WHY YOU NEED A NICHE – ANH

In this episode in the Blissful Biz podcast I’m talking about the need to possibly narrow your niche and all of the questions that go along with that.

I know it’s at the forefront of many yoga teachers minds when it comes to building their business. At the same time, niching seems to be quite a controversial topic especially in the yoga world. Deciding on a niche seems to be all about marketing, and selling, and less about helping people.

I don’t agree with that. Instead I’m going to share why and how you and your clients can benefit from your niching down.

A niche is a segment of your potential customers. For example, instead of offering all kind of yoga classes to everyone in your town, your niche could be pre-natal yoga to women who are pregnant. Here the style of yoga is your niche, which is a common approach to niching down.

If you’re struggling with this because you want to do everything, you’re not alone. I know it‘s tough to pick one topic and it might feel like putting yourself in a box. A lot people don’t want to pick a niche because of this.

But think of it like this: if you wanted to learn advanced arm balances, would you go to a yoga for beginners’ class in your local gym? No, you would look for a specialized class or workshop on arm balances.

The reality here is, your potential clients have different levels of experience as well as different ages, genders and backgrounds.

Carving out a specific offering to meet the specific needs of a specific type of student can be highly beneficial for your business.

People have specific problems and they are looking for experts, or leaders, who can help them with that.

Why you should narrow your niche

#1 You make it easier for the RIGHT people to find you and to fall in love with your offerings.

And here I also mean Google! Niching down is especially important in the online world, Google loves blogs or websites that are experts on a specific topic and will direct more traffic to it than to a website that covers all kind of content, because people will spend more time on it.

#2 You begin to stand out as an expert or leader in your topic.

For example, instead of listing all the possible benefits that a yoga practice can have on your website, which we all know is a lot, narrow it down to the biggest problem your audience has.

It could be that you are teaching in a small town, mostly to middle-aged folks, who have a lot of back problems.

So you focus on that. You offer workshops, yoga for back problems. You create blog posts about this. You maybe have a free video or a PDF with some tips that people can download.

You will still do other things, teach other classes, but you become the expert in your community for yoga for back problems.

Again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t teach any other classes. It just means that you have a focus, and in the best case your focus is aligned with what your audience needs, and what you are passionate about.

What makes a great yoga teacher niche?

When you hear of a niche for yoga teachers, you might think about “prenatal yoga” or “ashtanga yoga”. A specific teaching style that defines your niche.

The problem for many is, this can feel restricting, because most yoga teachers teach more than one style.

The good news is, a niche can be much more – it can be the way you teach, demographic, a language, an age-group, expertise…

Here are more ideas how to pick a niche:

Pick a topic, for example nutrition, meditation, or pranayama.

Pick a yoga style, for example Hot Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, Yin Yoga

Combine two topics, for example Yoga & Surfing, Yoga for Cancer Patients

Pick a demographic, for example yoga for men, yoga for millennials, yoga for seniors

And finally, your niche can be your personal style, for example you have a tough love attitude, or your classes are more boot camp, or you have a scientific background and infuse your classes with that.

This is more difficult to narrow down, but it’s so worth it! Try not to overthink it but trust your intuition. Go with what feels good.

How to find a niche when you’re multi-passionate

If you feel like there are too many things you are passionate about, it’s okay to start with more than one topic and narrow it down over time.

Clarity comes with action.

Experience. Try different things. When you get bigger and your business is more established, it will be more challenging to switch things up.

But also, you don’t need to try to turn everything you are interested in into a business – you don’t have to monetize everything you do.

You can have hobbies! Multiple interests! Not everything needs to go on your website and be shared with the world.