Sustainable Niching for Online Service Providers & Practitioners: How to Niche Without Limiting Your Audience & Business

You know you need a niche, but do you know what a niche actually is?

Spoiler: your niche is not a topic, a demographic, and it’s also not ‘you.’

So what is it? And how do you find your niche as an online service provider, coach, practitioner, or creator? Let’s talk about it!

Niching for Digital-first Service Providers & Practitioners

As I mentioned, your niche is not a topic, demographic, nor is it ‘you.’ In fact, the topics you talk about in your marketing, the demographics of the audience you serve, and the parts of your genius and expertise that you bring to your business are all determined—in part!—by your niche.

It’s: know your niche → then use that to find marketing topics, identify key audience demographics, and decide how to highlight your genius.

Not: “I can only talk about these topics,” or “I can only speak to [specific audience, e.g. coaches, single parents, etc.],” or “I can just follow my whims and hope people keep following along because it’s me doing it.”

(Even the most successful influencers who seem to be selling essentially themselves still have a niche that isn’t just “them.”)

As an online business owner, your niche ultimately is the result or transformation of your work. Once you’ve found your niche, you’ll then use it to determine pretty much everything else you do across your business. Which brings me to…

Why Niche Your Online Business

A lot of people in the online business world will say things like, “You need a niche so that you can get clients!” While that’s true, to a degree, it’s also way overly simplistic.

The reality is, despite what people might say in their ads, knowing your niche isn’t going to fill your coaching roster, sell out your course, or make you a million dollars (or even doll hairs). 

Your niche will however allow you to make strategic decisions across the rest of your business so that you can achieve any metric of ‘success’ you choose to pursue.

The way I explain it to my clients: there are three pieces of “contextual information” that allow you to reliably deliver results through your work and bring a steady stream of clients into your (now rave-worthy) offers. These three pieces of contextual information are:

1. Your goals
2. Your business model
3. Your niche

Together, these three things define the direction of your business. Your goals serve as your North Star, or, the thing that you are specifically working toward in everything that you do in your business. Your business model and your niche serve as the “guardrails” keeping you on the path to achieving your goals.

Have you ever gone bowling and decided to put the “bumpers” up, to prevent the bowling ball from falling in the gutters? Your niche and business model are the “bumpers” that keep your bowling ball of a business moving in the right direction so that you can hit your chosen target.

How does your niche serve as a “guardrail”? By keeping you focused on what you’re actually doing—or need to be doing—in your business. When you know what the result or transformation of your work is—aka you know your niche—you can then answer questions like:

• “Who is a Right Fit to achieve this transformation/result/outcome?”
• “How can I facilitate this transformation/result/outcome, in full or in part, for or with my Right Fit client?”
• “What language do I need to use to attract Right Fit clients into my right-for-them work?”
• “What do I need to talk about in my marketing, my website copy, my conversations, etc. in order to let my Right Fit prospective clients know that I am offering the solution that they’re looking for?”

The answers to all of these questions (and more) are crucial, foundational pieces of information that, without a niche, you’re left guessing on. If you don’t know what the actual intended result, transformation, or outcome of your work is, you can’t know who is a Right Fit for it. You can’t know what types or styles of offers to create. You can’t know any number of details that you absolutely have to know in order to have a thriving, successful business.

So, yeah, knowing your niche is important. But it’s also only a first step.

“What about differentiation? Isn’t your niche supposed to help you ‘stand out in a crowded market’?”

I hate to break it to you Actually, I’m really glad to share this with you because more business owners need to understand this: your niche is only the preliminary step when it comes to differentiating your business. Knowing your niche alone is not going to suddenly make you “stand out from a sea of sameness” or “position you as an expert/authority in your industry.” 

Said more simply: Your niche is the starting point. Differentiation comes from what you build on top of it.

Once you know your niche, you’ll then use that to make necessary decisions about the very foundations of your business. From there, differentiation happens in a few ‘layers.’

First, you differentiate your business and work from a crowded market by getting clear on who your true Right Fit client is and then building everything in your business to speak exclusively to them. This differentiates you from others who are solving similar problems through their work as you are, because most of your competitors are not speaking to a true Right Fit client. You will be. Which means that when your Right Fit client is scrolling through whatever social media platform you’re on, or reading emails in their inbox, or listening to podcast episodes—or however you choose to connect with your people—they’re going to immediately be drawn in by what you’re saying, often thinking to themselves, “OMG it’s like [YOUR NAME] is speaking directly to me!!”

Never underestimate the power of actually knowing and being able to speak directly to your true Right Fit client (which, remember, goes well beyond knowing your ideal client or having a ‘persona’).

From there, you’ll be able to differentiate yourself via the results you deliver to your clients through your work. This is yet another often overlooked layer of differentiation, but I’d argue that in a business that’s built to last, this is the most important, because the longer you’re in business—especially as a micro-business owner and/or solo-preneur—the more your reputation matters and will follow you. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, being able to reliably deliver results to your clients goes well beyond simply having legitimate expertise or experience. It’s about creating a cohesive ecosystem in which you’re only making promises which you can reliably follow through on, you’re creating offers that are set up to reliably facilitate predictable results, and you’re exclusively attracting Right Fit people into offers that are right-for-them. Here at WholeCo, we call this AOM Alignment™ (Audience-Offer-Messaging Alignment). 

When you reliably deliver results to your clients, this naturally differentiates you from the crowd and does so in compounding ways with bigger results the longer you’re in business. The longer you’re in business, the more clients you’ll have had who loved working with you and the results they achieved, and the more you’ll have a reputation as someone who delivers on what they say they will. Which means the next time someone posts in an online forum asking for recommendations on people who do the work that you do, your name is more likely to be dropped alongside a rave review—which is often more than many others in your industry can say.

There are several other layers of differentiation, but the one I recommend my clients save for last is actual, explicit differentiation work. What I mean by this is: you sitting down, either with yourself or someone like a brand strategist, and deciding, what is it that makes my business different? There are several strategies for answering this question, though the one I personally favor is called Category Design. 

The reason I recommend my clients save this explicit inquiry into differentiation for last is because you can’t possibly know the legitimate answer to this question, nor any of its sub-questions, until you know how to speak exclusively to your Right Fit client and have reliably delivered results to many of them. True, explicitly decided differentiation is something that requires a bit of an organic, exploratory process—often sped up by the mirroring that a brilliant brand strategist can do—and, in order to have ‘staying power,’ requires that the previous layers of differentiation are already working.

So, does your niche make you ‘stand out in a crowded market’? I mean…it provides the context from which you can do so? But again: your niche, on its own, is not responsible for differentiating your business.

Ok, the one caveat to this is that a very legitimate approach to differentiation—beyond my fave, Category Design—is to find a hyper-specific niche. Think: “I make model airplanes for left-handed people” level of specificity. Speaking of, I was just watching one of those “how it’s made” videos the other day, and it showed this machine that cuts logs into firewood. THAT’S a hyper-specific niche: “I make machines to cut logs into firewood.” Especially considering these gigantic machines literally cannot be used for anything else.

Hyper-specific niches—like creating firewood-cutting machines—can work, but they severely limit your audience. For most online business owners, this approach is neither practical nor sustainable. (I mean, how many businesses are there who make enough firewood to sell that they want one of these several hundred thousand dollar firewood cutting machines?)

Not only does hyper-specific niching limit your audience size, it also typically only really works if you’re literally the ‘only’ in that niche. Or at least, the only option available within a certain location or something of that sort. Most online business owners will not benefit from a hyper-specific niche. And trying to pigeonhole yourself into one will almost always leave you feeling exhausted, frustrated, and severely stifled.

All that to say: instead of relying on your niche to do the heavy lifting, focus on these layers of differentiation. Start by defining your Right Fit client and crafting messaging that speaks directly to them. Become really freaking good at delivering on your promises. Continue building from there, and watch as your business naturally stands out. When you get to a point where these initial layers of differentiation are already working, now you can begin an explicit investigation into your brand differentiation.

How to Find Your Niche

We’re all (hopefully) now in agreement on what a niche is, what it does (and doesn’t do), and that you do, indeed, need a niche. The great news is that finding your niche from here is actually relatively simple!

Step 1: Brainstorm the outcomes of your work.

The very first step you want to take when finding your niche as an online business owner is to list out all of the outcomes or results that your work supports your clients to create or achieve. Try to get specific, here, if possible, as this will help you in your next step. For example, instead of saying, ‘I help people feel better,’ think about specifics, like, ‘I help clients manage stress, gain energy, or find joy in their daily routines.’ 

If this is too challenging or your brain is going blank—”I don’t know what I help my clients achieve!”—back up a step further and write down what problems your clients are currently facing that you feel equipped to help them solve or overcome. Then, for each of those problems, ask yourself: “If I worked with the client experiencing this problem, what outcome or result could they reasonably expect to experience?”

Remember that regardless of which path you take to this first step, your answers do not need to ‘sound good.’ You aren’t creating messaging right now, you’re literally just brainstorming. As long as you understand what you’re saying, that’s all that really matters at this stage.

Step 2: Find the “umbrella” or overarching category.

Once you feel solid in your brainstorming or like you’ve found the majority of the types of results you facilitate through your work, now it’s time to figure out what they all have in common. I like to think of this as an “umbrella” that they all—or most of them—fit within. Basically: what is the core or overarching transformation, outcome, or result of your work? You want to land on one answer (not a gazillion with lots of commas in between).

Note that your answer here might be relatively broad and/or unspecific. It could be something like, “helping clients find confidence in their careers” or “supporting people to live healthier lives.” In my case here at WholeCo, my niche is building Sustainable Success in business. Having a “broad” niche is entirely ok, and it’s even to be expected. Remember: your niche is part of how you define the direction of your business. Specificity, differentiation, all of that is added in later in various “layers.”

Step 3: Celebrate! You just found your niche.

I know, I know, you might be thinking, “Wait…that’s it?” And, yeah, it is. You now know your niche. Except remember: your niche is just the first step. If you want to achieve any further results in your business—like bringing clients in, or differentiating your business, or being able to charge higher price points, etc.—you need to take the next steps.

Before you take those next steps, however, I need you to remember one thing! You are allowed to continue workshopping, nuancing, refining, and/or editing your understanding of your niche. Obviously be discerning about at which point continuing to do so is a resistance pattern, holding you back from other things you need to do in your business, but editing and adjusting or even outright pivoting are absolutely allowed. You’re not “stuck” with a niche just because you decided that’s what it was today. In fact, you will continue refining your understanding of your niche as time goes on.

“But don’t I need to have an ‘I help’ statement or put my niche into some form of a sentence that sounds good?”

Here’s the thing: a lot of people will sell you on needing a specific, well-crafted sentence to be able to explain to other people, “this is what my niche is!” And sure, you can create one of these sentences if you want. But creating an effective sentence that encapsulates what your niche truly is—here at WholeCo, we call this your Niche Statement—requires that you’ve taken the next steps, first. Let’s look at what those next steps are.

Next Steps After Finding Your Niche

After you’ve found your niche, you can now move into building AOM Alignment. As a reminder, AOM Alignment is how you reliably facilitate results for or with your clients—and reap the rave reviews, referrals, and repeat sign-ups that come with. 

You start with your audience. “Who is a Right Fit to achieve this transformation, result, and/or outcome?”

Then you move into designing your offers. “How can I facilitate this transformation, result, or outcome, in full or in part, for or with my Right Fit client?”

Then you create messaging. “What language do I need to use to attract Right Fit, ready-to-buy clients into my right-for-them work?”

From there, you can begin building your Demand Generation System to bring a steady stream of clients into each of your offerings.

And this is how your niche provides the context for all of the things that ultimately bring you clients, make you money, or establish your reputation in your industry. 

Signs You’ve Found an Effective, Sustainable Niche

One thing many online business owners forget is that, when you’re running a micro-business—which the Small Business Administration in the US defines as an enterprise having less than 10 employees, including the owner—your niche will only be effective and sustainable if you actually enjoy working within that niche. AKA if you actually enjoy facilitating that result, transformation, or outcome. Of course, how you facilitate that transformation, result, or outcome gets to look wildly different from business owner to business owner. But you still have to feel passionate enough about that transformation and committed enough to facilitating it that you’re willing to build and run an entire business dedicated to it.

That’s why enjoyment is the first indicator of having an effective, sustainable niche. If you are passionate about and enjoy delivering results in that niche, you’ll know you’re on the right track. Does that mean that you always love every single part of delivering your work within that niche? No! Of course not! But you have to be passionate enough about it that the parts you don’t enjoy are still worth doing so that you can continue to do your work in that niche.

Other indicators that you’ve found an effective, sustainable niche as a service provider, consultant, coach, or creator:

• You’re able to clearly identify who is and isn’t best-positioned to succeed with your unique approach to facilitating this transformation, result, or outcome.
• You’re able to create an offer or offer suite that reliably delivers results that fall within the umbrella of this niche.
• You’re able to, with relative ease, know what to talk about and/or reference throughout your messaging, content, and copy.
• Eventually, your niche is contributing to your ability to attract a steady stream of clients into each of your offerings.

An Invitation to Go Deeper

Finding your niche is only one step in the process of building a truly sustainable business. Because while your niche provides the direction for the work you’re doing, you still have to take the steps to bring it to life through your audience, offers, messaging, and more. Not only that, but you need to be able to use your audience, offers, and messaging to create layers of differentiation that help your work and your business stand out from the crowd and signal to your Right Fit clients that you have the exact solution they’ve been looking for.

Want to learn how to do all of that and more?

Join me for our 6-week cohort of WholeCo’s most popular course, The Aligned Niche! 

The Aligned Niche is a step-by-step course where you will learn to clearly express who you help, what you do, and why it’s valuable so that you can confidently showcase what makes you and your work unique everywhere that you’re marketing and selling your stuff.

In this 6-week live cohort, I’ll walk you step-by-step through the process of:

• Choosing your niche based on the problem you solve, rather than a—often limiting—list of demographics (age, gender, profession, etc.), so that you can call in clients who are a dream to support with a heck of a lot more clarity and ease.
• Naming and claiming what makes your work unique so you can exit the “competition,” marketing and selling your work with confidence and authenticity.
• Identifying what your specific business needs (and what you can release) so that you can simplify your strategies, staying focused on your biggest priorities.
• Intentionally cultivating credibility in your communities with plenty of “receipts”—aka the rave reviews, referrals, and repeat sign ups—positioning you as a trustworthy voice in your industry.

We get started in April, which means that The Aligned Niche: LIVE is on early early bird sale right now through February 28, 2025! Save $250 when you get in now at this ultra special rate.

SIGN UP FOR THE ALIGNED NICHE: LIVE →

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