Are you finding it harder than you first expected to build your coaching practice and attract clients? If so, have a look at what you're selling and who you are selling it to. Is it what people are actually buying already in the marketplace? If not, it's time to change.

You see, I find many coaches choose their target market rather haphazardly, if at all. Unfortunately, a lot of coaches make the mistake of playing it safe by remaining a 'general life coach' and often struggle as a result. This is a disastrous approach. Why?

There are just too many generalist life coaches out there at the moment and the marketing message is simply not compelling enough to attract clients consistently. It's a well beaten path that leads to a town called nowhere.

Please appreciate that your choice of target market will determine how easy or hard it is to attract clients into your coaching practice. It therefore makes sense to make a wise choice.

I'd like to highlight a related criterion that is of major importance to how good a choice of niche you will make for your coaching practice...

Whenever choosing a target market, I recommend you look for evidence that people are already buying the specific type of service you want to sell. This is a point of critical importance and it's one that I can't emphasise enough.

For example, let's say you wanted to focus your practice on working with people who want to boost their confidence - this is just an example and not a suggestion.

Take a look at the marketplace and see if anyone else is providing similar services to that market. If so, you have a potential niche market that you could focus your efforts on. If not, it's back to the drawing board I'm afraid - unless you want more frustrating times ahead.

Once you have found evidence that a market exists for the type of service you want to sell then it's relatively easy from there. You then just need to develop a more distinctive and powerful marketing message and get in front of those people.

Tips for Choosing Your Niche

Here's a summary of what you can do to begin to move yourself forward:

1. Brainstorm niche ideas -- Take the time to note down all of the niche markets you could go after. Quantity is more important than quality at this stage.

2. Look for evidence -- For each niche idea, take a look at the marketplace to see evidence that a market exists. If a market doesn't currently exist, then you have another choice to make. You can either cross it off your list or persist to become the trailblazer for your idea.

Note that the latter approach will take more time and effort and has a lower probability of success. It's far easier to satisfy an existing market demand than it is to create a market demand from scratch.

3. Choose your coaching niche -- From the niche ideas that have and existing market, select one to focus your efforts on.