Discover Your Coaching Niche

Coaching MegaTrend 3: Increasing Maturity in the Coaching Market

The Wild West days of coaching are over.  A significant percentage of coaches have now been coaching for more than five years, many for ten – and they have a maturity of approach & experience.

There is an associated increased maturity in the coaching market itself, with clients having an much more awareness about coaching and its benefits.

Purchasers of coaching services have changed from Innovators in the early days of coaching through Early Adopters, and now firmly into the Early Majority.

This means two things – firstly is that there is a much bigger market out there – 34% of any market are seen as Early Majority, with innovators making up 2.5% and early adopters 13.5%.

Secondly, Early Majority are more cautious purchasers and need more reasons to buy.  They are deliberate, not impulsive decision-makers.  They have many informal social contacts that they rely on to know whether they should decide to do something. They adopt innovations – like coaching – just before the average member of the market.  They seldom lead, are not the first, and not the last to do something.

This means that we need to take a different approach to presenting and marketing coaching services to the Early Majority.

Coaching MegaTrend 4: Niches & Differentiation

The need to differentiate oneself from the ocean of other competing coaches is more vital than ever.  As competition in the generic life coaching market intensifies, more coaches will need to specialise to differentiate themselves.

There is more and more focus on niches – weight-loss coaching, presentation skills coaching, marketing coaching, career coaching, coaching for lawyers, dentists, executive coaching, relationship coaching…

Yes, these options have been available via life coaches for a while, but niche coaches focus on one specialisation, and therefore bring more experience and knowledge of what’s required in that niche to their clients.

The coaching market is already showing signs of fragmenting, with specialist coaching sub-markets continuing to develop rapidly.

These coaching niches are growing faster than the rest of the market, with executive coaching, relationship coaching, career coaching and weight loss coaching growing particularly fast.

This is good news for coaches who can exploit these profitable niches, and is bad news for the undifferentiated life coach.

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