Discover Your Coaching Niche

But how should coaches reach their clients?

Some coaches are finding that their current ways of finding clients are not as successful as they had hoped. Often this is due to coaches not spending enough time where their clients actually are.

Many coaches, for example, attend evening meetings attended solely by other coaches. While this may be a good way to acquire coaching knowledge, coaches are very unlikely to pick up new business at these events.

Coaches could, on the other hand, ask themselves:

• “Where do my target market congregate?”
• “Where do they meet up both offline and online?”
• “Which online forums and lists do they patronise?”

Each target market has shared interests, values and preferred ways of doing things. Each tend to be attracted to the same concepts and philosophies. They usually have shared development needs, based on common requirements for skills and knowledge.

This is especially true for those groups and associations that stipulate continuous professional development for their members. This all leads to particular target markets favouring specific online and offline meeting places.

Coaches need to be aware of these places, and make themselves visible in those locations. If you are close to the market, which you should be, these places will be easy to discover. Just ask three members of your target market where they go.

The bare minimum would be to sign up for the online forums and to join the relevant offline associations. A proactive coach would take it a step further by volunteering to help the administration of the relevant associations and being active and visible online.

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