I'd like to preface this article by reminding you that you have living intuitive wisdom in you. "Should" does not apply to everyone, hence the asterisk. I personally like to rely on my intuition to lead me through life as a general rule. And sometimes my intuition pulls me away from what would be considered rational or the "norm" and towards another road less traveled. This is an article about the "norm", so be forewarned.
When it's not a good idea to find a niche
For the most part, finding a niche is helpful. There are several reasons for this. But I'd first like to start out a situation where it's not helpful.
If you already have a steady stream of clients, and you want to branch out, that's when it may not be a good idea to find a niche. But if you already have a steady stream of clients, the likelihood of you actually reading this article is pretty slim. Most likely you're just starting out and looking to break into the field.
Why Niching is a good idea.
1. Google will see you as an expert in a particular field
In terms of people organically finding your content (through the internet), the more specific you get, the less competition there is. Just as an example, pretend you were a shampoo company. How hard it would be to get on the front page of google for a search for "shampoo"? Whether you like it or not, you're competing with multi-million dollar companies most likely.
In the United Kingdom alone, there are between 10,000 to 100,000 shampoo searches per month. If you're starting out selling your shampoo, you probably don't need that many sales.
Now, let's say instead of selling shampoo, you sell organic shampoo. There are significantly less searches for "organic shampoo". So if you present yourself as someone who sells organic shampoo, you get a slightly higher likelihood of being noticed because google will understand you're more relevant.
Still, organic shampoo is pretty broad and stiff with competition.
If you were to make that more specific, for example, "organic coconut shampoo", and Google sees that your entire website is around this perfect formula for organic coconut shampoo, it's much more likely that in time you'll rise closer to that point where people can reach you organically.
While it's true that very few people will be searching for "organic coconut shampoo", the fact of the matter is people are. And so you can actually reach those people.
The same is true across all industries. Even though it may seem like you're limiting yourself, you're not. It's quite the opposite.
2. You don't have to make your content resonate with everyone
This is one thing I really struggled with when I first started by coaching business. I wanted to phrase things in a way that would rule nobody out. So every time I wrote something, I would judge from every angle possible, making sure that nobody would find it too spiritual, or too intellectual, or too this or that.
When you have a niche, you understand how those people think. When you understand how those people think, you don't have to worry about other people thinking it's stupid or not relevant to them - because they're not the people you're trying to reach!
It's simple, but it allows you to get out of the self-judgmental headspace when it comes to putting yourself online. You only have to worry about what one person thinks.
If you don't have a niche, and you're trying to appeal to everyone, the moment someone says, "this is dumb and doesn't apply to me," you might take that personally because they are someone you're trying to serve and so their opinion matters.
There is actually, counter-intuitively, huge freedom in ruling people out. Their opinions really don't matter. If your niche is spiritual people, for example, you can use spiritual terminology. If that doesn't resonate with 90% of the population, and they think it's stupid, that's totally fine! They don't represent the people you're trying to sell to.
3. It'll resonate deeply with people who want it.
Here's the flip side of the above, which is even more awesome. The people who you're speaking to will really resonate with it. They'll feel that it really applies to them - because it does!
When you are able to use language in such a way where you don't need to worry about people that don't matter, you can use it in a way that specifically hits home with people that do matter.
People will begin to say, "hey, this is for me!" And they'll feel like they matter. That's what we want. Because when people feel that something is relevant to them, they're much more willing to connect, listen, and eventually have their lives transformed for the better.
So how do you find your niche? In my experience guiding people through this process, a lot of people have raved about using this heart-centered approach to finding your niche.
