The number one priority for any life coach is to provide the best possible service to their clients. But for that to happen, coaches must have a way to consistently attract clients in the first place.
Starting a coaching business is not just about being good at what you do. It’s just as much about becoming more visible to your ideal clients, building authority in your field, and finding the methods that help you fill up your schedule.
And that’s why a lot of the success you can achieve will come down to the life coach marketing strategies you use and how successful you are at making them work. The most successful life coaches have multiple effective methods for generating leads at once, ensuring that even if one of them dries up, there are others they can fall back on.
To help you reach your audience and get your message out there, let’s explore nine of the most crucial life coach marketing ideas you should consider.
Define Your Target Audience
Marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services to an audience of prospective buyers. And that means that the audience you’re promoting to must actually be interested in what you have to offer.
So, before pursuing specific methods for growing your life coaching business, you will need to perform in-depth research of your audience, figuring out exactly who they are, what their needs are, and where you can find them.
But how can you tackle such a massive task?
Well, the first step is to look at your current clients. If you’ve worked with and helped people already, then you have a pretty good starting point for figuring out who you want to target.
Look at the clients that:
- You were able to help the most
- Were the most enjoyable to work with
- Produced the best financial outcomes for your business
Once you identify the group of people that fit these criteria, you need to try and learn as much as possible about them. However, making assumptions won’t cut it.
If you really want to gain valuable insights, you’ll need to take a more personal approach and schedule interviews where you ask people what drew them to you, what they liked, what’s important to them, and how they could be approached in the future.
Having that information will allow you to zero in on the most critical aspects of your business and develop a life coaching marketing plan focused on attracting the people you can help the most.
Create an Appealing Coaching Program or Package
Many life coaches get started offering one-on-one consultations to clients. But while that’s a great way to hone your craft and learn more about your audience, it can be limited in terms of how much you can grow your business.
Eventually, coaches that want to expand will need to consider group coaching, as that’s the only way to serve more people at once, increase visibility, and become a thought leader in your industry.
But for that to happen, you need to be strategic and develop a comprehensive coaching program or package that you can then offer through your life coach marketing efforts.
You’ll need to start by picking the right group coaching framework based on how many people you want to work with, how much you can automate, and how many people have already graduated from being your clients.
Once you have a packaged service you can leverage, running effective marketing campaigns will become more manageable. You will be able to target the right people, highlight the unique benefits you can offer, and not be worried about becoming overbooked nearly as much as with one-on-one coaching.
Free Coaching Call
As a life coach, you’ve probably heard enough warnings about “giving away stuff for free” and “valuing your time.” However, while there is truth in that some coaches are afraid to charge what they’re worth for the time they spend, that doesn’t mean you can’t leverage giving away something for free into bigger opportunities down the line.
A free coaching call might seem like a waste of time, but it doesn’t just serve the client. You also get the opportunity to evaluate whether the client is a good fit and if you can actually help them. Instead of being saddled with a commitment that might not be ideal, you can filter out non-ideal candidates while also building up your reputation.
And the best part is, free coaching calls are an incredibly powerful life coach marketing tool. Leading with a free consultation removes almost all of the risk for the client, allowing them to get to know you and your methods without having to invest money.
And you get the opportunity to familiarize yourself with their situation while also showcasing your knowledge, which will help you increase the perceived value of your services and allow you to justify higher prices.
Develop a Remarkable Brand
Your coaching business is only as strong as its brand. And since you’re the person behind the business, it’s your personal brand that needs to shine through if you want people to trust your expertise, believe your claims, and line up to sign up for your courses.
But how can you develop a brand that resonates with your audience and with what you want to represent?
Well, the best approach is to simply be authentic. Base your brand on who you really are and what you believe in, and you won’t have to worry about maintaining a public persona; you can just be yourself.
However, you should emphasize the expertise and unique experiences that have made you the life coach you are today. People love strong personalities in the coaching world, but they also care about the credentials.
Based on your credentials and the people you want to work with, you should also try to narrow down your niche, find the focus areas you want to work with, and develop a brand that’s associated with them.
Once you do have a remarkable brand, you must make sure that you maintain brand consistency throughout your communications, marketing, and the course itself. That will help reinforce the values you represent and will form stronger associations about you within your audience.
Leverage Social Media
There are almost 4 billion active social media users in the world. And that number is increasing every year. So whether you like it or not, tapping into that massive audience of prospective clients is one of the best digital marketing avenues for life coaches.
That’s especially true when you think about how many additional benefits social media marketing offers. You get to showcase your expertise, encourage engagement of prospective clients, and expand your audience by taking advantage of the organic reach that social media platforms can offer.
Here are a few ways you can make the most out of social media marketing for coaches:
- Join relevant Facebook groups. Facebook is a goldmine for showing your expertise and connecting with prospective clients in the process. By sharing helpful tips and answering questions, you can get people to come to you for answers and turn those requests into paid coaching arrangements.
- Create a Facebook group. After you become an established expert in a few groups, you can leverage your authority into your own Facebook group, where you’ll have complete control of the content and can create a loyal community of followers.
- Instagram activity. Instagram might not be the first platform you consider, but it can be great for creating impactful content that showcases your coaching brand. You can also use IG for prospecting, reaching out to prospective clients, and promoting your services.
- Twitter marketing. When trying to attract clients, you need to adopt a multi-touch approach, and Twitter is a great place to stay in touch with people in your circle. You can also use the platform to provide valuable tidbits of information that positions you as an authority.
- Pinterest marketing. Pinterest can be a powerful platform for boosting your program attendance. The way it’s designed, you can leverage the topics your audience cares about and post about them on the platform, gaining instant traffic to your articles where you can guide people into your funnel.
- LinkedIn activity. Most coaches know that they should be on LinkedIn, but few take full advantage of what it has to offer. You should focus on creating an appealing and informative profile that showcases what you do and what you were able to achieve. You should also create high-quality content and participate in relevant groups.
- YouTube marketing. Video content is taking over the online marketing world. More and more people prefer to consume content through videos, so as a life coach, you must adapt and start creating engaging videos that will help you build a following on YouTube.
Media Exposure
Help a Reporter Out (or HARO) is a free service connecting various experts with journalists who need input for writing their stories. It creates a win-win situation where the journalists can get quotes and insights from reputable sources while also getting the experts free publicity they can use to increase visibility and grow their personal brand.
Because of how the service works, it’s an ideal way to market yourself as a life coach. It’s low effort, doesn’t take much time, and can result in numerous opportunities to be featured in publications with millions of readers.
Simply sign up for the HARO newsletter and look through the opportunities they send. Once you see something that you’re a good fit for, reach out and offer your input on the subject. Getting visibility on prominent publications can be a huge stepping stone towards establishing a group coaching business and attracting a broader range of clients.
Networking & Events
Networking should be one of the top priorities when setting up your life coach marketing strategy. Since coaching relies so much on the human element, you need to actively pursue opportunities to create connections, develop relationships, and expand your reach through personal interactions.
But at the same time, you need to be very selective about the types of events you pursue, carefully evaluating whether the events you’re considering will be attended by your target audience or by people who can help grow your coaching business.
You should also develop your networking skills, learning to present a compelling pitch quickly and to balance being informative without selling your services too blatantly.
Once you become a more prominent figure, you should seek out speaking opportunities at events, as that’s the best way to position yourself as an authority and make people actively seek you out.
When you establish connections, make sure to create a process for following up, setting up reminders in your coach calendar to stay in touch, and nurture the prospective clients towards enrolling in your course.
Leverage Other People’s Audiences
If you want to sustain the growth of your coaching business, you must always be on the lookout for expanding your reach into new markets or new audiences. And sometimes, you’ll need to leverage other people’s audiences if you want to get in front of new people that aren’t exposed to your messages yet.
Here are four approaches you could try out:
- If you’re already running webinars, you could seek partnership opportunities for joint webinars where you host events with an expert from a complementary niche.
- Another excellent method is to look for blogs and publications that your audience reads and offer to write guest posts on the subjects you’re an expert on. Helping people overcome various challenges in their lives is always a popular topic,
- Podcasts are becoming more popular, and people love listening to them during the day. So appearing on podcasts that your audience listens to could help you gain access to more clients.
- Clubhouse is an exclusive audio-based platform that operates on invites-only. But if you can get it, you can gain access to an audience of people that few other coaches are using, creating rooms and sharing value that can attract the people you can help.
Write a Book
There probably isn’t a life coach who wouldn’t benefit from writing a book. Books are one of the most popular formats for consuming life improvement advice, and they’re also perfect for a comprehensive introduction to your origins, qualifications, philosophy, and core teachings.
If you write a book that helps people solve problems, you will instantly separate yourself from all of the beginning coaches and become an expert with a much broader reach.
And the book itself will also act as an incredibly powerful life coach marketing tool, attracting only the best candidates for your coaching program who read your book and found it to be helpful and aligned with their values.
Bottom Line
The most fulfilling part of a life coaching business is the ability to help people improve their lives for the better and overcome obstacles. But if you want your business to succeed, taking care of the life coach marketing is just as important.
With the ideas listed above, you will be able to expand your reach, develop valuable partnerships, and build your authority to get your ideal clients to come to you instead of you having to seek them out.
