Marketing might sound daunting, especially if you don’t like putting yourself out there. But there’s no point in wanting to help people if nobody knows your services exist, which is where marketing comes in.
If you don’t know where to start, we’ve got you covered with this guide to marketing for coaches.
In my time as a coach, I’ve used tools like summits and workshops to generate thousands of new leads and convert them into coaching clients. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without an effective marketing campaign that encompasses everything from guest speaking to social media to developing a brand identity.
Let’s examine marketing for your coaching business and discuss how you can get started immediately.
Table of Contents
Marketing is essentially getting the word out there about your coaching services. It encompasses a lot of different strategies, tactics, and channels, including social media, building a brand identity, networking, and more.
Marketing is important for coaches for a few reasons.
A good marketing campaign will let people know exactly what your ethos is, what you’re offering, and who you’re looking for as a coaching business.
Marketing doesn’t just introduce you to new clients; it will also introduce you to other coaches and professionals within your niche. Networking is an important element of marketing, and it will help connect you to new people, open you up to new ideas, and alert you to possible opportunities to strengthen your skills.
Marketing can help to establish your brand identity. Your clients will come to know what your expertise is, what you stand for, and why you want to help people.
Lastly, a good marketing campaign will help your potential clients see your expertise and how much you know about a particular subject.
Your target audience will impact every single thing you do in your marketing efforts. Everything from social media posts to the kind of offers you create should be targeted at your chosen audience.
There are so many coaches out there advertising their services online, and if you’re just marketing yourself as a ‘coach,’ you’re not going to get very far.
But if you drill down into a specific niche, you’re going to find the right people and stand out from the crowd.
I’m gonna presume you’ve found your niche if you’re at the marketing stage, but if you haven’t, I’d suggest making a list of your skills and passions and picking the one that a) you have a lot of expertise in, and b) makes you feel the most fired up.
The next stage is to look up keywords within your niche. You can probably think of a list off the top of your head, but you can also use sites like SEMRush’s Magic Keyword tool. You can draw from this list when you’re planning your marketing strategy, and it will help when you come to improve your SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, later (which is vital if you’re trying to become more visible on search engines).
I think the easiest thing to do is focus on the 4 Ps. E. Jerome McCarthy created these in the ’60s, and they’re a solid place to start your marketing efforts.
The product is the service you are providing. The product should, of course, be something that your prospective client needs, something that will make their lives easier or better in some way.
Ask yourself: What is your coaching business, what does it provide, and does it meet a need for your target audience? You can also ask what makes your particular service stand out from the crowd. Maybe you offer a unique perspective, or you have life experience other coaches don’t have.
To make this easier, you can use our Magic Pill Irresistible Offer template, which will help you to craft your own offer that is specific to your target audience.
Pricing is a tough one. How much do you charge for your services? Your time is valuable, and you don’t want to underprice yourself. At the same time, pricing that is too high will eliminate a certain number of prospective clients.
You need to ask yourself what kind of income you want to have as a coach. That will help you to work out how much your time is worth per hour. Working out the time for money ratio can be hard when you start out, and you may need to be open to adjusting your pricing later.
Many coaches set their pricing at an hourly rate. That doesn’t stop you from offering introductory packages, discounts, and so on, but having a base rate worked out at the start is crucial.
You need to position yourself as the only logical choice for your target audience. Your marketing should make you sound like the go-to expert, the one person you’d go to if you were struggling with a particular problem or you needed help to reach a specific goal.
This will influence where you market your product and the channels you’ll use to reach them. Where do the clients who would most benefit from your services spend their time? This should inform your own digital presence.
The aim here is to clearly show your clients that your service exists and that they need it. Promotion encompasses many different tactics, including targeted ads, social media marketing, content marketing, networking, and offline marketing strategies. All of these promotional activities are marketing your services to (hopefully) the right people.
Personal branding can take some time to get right, especially if you’re just starting out.
Pro Tip: You can find specific examples in our blog post, 11 Personal Branding Examples You Can Model Yourself.
As a coach, there are a few key elements to building a strong brand identity for your coaching business:
This is a tough one in a saturated marketplace, but it’s really important.
See if you can come up with a unique perspective and go with that. Are you naturally funny? Or are you more introverted? What about your personality attracts your ideal client? Think about how you can show that to your audience in the way that you speak, write, and present your services.
At the start, you should establish some guidelines for your branding. This includes your logo, your website design, the kind of ‘voice’ you’ll have when you post on social media or on your website, and your color scheme.
Using these consistently will help your audience immediately spot content as ‘yours’ and position you as a familiar presence.
So, where do you start when it comes to promotion? There are a few things you need to think about.
This will require some research. You need to work out where your ideal clients congregate and focus on those. For example, if you’re a fitness coach, you may find that TikTok and Instagram work well, as they’re very visual platforms. People like to see exercise routines, before and after photos, and recipe videos.
If you’re a business coach, you’ll want to present your services on LinkedIn, where a lot of career growth and networking tends to happen.
You can also analyze stats, such as the age range of people using specific platforms. Websites like Sprout Social can help you do this. If your target audience is younger, you can focus on the platforms they use the most.
You might see the words ‘distribution’ and ‘repurposing’ when you’re researching marketing techniques.
The difference between them is this: repurposing allows you to transform an original piece of content (like a workshop or a YouTube video) into a different format. At the same time, distribution is the process of sending digital content to the best place to maximize reach and engagement.
Repurposing is useful because it saves time spent creating content. But distribution is key, and you need to have a strategy for the kind of content you’ll share.
I think there are a few key things you need to remember when creating a distribution strategy:
Here is how to effectively repurpose your content.
Having run many myself, I’m passionate about virtual summits and virtual workshops. Being the host increases your authority, which is crucial for building trust with potential clients, especially if you’re just starting your business.
If you don’t want to run a summit or workshop, you can be a guest expert on someone else’s. This is a great way to increase your authority and give you something to share on your social media platforms, opening you up to wider audiences.
Virtual summits offer advice on a specific topic and bring together different experts within a specific niche. They tend to be a series of interviews or presentations, and you can have as many attendees as you like.
Workshops, meanwhile, tend to be smaller and involve more audience interaction. They may include practical activities and may have some back-and-forth between the host and the participants.
I have hosted dozens of workshops for myself, selling over 1,000 of them between $27-97, and these have led to follow-up appointments with new clients. So, I think they’re an incredible way to meet clients and market your coaching services.
There are a few things I’d recommend doing:
Virtual summits are another passion of mine. I’ve launched over 15 summits myself, gaining 5,000-25,000 new leads every single time. It’s a great way to grow your coaching client roster.
I’d suggest doing the following if you don’t know where to start:
I’d like to show you some examples of virtual summits and workshops from some of the coaches I’ve worked with.
Sara is a plant spirit wisdom teacher and coach, and she worked with me to pivot to a new niche. she says:
“Working with Liam allowed me to grow my email list by 5,000 people, to generate $1,000s and pivot to a completely new niche in a ew short weeks … I’m still getting emails from people all over the world saying how much the summit has changed their life.”
Sara’s goal was to gain new email subscribers and to make a positive change to her audience, and she achieved it via a virtual summit. She knew the kind of content that would impact them the most and went with it with impressive results.
Philip is an author and business coach. After working with us to create his own workshop, he says:
“From my workshop, I instantly brought in $6.5k in revenue and was able to drive people to book a call with me for my high-ticket services. I then secured another $10k the following week.”
Philip was able to use a workshop to achieve his goals (gaining new clients for his high-ticket services). Running a workshop established his authority within his niche.
Michael Morgan is an Alzheimer’s and longevity coach. After running a summit, he generated $40,000 in the first 30 days of using our system.
If money is a goal, your pricing needs to reflect that. When you’re running a summit, remember how much time you’re putting into it, which will help you price the summit accordingly.
Janine is a podcaster and author, and she worked with us to create a workshop for her niche. She says:
“From my first workshop, several people joined my group and 1-on-1 coaching program. I intend to run one a month going forward, and I now use the workshops as my primary way of attracting clients!”
Janine has found that running workshops is a great way to establish a rapport with future clients. This is part of why I’m so passionate about them.
Networking and referrals are another key part of marketing.
Your network is the group of people you build professional relationships with. There are a few things you can do to build your network:
Referrals are a powerful way of attracting new clients, so how can you encourage people to refer your services to others?
Firstly, I’d suggest looking into offering rewards for current clients: you can offer a discount on their next coaching session, for example. This is a great way to encourage people to refer.
I’d also maybe steer away from using language like ‘referrals’ and instead phrase it as a call for help. This feels more personable and less ‘salesy’. You can send an email to your current clients, for example, saying, ‘I wondered if you could help me.’ People do enjoy helping, especially if they’ve built up a rapport with you.
Finally, I’d say don’t be afraid to ask people for help. That includes your whole network. If you don’t ask, you don’t get it, and you don’t have to be pushy with it.
How do you keep your clients happy and engaged with your services?
Managing these client relationships can be difficult, especially once you’ve gained quite a few clients. So, how do you keep on top of them?
You can use free platforms. Old-school, maybe, but Google Sheets or Excel is a good way to organize data like names, last contact dates, phone numbers, and email addresses. If you need to look someone up, you’ll be able to find it. And it won’t cost you anything.
If not, you can check out Hubspot. They have a free plan which offers some tools for managing your contacts.
And if you want more information on how to plan your client’s journey, you can read our Sales Funnel Beginner’s Guide.
We’ve been talking a lot about digital marketing, but what about offline strategies?
Direct mail is still a good option in some circumstances. While there is a bigger upfront cost, physical mail is becoming rarer, so you’ll definitely stand out from the crowd.
The main downside to physical mail campaigns is that you need to put effort into finding the right people. If you’re targeting a specific niche, a large-scale leaflet drop isn’t going to get you many results.
The main thing I’d say about direct mail campaigns is to include a call to action and proofread.
Conferences are a great way to meet people. Attending allows you to build your network and meet people who may need coaching within your niche.
Speaking at conferences is another fantastic option for building your expertise. If you can show your knowledge during a talk, you’ll have a great opportunity to find new clients.
Local events are another good option. Attending, again, is a great way to meet new people. But if you can offer your services as a speaker, you may find some local clients who need your services.
It’s really important to learn how to analyze your marketing campaigns. This will help you to make more effective campaigns in the future.
Marketing objectives are long-term goals for your business. Think about your big-picture goals. These are the objectives you should work towards when you’re planning your marketing strategy.
However, KPIs are measurable goals you set and reflect your strategies for growth.
Marketing KPIs are specific goals you want to track. For example:
These metrics can be measured using free and paid tools and will allow you to set specific goals that align with your bigger marketing objectives.
There are some free tools you can use to track your marketing performance:
When it comes to marketing, it’s not a free-for-all. There are some legal and ethical considerations to remember. Here are a few things I’d recommend:
Marketing doesn’t come easily to everyone, but with a bit of practice and trial and error, you’ll be able to effectively advertise your services and find your dream clients.
Don’t forget to watch our free training on how to get coaching clients to build up that roster and start earning a regular income as a coach.
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