The demand for coaching services is growing. Since 2015, the coaching industry has grown by 21% to reach a whopping $2.85 billion globally. Clearly, a lot of people want help improving their lives in some way.
But with big demand comes lots of competition. Everybody is fighting for a piece of that golden coaching pie. In fact, there are 23,000 certified coaches in the United States alone. (Also see may article “How To Stand Out In A Crowded Market“)
So what can you do to grow your coaching practice? Follow these strategies:
If only there were a magical “Get Coaching Clients Now” button that you could smash which would make your ideal clients appear before you. Alas, life is not so simple.
But, there is a proven way to get new life-coaching clients: consistent effort.
Poof. There it is.
The secret to getting coaching clients is consistency. You must constantly put yourself out there and get your coaching business in front of your target audience. There’s no magical secret formula that will bring you new coaching clients.
What works is work. Consistent. Hard. Work.
If you’re willing to consistently work, you will grow your coaching business. Got that? Success comes from consistency.
If you apply these coaching marketing strategies consistently, you will see results.
You need to know exactly who your target audience is for your coaching business. You can’t be mushy on this point. You can’t serve everybody. If you try to reach everybody, your messaging will become diluted and boring.
You need to be laser-focused on a specific group of people who you serve. Take some time to figure this out. Try to determine their:
Once you have a specific audience in mind, you can start talking to them in ways that make sense to them. Using their words. Describing their struggles. Helping them solve their pain points. Your messaging becomes so much stronger when you have clarity about who you’re serving with your coaching business.
In addition to knowing your audience, you also need to discover your coaching niche. How is this different than knowing your target audience? Great question.
Let’s put it this way. Your audience is who you serve. Your niche is how you serve them. When you put those two together, you have your Unique Selling Point (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from every other coach out there.
So how exactly do you help your coaching clients? Be precise here. Don’t say something really broad like, “I help people get what they want from life.” You need to be much more specific, like, “I help women between the ages of 35-60 be more productive through proven processes.”
Specificity is your friend in this regard. You need to have clarity regarding exactly how you serve your coaching clients.
Word to the wise. Do NOT try to be everything to everybody on every social media platform. That’s a terrible way to grow your coaching business. You’ll end up spread way too thin, like butter over too much bread. Rather, focus on one or two platforms where you can do really well. Platforms where your audience hangs out.
If you’re a coach to C-Level executives of Fortune 500 companies, you probably should be focusing on LinkedIn. If you’re targeting Millennials or Boomers, Facebook and Instagram might be the best place to focus your efforts. What matters most is that you’re spending time where potential coaching clients will be spending their time.
Share value content consistently from your social media platforms. Don’t focus primarily on promoting your products and services. Rather, focus on delivering loads of value to your audience day after day, post after post. Over time, you’ll begin to develop a brand and reputation. You’ll be known as the go-to coach in your industry and potential clients will be drawn to what you offer.
Facebook groups are an underutilized tool in the coaching world. By starting a Facebook group, you can interact with potential clients in a one-on-one manner. What’s more, you can get feedback and insights from potential clients about what they want and what they’re struggling with.
Groups can be tricky though. If you’re not active in your group, regularly interacting with members, the group can peter out. Just like your social media profiles, you have to consistently add value to your group in some way.
Don’t primarily focus on yourself. Rather, focus on helping those in your group. Focus on delivering insights and strategies to your group members. This will help establish your reputation as an insightful, helpful coach in the eyes of potential clients.
One of the more effective ways to grow your coaching practice is to network with other coaches.
[Insert record scratch].
I know, I know. You’re wondering why you would want to network with people who might be your competition.
Because you’ll cross paths with a lot of life coaches who are in totally different niches than you. These coaches aren’t your competition. You’re targeting very different coaching clients. If you establish meaningful relationships with these coaches, there’s a good chance that they’ll refer clients to you and you can refer clients to them.
If you want to build your coaching practice, you need to have a great website. Not a good one. A great one. One that really shows off your skillset and also looks great. Your website should include:
The good news is that you don’t need to be a web developer to create a gorgeous website. Platforms like Wix and Squarespace make it easy to design a great website in just a few hours.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most powerful marketing strategies you can have in your arsenal. SEO is the process of making your website look really good in Google’s eyes so that when potential clients search for coaching services, your website shows up high in the search results.
SEO is a huge subject that can’t be explained in a single paragraph so I’m going to give you some resources that can help you start the process on your website:
Both of these guides walk you through the basics of SEO and how to get started with it on your website.
Paid advertising on platforms like Facebook and Google is a great way to get life-coaching clients. You can put your message and brand in front of precisely the right group at exactly the right time.
For example, using Facebook ads, you can target men between the ages of 25-40 who have expressed an interest in snowboarding and live in Florida. Or using Google search ads, you can target women who are searching using the phrase “career coach” within a 50-mile radius of you.
You don’t even need to spend a huge amount of money to win with paid advertising. For as little as $10/day, you can get your brand in front of thousands of people who wouldn’t know about you otherwise.
Want to get life coaching clients online? Offer free coaching resources to them that they can’t get anywhere else.
You have a couple of ways you can go with this. You could offer a one-on-one free coaching session where you help the coaching client solve just one sticky problem. Doing just that would thrill the client and show them how good you are at your job.
Or you could do a free coaching group session where you guide a group of people through a particular exercise you know works really well.
The goal of both strategies is to get you in front of potential clients and show them all that you have to offer.
Don’t sleep on email when it comes to marketing strategies. If you can get into someone’s inbox, you have their attention, even if it’s just for a short time.
But that raises the question: how do you build an email list? Offer a free resource for download on your website. If you’re a health coach it could be a guide to the keto diet, or if you’re a relationship coach you could give away an eBook about navigating the weirdo-infested waters of dating. You get the point. Give away something valuable that will convince people to give them your email address.
As you build your email list, start sending helpful, insightful emails to those on your list. Give them a reason to read your emails. The more value you send to your email list, the more they’ll see you as an expert coach who can be trusted.
Client testimonials are like gasoline on the fire of your coaching business. Most people are much more likely to believe what others say about you than what you say about yourself. If you can secure some glowing paying client testimonials, show them off on your website, on social media, and anywhere people might see them.
Testimonials prove that you know what you’re talking about. That you’re not a huckster selling snake oil to suckers. They show your ideal coaching clients that you can get big results.
A podcast allows you to seriously show off your knowledge to potential paying clients. You can speak for extended periods, going deep into subjects that your audience really cares about. You also can interview other experts in your field, which in turn positions you as an expert as well.
Additionally, a podcast helps your audience learn how you communicate, which can attract clients who resonate with what you say.
Another highly effective way to find coaching clients is to create a blog on your website. A blog benefits your coaching practice in a couple of ways.
First, it allows you to deliver powerful content to your audience on a regular basis. In every blog post, you can talk about insightful, relevant topics that appeal to your ideal coaching client and demonstrate your deep knowledge of the subject.
A blog also helps with the Search Engine Optimization of your website. You can write about subjects that people are searching for, which then leads to your site showing up in those searches. The more searches you show up in, the more people come to your website and see the services you offer.
We’ve already touched on this, but it’s worth going a little deeper because of how powerful social media can be for your coaching practice.
You should use social media to build your coaching business because:
It’s possible to reach an audience on social media that you would never have access to otherwise. Each platform has hundreds of millions of users if not billions, and you can be absolutely sure that your ideal clients are using social media. Yes, posting regularly on social media requires consistent effort. But it’s well worth it.
You can gain visibility for your brand. You increase your audience. More people hear your message and are attracted to you. You get more clients. Which leads to even more visibility. It’s a beautiful circle.
Social media platforms also allow you to build your brand and your credibility. You get to demonstrate the depth of your knowledge to your audience and show that you’re trustworthy.
For example, say you have a channel on YouTube. You can speak at length on the subjects you’re most passionate about and have the most knowledge about. When people see you speak, they know they’re hearing the words of an expert. They know that you’re not just some random person off the street, but rather, someone they should listen to.
The number of clients you should have as a life coach depends on a couple of factors:
First, you have to know yourself and your capacity. What are your energy levels like? How much time do you have? You want to be careful that you don’t spread yourself too thin as a life coach.
Second, you have to consider the type of relationship you want to have with your clients. Do you want to do one-on-one sessions or do you want to do group coaching? That decision will have a huge impact on how many clients you can take on at a time.
You also need to think about how customized you want your services to be. The more you need to customize your services for each client, the more time will be required.
Finally, you need to consider what tools and technology you’ll use in your coaching program. Are you going to meet remotely with clients or will all the sessions be in person? Will you be able to scale your efforts if you want to?
Taken together, these four factors determine how many clients a life coaching coach should have. Remember, it’s primarily about quantity when it comes to coaching. It’s about impact. It’s better to have a deep impact on a few clients than to scarcely make a difference in the lives of a lot of people.
There are two wrong ways you could respond to all that we’ve talked about above. First, you could curl up into the fetal position and take a nap because it’s all too much work. But I don’t think you’ll do that, because you’re a driven individual who’s passionate about helping others.
The other mistake you can make is trying to do all these strategies at one time. While your heart is in a good place, you won’t get traction that way.
Start with one or two marketing strategies and give all your focus to them. Work on them until you’re really seeing results and are able to expand. Then add another strategy. Work on that one until you’ve mastered it. You get the picture.
Before long, you’re going to have a steady flow of clients coming in the door. In fact, you’ll have to deal with the problem of keeping up!
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