Finding your marketing message
“Niche” as an “artificial” construct is derailing the REAL work we need to do to get clear for our business, to define our message that will DRIVE us to do what MATTERS.
“Niching” without a deeper foundation is just busy work.
Worse than the busy work of implementing some marketing tactics because it gives you the ILLUSION of clarity and sends you down the rabbit hole of building a business around something that does not resonate with you.
Here is the “I AM REALLY PISSED” bit
I was talking to a health coach who is taking a very popular “$3,997-ish business program for holistic practitioner.” (Am I stepping on some toes here?)
(Note – I am quite angry here, and the anger is not a judgment of the action or decision of this coach. I respect where she is at and I think her story illustrates a deeper problem – aka the kool-aid we got fed – that I am seeing over and over again.)
She was three months into the program, and she told me she was struggling with her elevator speech. I asked her – what’s your niche, what you do for them and how do you do it?
(Assuming if she’s been in a “business training” program for a couple of months, she would know the answer before being sent into doing the elevator speech exercise… )
She has a very strong conviction about her mission – which is awesome. But three months into the program and she can’t articulate her unique positioning, what she delivers for her clients and how she deploys her magic sauce??!
Apparently, her coach just told her she was not telling the “benefits” in her elevator speech and leave it at that. Leaving this woman, with a FIRE in her belly and a life-long mission in her heart, feeling incompetent.
Three months in, dude, and you are still skimming the surface?
That, PISSES ME OFF!
How can you craft an “elevator speech” and deliver it confidently and convincingly if you don’t even know the very basics that DRIVES you and your business??!
ASS BACKWARD
Trying to craft an elevator speech (or whatever fancy schmancy name they call it) without understanding the purpose, drive, beliefs, conviction, superpowers etc. behind the person delivering the speech is a losing battle.
Assuming the 10-minute of fame in a group coaching call can hand you a bunch of words you can regurgitate and magically sell something is just wishful thinking.
Are you going to let someone else’s “what something should look like” make you feel incompetent because it doesn’t gel with the way YOU roll?
Can you stop making yourself wrong for being YOU?
She then told me she was going to do a survey with a list of 70 people who, half of which, are not her ideal clients.
WTF
You are asking people who are not even going to pay you for your stuff what you SHOULD be doing – before you are clear on what YOU WANT to be doing?!
Are you really going to let “other people’s worldview” drive your life’s mission??!
Frankly, I don’t think it’s her idea to do a survey. Someone told her to do so without understanding where exactly she is at, and the quality of her list.
In a way, I am glad she doesn’t have an elevator speech yet because at least she is not under the illusion that she has it “figured out” while in reality, the business is built on quick sand.
Screw “Defining Your Niche” as some marketing exercise you do because you paid $1,997 for a training.
Let your niche EMERGE from the message that is already alive and on FIRE in your HEART and GUTS.
When you nail that message, and do the inner work to remove your mindset gunk to create a clean path for it to emerge and for your to CLAIM IT – because it’s no good if you can’t OWN IT and just keep it between you and your cat – you don’t have to force yourself into anyone’s marketing box.
You can make yourself the niche, if this is how it has to go down. Permission granted to toss out the “niche menu.”
Can you please stop letting other people’s idea about marketing derail YOU from your life’s mission?
The first step to clarity is stillness. Go within, muster up the GUTS, CLAIM your big-ass vision.
When you get to the bottom of it and find YOUR passion and vision, you will also nail that CONVICTION from the GUTS that leads to COMMITMENT, which fuels the GUMPTION to “stick with it” and make it happen.
Ultimately, you want to get to that place of ultra-clarity, then formulate it into an identity you can claim and translate it into marketing communication that sells while allowing all of your individuality and personality to shine through.
Article Courtesy of Lioness Magazine
