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There are plenty of techniques out there that coaches can use to reach out to potential clients and work with them to see if there is a fit for your services. We talk about many of those techniques right here in this blog.

One coaching expert has recently produced a powerful and compelling resource that can help to transform your coaching business and make your marketing far more effective. Her name is Hannah McNamara and her book Niche Marketing for Coaches will guide you through the process of discovering who your niche market is and why you want to work with them. At £14.99, it can earn you tens of thousands time it’s value.

No, I’m not kidding, it’s that good.  If there was a school of coaching, this book would be the required textbook. If someone wanted to start up a coaching business from scratch, having never worked as a coach before, this is the only marketing book they’d need.

Bold claims, but you should see this book!

Hanna McNamara will help you choose your niche and then she’ll show you how to position your business so that the niche can’t help but respond. She’ll walk you through numerous marketing techniques that have been time-tested and proven practice-builders.

Hannah is well-qualified to be talking about this stuff. As a coach to coaches she applies her years of experience to answer the question "How can I get more clients?", which is a question that every coach asks all the time.

Hannah’s extremely useful book is a valuable addition to your coaching library. (I know because I’ve added it to my own library). Not only that, but for a limited time you also get thousands of dollars worth of highly practical, business-building bonuses. Twenty-one of them to be exact.

Now, I admit that I’m a little biased. After all, two of the bonuses are bonuses that Contemporary VA (the creators of this very blog) are offering to those who buy the book. You’ll find that there are TONS of other bonuses that are worth having, too – bonuses that people pay hundreds of dollars for. And what’s crazy about Hannah’s offer is that coaches get thousands of dollars of free bonuses for the price of the book.

So visit the site and check out the book. You’ll have a chance to review some sample content, look at the table of contents, and inspect each of the twenty-one bonuses to decide for yourself.

Contemporary VA

@contemporaryva on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

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Fledgling business owners who want to be successful quickly will try to avoid becoming stuck in a niche and will often claim that "everyone" is their customer. But this is inefficient and can become costly. After all, serving "everyone" is impossible.

Let’s look at an example of a (fictional) productivity coach who thinks that everyone is her customer: By only speaking English, she effectively eliminates billions of potential customers. By charging for her services, she effectively eliminates millions more who do not have the money to hire her. By being a productivity coach, she automatically excludes babies, children, and perhaps even retired people who have less of a need for enhanced productivity. By being located in New York, and by working face-to-face with clients, she eliminates potential clients who live outside of the area. So, in this short paragraph, her client base of "everyone" was narrowed down from billions to a few hundred thousand. And if we went on, you’d see that it gets narrowed down even more.

By identifying a niche and focusing on it, you are admitting that you cannot possibly serve everybody so you might as well serve a few people well. This helps you to become an expert in the specific needs and challenges of that niche. For example, perhaps our productivity consultant from above might consider focusing on C-level executives of Fortune 500 companies, whose problems and opportunities for productivity look very different than those of the middle manager or of C-level executives in small and mid-size companies. The amount that she could charge would be different, too.

And, by identifying a niche and focusing on it, your marketing can become more effective. Rather than marketing to "everybody", which requires an expensive broad reaching advertising plan, targeted advertising to the niche will help convert more prospects for less marketing investment. Our productivity coach, hoping to reach C-level executives, might skip certain marketing methods: scratch billboards, television, and radio from the list. She might consider advertising in Forbes and Inc. as two examples of targeted marketing.

By working with a niche, you’ll be able to address the specific needs and challenges of that niche which makes for a better coach/client fit. You’ll address your client’s needs and challenges more effectively. And, because people spend time with people just like themselves, your customers will be more likely to refer your services to their friends… who likely fit your niche. Our productivity coach from above can address the productivity challenges of C-level executives of Fortune 500 companies and can have the confidence that they are rubbing shoulders with other C-level executives of other Fortune 500 companies.

So, how do you determine your niche? Start by looking at your client list.

• Who do you serve most frequently right now?

• Who do you prefer to work with?

• How quickly can you get up to speed on the niche-specific needs, opportunities, and challenges inherent in that niche?

• Are there marketing opportunities that are apparent?

• How do your rates compare with the niche’s payment expectations? (Hint: you’ll often be able to charge more by specializing).

• Does your personality mesh well with your niche market?

• How would you feel about working with that niche market for a decade or more?

Niche markets are the key to successful coaching practices. Find your niche and start reaping the rewards.

Contemporary VA

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But there’s a problem with these helping professions that doesn’t get enough attention. The problem is this: They are businesses but it is almost taboo to call them businesses. Businesses generate leads and convert prospects into customers and they earn revenue and try to earn a profit. Helping professions, though, don’t like to be associated with those business / sales / marketing terms because it seems less helpful. In this blog, we refer to these business terms without apology because we believe that helping professions and business are NOT diametrically opposed.

With that in mind, we now turn our attention to an important business topic that is bypassed in the coaching profession: metrics.

Metrics are measurements. In other businesses, there might be a metric measuring inventory turnover or profitability or prospect-to-customer conversion rate. But these are rarely measured in coaching because of the anti-business taboo. Yet, your job could be so much easier if you spend some time thinking about your metrics.

With so little attention focused on metric in coaching, it is hard to determine what to measure. After all, how do you measure a customer’s success at overcoming their fears or dealing with their obstacles?

You may not be able to measure those but you can measure other things:

• You can measure the number of leads you get from your website

• You can measure the number of people who agree to a free initial consultation

• You can measure the number of people who have a free initial consultation who go on to sign up for a series of sessions with you.

• You can measure what is the number of sessions people have with you

• You can measure how much revenue you earn per person over their lifetimeYou can measure your profitability each month

• You can measure your profitability each month

What is your first reaction at reading this? Does the thought of measuring these things repel you? It’s possible that some coaches might even be offended by the thought.

On the other hand, the coaching profession is like every other business – it needs to earn a profit to stay in business and by paying attention to these numbers, you can help more people and increase your likelihood of staying in business. You don’t have to focus on the numbers or obsess about how to earn more per-client profitability, but thinking about the metrics listed above can help to know how your business is running.

Contemporary VA

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