Anti-Niche Niching for Therapists

Most of my work supporting therapists and healers is helping those who already have a clear speciality, or want to start to specialise, or combine their outside-of-therapy skills with their therapy and healing in a brand new way.

But this doesn’t apply to everyone.
There are therapists and healers who LOVE having a general practice, helping many different people with many different things, and yet they are told that they have to niche down.

Let me speak to that.

Traditionally, the reasons business coaches ‘push’ for a niche is that it makes the marketing soooo much easier if you have a message that speaks directly to the person who you love to serve most.

A message like ‘I do hypnotherapy and I can help everyone with everything’ (I’m exaggerating here, of course), is not going to land with many people at all.

Instead you have a message where people who need you go ‘OMG, she’s talking to me!’ or ‘This is finally the thing/person I’ve been looking for’.

Someone struggling with a cocaine issue is far more likely to sign up with someone who specialises in this, than someone who also helps with phobias, IBS, public speaking etc.

They want to know that their therapist really understands their specific situation, and that comes from speaking their language.

They don’t know how amazing some modalities are for helping a wide range of people and issues – and why would they?

HOWEVER (and this is a big however), there are *other* ways of putting across a message that speaks to people directly, even when you have, and want to have, a general practice.

WAY 1:

Firstly, there’s the concept that I call your Umbrella Niche.

This is *not* about choosing a demographic, or choosing a specific issue to work with. It is at another level.

Look at all the clients you’ve loved working with the most. What do they have in common?

Then look at all the clients you’ve disliked working with the most. What do they have in common?

You may begin to see that there is some kind of umbrella niche that sits above all the demographic and specific issue stuff we are ‘supposed’ to focus on.

WAY 2:

Next, Look at your pre-therapy/healing work and career and skills, or other interests.

How can you combine these with your modality to create a message that shows your uniqueness (and we all are unique, aren’t we?).

For example, I was working in the City when I first qualified, and I’d been working in Investment Banking for many years.

Even before I specialised in drug use and addiction, I used the City in my messaging.

I spoke to ‘City Professionals’ about the kind of pressures they are under, I understood the sorts of issues that came up in that kind of environment, and when I narrowed my message this way, my credibility with my City clients went through the roof.

They knew I understood them, and it still allowed me to work with many types of issue (and I still ended up working with plenty of non-City professionals 🙂)

They still felt that I was speaking to them directly and that’s what made the difference.

So the good news is that you don’t need a demographic. You don’t need a single issue you work with.

WAY 3:

Another one is to have theme months.

Focus on one specific thing for a month or two and make a feature out of it.

Speak to that issue, or that experience for the entire period month, and those people who need your help with this will feel spoken to directly.

You could have your current theme featured on your website, and do special free resources and content all about it.

WAY 4:

Have a signature system.

A way of working that is unique to you, and that does not mean abandoning the modality you have trained in, you can completely do this *and* have a signature system.

I could talk for hours on this subject alone!

AND THERE ARE MORE WAYS…

I want to thank the therapist who brought this up recently, because it’s something that so many therapists & healers experience.
And when they’ve done the work and still decide they don’t want to specialise, then there really are other options

This is one of the reasons that traditional marketing wisdom doesn’t always apply to therapists & healers, and also (if you haven’t already guessed), one of the reasons I’m so against the traditional ‘Ideal Client Avatar’ exercises (not in principle, though), even though in my programmes I do have a big focus on aligning with your clients – I just don’t do it that way!

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