Coaches have grown in popularity in recent years, with more and more clients recognizing their value.
However, there are still a few stumbling blocks that all coaches face when seeking out new clients. Namely, competition from other coaches, as well as the ability to raise their profile and get themselves noticed by more potential clients.
The easiest way to overcome both challenges is to improve your marketing results. With a good marketing strategy in place you can attract more qualified clients with less effort.
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at 6 quick and easy ways coaches can do just that.
1. Create a Brand That Stands Out
A coach who is simply a coach will attract some clients from time to time, but they’ll find it hard to attract enough well-paying and loyal clients unless they create a brand.
The role of a coach is your main priority. But unless you frame a brand around it, you’ll find it hard to stand out among your biggest rivals. When people think of “coach in X niche” you ideally want them to think of you and what you offer. And the way to do this is via branding.
Here are some tips to help you create a brand around your coaching:
Define Your Niche and Narrow it Down
What aspect of coaching do you excel at the most? What do you specialize in? For example, a therapist who specializes in gambling addiction will find it easier to create a brand around helping people recover from a gambling addiction.
Focusing on your niche will help you understand more about your target audience, too, which will further help you create your brand.
Tell Your Stories
A key ingredient to branding is being your true, authentic self. This means telling your stories - your reasons for becoming a coach, your life journey, and what you hope to achieve as a coach.
Telling your stories will help you to create a unique emotional connection with your audience. It will do this via credibility, empathy and more crucially - rapport.
Consider Your Typography, Colors, and Logo
The best coaches in the world have logos, as well as consistent color schemes and typography. It’s important that you work on these aspects of your own brand, and that you stay consistent with them wherever clients can find you on the Internet, including your website, your social media profiles and even your email.
2. Offer a Free Coaching Call
A tried and tested marketing method that works in all industries is that of offering some of your services for free.
A free coaching call essentially allows otherwise hesitant clients to “try before they buy.” It’s a great way to introduce yourself to a client and build up a relationship by showing them exactly what it is that you offer. It also boosts initial conversions, as more people will obviously be inclined to give you a go if they don’t have to pay for anything just yet.
The idea is that you offer a limited amount of your time for free, such as 15-30 minutes. This way, the client can get a feel for you and your services, and they can get a better idea of whether or not the two of you are a good fit.
At the end of the call, you can ask them how they feel it went and whether or not they want to continue with your coaching at your regular price.
3. Launch a Guest Blogging Campaign
Guest blogging is when you write blog posts for other websites and blogs. Usually, these websites and blogs are related to your own niche, and they should have a good volume of traffic and engagement.
The idea behind guest blogging is that you leverage another company’s traffic/audience for your own gain. The concept is simple: You pitch an idea for a blog post to a related website, and if they accept, you then write the post.
This post should demonstrate your expertise, but it should also offer helpful advice and value to the end user. Within the post, you can include a link to your website. This is known as a backlink, and it’s helpful for increasing organic traffic, establishing your brand credibility, and building your relationships with companies and their audiences.
When writing your guest blog post, here are some things to keep in mind. Your guest post:
- Should offer value and helpful advice to the end user
- Needs to demonstrate your expertise and position you as an authority in your niche
- Needs to include a link back to your website
- Should conclude with a CTA (call to action) as well as a professional headshot and a brief bio
You can promote your guest blog post to your email list, as well as on your social media profiles.
When it comes to finding guest blogging opportunities, meanwhile, the easiest way to find potential websites is to type your niche + “blog” into Google.
Then, you can draw up a list of potential websites and add them to a spreadsheet.
The next step is to make sure that each website is relevant. In other words, their content and niche need to truly align with your own. Their audience needs to be your audience.
Second, you need to be sure that each website and company is worth your time. To find this out, check their engagement. How many comments and shares do their current blog posts have? What about their social following, is it high or low? Is their following engaging with them on their social platforms?
What about their domain authority? Is that high or low? You can use an SEO tool to find this out (Ahrefs and Moz are both worth checking out). The last thing you want to do is waste your valuable time writing guest posts for websites that have little to no traffic.
4. Write a Book
Writing a book has numerous marketing advantages for coaches. A book helps you:
- Generate more brand awareness
- Reach a wider audience
- Establish credibility
- Position yourself as an expert in your niche
A book can also be used as a lead magnet that you can use in exchange for someone’s email address.
Your book doesn’t have to be long. As a matter of fact, it can even be less than 100 pages. The idea is that your book should be centered around the problems your coaching skills solve. It should:
- Offer value to the end user
- Discuss pain points your audience often discuss
For example, a life coach could write a short eBook about productivity. However, it’s important that you don’t give every single solution away in your book. Instead, you can use your book to solve part of your audience's problem. Once they’ve seen the value that you’re able to offer them, and that your answers clearly work, they may then want to take the next step with you. This could be a free introductory coaching call.
Some coaches may choose to give their book away for free, while others might prefer to charge a small fee. Alternatively, you could give the book away for free but charge for postage & package if it’s a paperback or hardback.
And while writing a book can sound like something that would take up a fair amount of time, it might be beneficial to outsource this to a freelancer. Especially if you don’t consider yourself to be a writer, you could generate the ideas for the book, including the chapters and the bulk of the content, while a freelancer writes your ideas out into words.
5. Host a Webinar
A webinar is another way to demonstrate your expertise and raise brand awareness; this gives you a chance to build relationships, too, because people can actually see and hear you. Not just that, but webinars give you a chance to learn more about your audience via questions and answers, as well as comments. All in all, they’re a great way to capture more leads.
Hosting a webinar is itself simple enough. You just need to choose the right webinar platform and discuss your topic.
However, planning a webinar and generating interest for it will require more of your time.
6. Go Live
Along with hosting a webinar, or as an alternative, you could live stream an event to market yourself.
Live streaming is another way of demonstrating your expertise to potential clients in such a way that they get to see and hear you, as well as interact with you. By putting a face to your brand, you’re showing your authentic self and building relationships.
You can use live video to field questions related to your niche, interview other experts, discuss any upcoming plans, promos and discounts you’ve got in the pipeline, as well as share stories and case studies.
7. Partner with Influencers
One of the best ways through which coaches can grow their marketing results is by partnering with social influencers. Typically, influencers have a large and engaged follower base.
As a result, they're likely to pay heed to all the recommendations made by them and would engage with their content too.
However, you must be careful while selecting influencers to partner with. You should track fake followers to figure out if the influencer is genuine or not.
Once you've found a genuine influencer or key opinion leadership, you can partner with them to create a buzz on social media and boost your marketing campaigns.
Wrapping Up
Coaches must do all that they can to market themselves so that they stand out from their competitors and raise their own brand awareness.
Use the tips in this article to improve your marketing results via live video, free coaching calls, lead magnets and a guest blogging campaign.
About the Author
Ashley Kimler is the founder of CopyNoise. She's been working in the digital marketing space since 2009. Interested in getting her advice on your blog? She's always looking for the opportunity to share her perspective with new communities! Follow @ashleykimler on Twitter to see what's new.
