. In a services based business, it's not a product. If you're a coach, if you're a services based business, we need a driver with a purpose. We need a driver with confidence, belief, and a hardcore message that works directly to your people. We want people to hear your message and go, “heck yes,” or “heck no.” We don't want there to be any confusion to what you’re selling.

I've spent 30 years in the marketing and sales industry. 30 years. What's fascinating to me is the longer that I'm in it, the more I see patterns. I see more deeply the root cause of why someone might not be having success in their business. The epiphany that has become so crystal clear for me in working with hundreds of women, and also having been at IBM and some other companies, is it's the marketing. It's specifically the words being used in the marketing and knowing who you're trying to reach, what problem you're trying to solve for them, and really getting that.

I saw it back in my IBM days. I can remember we were selling computers, tech hardware, and different things for computers as the focus of the marketing message. So we had these computers and so did Apple. What was so different was their marketing. The marketing at IBM was all about how fast the computer was. We called it speeds and feeds. It was all about these features and functions that probably someone really technical cared about, but the end user could care less. So that message, it just wasn't resonating with anybody. Apple's marketing was nothing about the laptop. It was about a person. It was about how they wanted to feel. It was inspirational. It was about why they were using the laptop, not the laptop itself. That the laptop was part of the journey of creation of the end user. It was about the end user, not about the laptop. That marketing difference has not only been how Apple's been so successful from a laptop standpoint, but in everything.

It's why the Blackberry is no longer popular. Marketing. That's how it started, right? It's the marketing that matters, and really understanding your end user, understanding your niche, your person, and what's going to resonate with them. When someone hears your message, it's going to hit them. It's either gonna resonate in a “Heck, yes! I have to know more about what this person's doing,” or it's going to hit a “Heck no!” That is the goal.

Marketing Meets Mindset

I get so fired up because I don't think this is taught very much anywhere. What I have come to really understand is that your mindset, where you are at in your inner growth is a huge requirement for where your marketing is. If you are in a place where you have limiting beliefs and a lot of chatter in your mind like what are people are going to think, or feeling like an imposter, that will be the limiter to the success of your business. Period. You marketing what you do to the sliver of humanity that you're here to help, that is how your business will grow.

The problem is that everyone's missed the boat. Everyone's missed the point that it's the inner work that creates the outer marketing results. Think about this for a minute. The more confident you are, the more convicted you are, the more you believe so strongly in your mission and your calling, you’re going to show up differently on social media, in your emails and on podcasts. People by belief. So if your belief isn't there, if your confidence isn't there, it's going to affect your marketing in a massive way.

It's going to affect your message in a massive way. That's why the inner work is inextricably needed with the strategy. You've got to do the inner work combined with the marketing. Now, here's the really cool thing. When you go in and do this inner work, what typically then happens is that's where your core marketing messaging actually comes from. You get to almost harvest your convictions and your hardcore messaging. All the clarity you could ever want is actually going to come from doing the inner work. It is a beautiful thing. I'm so passionate about it because there are so many women who have maybe paid a lot of money to get a coaching certification of some kind, but you’re not getting clients.

Not only do you want to get an ROI on the investment you made for the coaching, but you also want to actually start coaching. You can't wait to coach people. You can't wait to work with people. Well, the only thing standing in between you and working with people is your marketing. Your marketing will become magnetic when you become magnetic about what you're talking about. That's why in our programs we work on both. We work on the strategy and the marketing tactics, but we also work on you because you have to become the magnet. You have to become the convicted, powerful energy that is emanating through your marketing. 

The Marketing Magnetics Masterclass

That’s what I'm going to be teaching in my upcoming free masterclass. If this has resonated with you in any way, if you are on the cusp of what you believe is going to be a breakthrough for you in your business, in your coaching business especially, come to the free masterclass. It's called the Marketing Magnetics Masterclass.

Register for free here!

What we're going to be teaching you in there is how to do exactly this. Turn on the magnetic power of your marketing through you. It comes through you. No one else, nothing else.

It starts May 30th! All replays will be available if you can't make it live, but you have to register!

Grab your spot here!