Do you really need to niche? (Target audience vs. Ideal client vs. Niche)

There's so much confusion around these three concepts: target audience, ideal client and niche. Sometimes, these are even used interchangeably—but they're really soooo different! In today's episode, I'm sharing some really clear definitions about each of these three terms and how you can better identify these in your business.

– Why niching is not so much about *who* you work with but the solution you offer for the problem someone has.
– Why your target audience is so much more than just the demographics of the people you work with.
– How defining your ideal client avatar can help you to focus your content, messaging and your offers.
– The benefits of niching to give your business more credibility and visibility.

 

 

Today, I'm talking all about target audience, ideal client, and niche. I've realized that there's a lot of talking about these three different things and using those words interchangeably.

And you know what? I have realised that so many people think that niching is simply defining your target audience, which is not. 

This episode, I'm going to look at the difference between those three things. The difference between your target audience, your niche, and your ideal client. And then I'm going to answer a very common question which is, do I need to niche down?

 

Niche.

Most people define their niche by who they work with. For example. ─ I'm a business coach for heart centered entrepreneurs, or I'm a life coach for spiritual women. And that can work, but more often than not, when I see somebody niching, they are niching for the sake of niching. They're niching because somebody told them you have to pick a niche rather than because it's going to serve their business. And then sometimes when you niche down and you use terms like heart-centered entrepreneurs, it can actually leave people scratching their heads.

Better off niching in a slightly different way. You might be better off niching by the problem that you solve or the solution that you deliver. For example, you might be a business coach that specialises in getting people to their first 10, 000 a month or an online business strategist that helps you build an online business that's profitable when you're offline. That's what I do. 

 

Target audience.

Often when I ask somebody who their ideal client is, the answer they give me is something like, well, they are age 25 to 45 and live in Sydney and have kids and they are either in a corporate job or they run a business that I hear that over and over again. That's not an ideal client. That is an example of a target audience. 

Okay, so your target audience is like the segment of the population who, within that segment, there is going to be people who are like your ideal client. It is the larger audience that you are targeting when you are trying to get visible.

So, for example, if you were running Facebook ads, you'd want to target an audience similar to your target audience. Not everyone in your target audience is going to be your ideal client. They're not all going to be right for what you sell, but the idea is that within your target audience, there will be quite a few people who are the right fit. So then that brings me to the third one. 

 

Ideal client.

This is often referred to as an avatar. Your ideal client avatar. ─ And this is the one person, made up or real, who personifies your dream client.

The idea with defining your avatar isn't that you are limiting who you work with. It's about creating focus. It's about knowing whenever you're creating a piece of content, whenever you are writing copy, whenever you are creating a new offer, whenever you're writing out messaging for your offers, you're focusing it on this one dream.

Not saying no to everybody who isn't this dream person, but it's about creating focus, right? Whereas niching, you would potentially be saying no to people who do not fit within that niche. 

Now, the idea with the focus is that you don't then have to try and talk to a hundred different people with a hundred different problems at once. You're speaking to the one person with the one problem, knowing that there are going to be other people within your target audience who have that same problem who are also going to resonate with that messaging. But you're not trying to talk to everybody in one go and you're making it less, you know, by trying to talk to everybody in one go, it becomes really confusing. It can become really overwhelming. It can lead to people asking, is this for me?

It also means you can dive deeper into your ideal clients, pain points, frustrations, their struggles. You can get into their heads. You can uncover what they believe and that makes it so much easier than to create content that meets them where they are at and that moves them towards buying from you rather than trying to meet your entire target audience where they are at.

 

Do you have to niche?

A lot of people out there will tell you that. Yes, you absolutely have to niche if you want to have a successful online business. I don't believe you have to do anything you don't want to in your business.

After all, you get to make the rules. If you do not want to niche down, you don't have to niche down. But the great thing about niching down is that. Firstly, it's not permanent but the other great thing about niching down is it doesn't have to be what you think niching down is, right? So you can change all of these things. And in my own business, I have niched and pivoted and un-niched a few times. And sometimes these have been really subtle shifts in messaging. Other times they've been completely big pivots where I've fired clients and started from scratch and retired all of my offers and started again.

And no, it's not limiting your business. I know this is such a common misconception about niching is that by picking a narrow niche, you are limiting the amount of people you can work with. But in reality, When you're starting out, you are going to reach such a small number of those people anyway. You're not even going to get close to tapping out that entire niche. And once you have grown your business to that point where there are no more potential customers in that market, then that is maybe when your niche is limiting. And that's a sign that you can start to un-niche. But when you're starting out, the more specific your niche, the easier it's going to be to become known as the go to person, to become known as the expert in that particular area. 

 

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