Are you ready to help clients and create a stable financial income? In our marketing for coaches guide, we will teach you how to build your personal brand, get clients, and grow your revenue exponentially.
Coaching has been increasingly popular through the years. You can work alone, help clients, and also make good money. With the increase in popularity came also an increase in competition. It's more important than ever before to learn how to market yourself.
If no one knows who you are, why would they choose you?
We will take you step by step through:
- How to market yourself as a coach
- Learn to get high-ticket clients!
- Make use of the right social media
- The latest and best marketing strategy
A complete online marketing package – Grow faster, and more efficiently
It’s time to make a difference in both your own life as well as that of your client. Let's start building your business through our marketing for coaches' ultimate guide. Together we will achieve your goals!
How To Market Yourself As A Coach Or Consultant
Arguably the most important business decision you will make, how to market yourself as a coach? The coaching business has seen a massive increase in competition. Does this mean you should avoid becoming a coach? No, with the right marketing for coaching you can build a solid and profitable business. The key is to specialize yourself and get yourself in front of an audience. How? That’s what we are going to talk about in the upcoming chapters.
Generalist vs Specialist
There is a clear winner between generalist vs specialist, this is the era of specialists. Just think about it. When you have an issue with your shoulder. Would you rather go to a shoulder specialist or an all-around physiotherapist? Exactly, the shoulder specialist.
The same goes for business coaching or life coaching. Focus on a specific part of business or life coaching and become the best expert in this field. People prefer experts and are also willing to pay more for expertise. For example, don’t promote yourself as a business coach but rather as a digital marketing coach. Even better, a content marketing specialist. The more specific and unique your skill is the higher your worth.
Exercise:
- Write down your skills
- Rank them based on your personal preference
- Now go to Google and look up the average price per hour of your skill list
- Cross-reference your preference list with your profitability list
- Choose the skill with the ideal mix of preference and profitability
- Congratulations! You now are a [e.g. Amazon PPC] expert!
How NOT To Pick A Niche – Profitability Is Key
Often people select their niche based on their preference. “It’s my passion!” Yes, and that’s great but is it also realistic? I love entrepreneurs that follow their passion and create something out of nothing. However, you need to be able to generate money.
Reasons not to choose a niche:
- High competition
- No differentiation possibilities
- Low margins
- Not scalable
Short-term Marketing For Coaches Issues
High competition: competition is in general a good statistic. It means there is a demand for the niche you choose. However, competition should be healthy. Too many competitors will mean that prices are being pushed down, PPC costs are going up, and you will have to fight for every customer. This can drain both your money and your time.
No differentiation possibilities: certain niches are difficult to differentiate yourself. For instance, networking coaches have a limited amount of channels to build upon. Ideally, you want to choose a niche where you can innovate how business is done before your arrival. You'll add value that people won't find anywhere else. Therefore they will prefer you over your competitor.
Long-term Marketing For Coaches Issues
Low margins: now this is probably the biggest issue I see daily. Entrepreneurs work hard and have a beautiful business, but their business model just doesn't work. Margins are everything! They decide what you will effectively make each year. Your margins should be minimal 30% and ideally around 50% or higher.
Note: yes, some companies choose to go low margins and beat the competition through pricing. However, for coaches, this is a bad strategy. A low price will indicate that your services aren't as good as your competitor. Coaching is a different sector than retail. Don't go for budget prices! It will kill your business.
Not scalable: let's assume your business is growing well in the next 3 years. What is the next step? How are you going to elevate your business to the next level? You should prepare your business for the future. You need to have a startup plan, growth plan, and exit strategy. The last one is mainly aimed at scaling your business and profitability to a level that you will become financially independent. You should go big for this one. Think and brainstorm without limits because it needs to be your ultimate achievement.
Learn To Get High-Ticket Clients!
How to land high-ticket clients? You will need to have proven yourself. High-ticket clients are also known as ‘whales’. These whales know they are wanted because they provide long-term value. Therefore you need to be able to convince the whales of your expertise and that you can handle a big client. The tool we will want to use for this is a testimonial. We are not looking for a testimonial written by your grandma, but instead, we are looking for a systematic testimonial structure. This means you will have a portfolio of clients that praise you for the same qualities. For example, you have 6 testimonials, and 4/6 mention your ability to work with a small budget. This indicates that you are good with budgeting, something that is important for whales because you will have big budgets to manage.
Testimonial Marketing For Coaches
Tips for harvesting testimonials:
- Ask for testimonials at the end of projects
- Guide your customer by giving them questions to answer
- These questions need to be focused on key differentiators e.g. your budgeting skills
- Write the actual testimonial yourself based on the answers of your customer
- After you wrote your testimonial down, ask for permission to upload your textual version of the testimonial.
Testimonials can look like a lot of work but they are crucial to convincing whales. Whales have more money and bigger projects to work on. The downside is they want evidence that you will get the results. The only way to do this is through testimonials. Do yourself a favor, create a solid testimonial question form and build your portfolio as early as possible.
Digital Marketing Coach – The Online Specialist
This chapter is meant for (aspiring) digital marketing coaches. If you are not a digital marketing coach, then you can skip this chapter and go to the next one.
Digital marketing is a booming sector and 10 years later we are still going strong. More and more business is conducted online and that means marketing has to be done online. Education on digital marketing is very poor. Many educational institutes provide little to none when it comes to digital marketing. That's why the supply-demand ratio is favoring the demand side by a mile.
So the sector is good, does that mean you don’t have to do marketing for coaches? Quite the opposite. Even if it's easy to get work within a sector (which isn't in digital marketing), you want to monetize your position for the long term. That starts by going down a niche within digital marketing. Find out which skills are in high demand and that you are good at.
A couple of popular niches:
- Content marketing
- Google Analytics
- Conversion optimization
- E-mail marketing
- PPC (pay-per-click)
Branding For Digital Marketing Coaches – The Basics
After you have selected your niche, build a brand! As a coach, you are a person. That's why you should build a personal brand rather than a company brand. The true power of personal branding lays within building trust. It's a lot easier to connect yourself with a person and put your trust in them. A business can feel faceless and therefore it's a bigger hurdle to take.
I want to talk about a few important aspects of personal branding:
- Branding colors
- Your brand story
- A face to the name
- Personal mass communication
Branding colors
Most of the time only thought of as decoration, however, branding colors have a big psychological impact on your customer. Did you know that 90% of our purchase decision-making is based on branding colors?
When you pick your branding colors, make use of contrast. This means that you should use colors that work paradoxically. Combinations that work: yellow>green, red>black, blue>white, etc. More importantly, focus on the psychological association of colors. Blue stands for security and trust whereas red stands for aggressive and vibrant.
For a thorough walkthrough, please check our branding colors article.
Your brand story
Make your 'about us' personal and go into depth. On this page, you have the space to talk about yourself and show who you are and what you stand for. Do include your customer into your story though! Even though you are talking about yourself, you aren't talking about yourself, ever. As a business, you should always think about your customer. What's in it for them?
Talk about skills or experiences that you possess and from which your customer can benefit. For example, you couldn’t find any biobased products for skincare. That’s why you decided to produce it for yourself. Whatever it is that you do or sell, make the upside obvious to your customer. Ideally, you have encountered pain or struggle and found the solution. In this way, your customer will never have to experience this pain.
Make the story personal and show a vulnerable side of yourself. Nobody will trust someone they can't relate to. So make sure you are relatable to your customer. Talk about common problems within your industry or even better, a personal problem. Trust is our best marketing for coaches 'secret'. And it isn't a secret. If you truly help someone, they will show appreciation and this often leads to more business e.g. referrals.
A face to the name
I know that it can be scary to place your face on your website. What if they think X or Z. But really, people don’t care about your wild hairs or sunburn. They want to see someone that is as real as they are. They want to feel familiarity and therefore they want to themselves in you. Make use of casual professional photos. You’ll want to look classy but not overdressed. Why not? Because your audience is most likely not reading your text in their best smoking.
Personal mass communication
Communication is entering an interesting phase in our modern marketing world. Back in the day, we would send an email that was meant for thousands. You would read it, get annoyed, and delete it.
We all know and have endured that pain in the butt… However, things are changing after e-mail marketing was introduced to our spectrum. The tools are getting smarter (AI is taking the lead in this change) and therefore we can send mass communication emails to individuals. Will these individuals feel like they are one out of a thousand? Heck no, we will address them by their first name and include photos of puppies. Who doesn't like puppies...
The personalization of email marketing means that we have a channel to directly talk to our customers, sounding like it is a one-on-one talk. Did you know that e-mail marketing has the highest return on investment of all digital marketing solutions? It's because of this personalization! You can send offers that feel like they are meant for that specific customer. They feel special and talked to, that's why they will buy from you.
More about e-mail marketing later on in this article.
How To Get Your First Client! – Marketing For Coaches 101
In this chapter, we are going to talk about getting the snowball going, how to use marketing for coaches to obtain your first client. It can be difficult to get clients if you are just starting with your coaching business. After you get your first couple of clients they will refer you to fellow entrepreneurs and things get easier. But how do you come there? Let’s discuss these matters and more!
Get Your First Client in 5 steps:
- Open Google maps and look for businesses near you
- Look for small businesses that have a poor digital marketing
- Contact the owner and offer your services for free (1 month)
- After the month you review your services with the owner
- If he/she is satisfied then offer your services for $500-$1000 per month
Why does this work? Because if the business owner sees your worth, he will want to keep you for two reasons. One is that you are making money for the business. Two, you are already doing the job and you know the ins and outs of the business. It’s a lot easier to hire you than it’s to substitute you.
Life Coach Marketing – A Better You…
Marketing for coaches in the lifestyle business is different from digital marketing coaches. Instead of entrepreneurs, you deal with basically everyone that wants to change something in their life. These needs are broader and often from a more personal nature. That’s why your approach should be focused on your ability to personalize your service.
It's crucial to make yourself accessible. Life coaching is almost always a big commitment for the client, therefore try to make it as easy as possible. Make use of free first consultation, WhatsApp and Facebook messages, and give away free valuable content on your blog. Trust is essential because people will take less risk when it comes to their personal life.
The most important tool to make yourself accessible and trustworthy is to go all-in on your branding. Attach your face and personality to every marketing channel you have. From Instagram to your website, people trust people. Faceless businesses will not be trusted to change the most personal issues a person has.
Marketing For Life Coaches Tips:
- Your face should be on every page (about the author, popups, background images)
- Video proof is crucial as a life coach e.g. results from previous clients or yourself
- Create a personal video message where you directly speak to your audience
- Instagram is by far the best marketing channel for life coaching
- Make use of yellow, green, and orange as branding colors (health-related)
- Your brand needs to be inviting, low-entry, personalized, and result-driven. These are the most important characteristics of a life coach.
Small Business Marketing Coach – Become Their Favorite!
Marketing for coaches in SME, how do you become the #1 choice for small businesses? It all has to do with being flexible. Small businesses are often led by entrepreneurs with ambition and passion. They want the best for their business but have to take finance into accounts. Every expense is one to be considered carefully.
As a small business marketing coach, you'd be wise to adapt to these needs. Rather than charging monthly packages, I found that SME's often prefer to have adaptable ratings because some months they have more to spend than others. So go for hourly wages and maintain a healthy cost for your services. Don't go budget or be part of the lowest bracket. People will think that you are not good at what you do. Instead, go for the medium price that is being offered sector-wide.
In dealing with SME owners it's important to focus on frequently communicating what you are doing. In my experience, larger companies have to spread their focus whereas SMEs are more committed to doing one thing well. Give your client a weekly update per phone and make sure to check for any doubts or fears that your client could have. Nurturing small businesses is a great strategy because when they become bigger, you will grow with them.
"Business relationships are like flowers, you need to water them to make them flourish."
Choose The Right Social Media Marketing For Coaches
Social media has been a true gamechanger for the coaching sector. It provides us with opportunities to acquire clients through free social media platforms. Do we want to increase our reach? No problem, through targeted advertisements you can reach your ideal audience. If you target the right keywords, you can buy ads for good prices and it’s a lot more affordable than most other forms of paid advertising.
In this chapter you will learn:
- The right social media channels for different marketing goals
- How to build an affiliate network through Instagram
- To monetize your coaching business with paid subscriptions
- The best upcoming social media trend (don’t miss out on this!)
Social media platforms come and go, but the importance of social media marketing has changed marketing forever. This change will not be undone, it rather will continue to grow in importance. That’s why you should start to invest (further) in social media marketing.
One key lesson before we start: Social Media Marketing is a long-term approach! Please don’t fall for the pitfall of immediate success. If you build a solid social media marketing strategy and work on it for 1-3 years, then you will truly be rewarded for your hard work. It has the potential to drive hundreds of thousands towards your website.
Tip: first focus on 1 social media channel and maximize its potential. Only then you should proceed to the next one. This will secure growth and make your invested time efficient.
B2B LinkedIn Marketing For Coaches
LinkedIn looked very promising when it was released. Unfortunately, it didn’t take off at all and we were all kind of disappointed by the slow start. However, that is all in the past as LinkedIn is finally starting to show its true potential. Platforms like Facebook are starting to be overcrowded and your posts will often be lost in the masses. LinkedIn on the other hand has more users than content. This means for LinkedIn content creators it’s relatively easy to reach a larger audience.
So when does LinkedIn make sense for a coach? If you want to use a social media platform to obtain leads and convert them into an actual business, then LinkedIn is by far the best choice. LinkedIn is all about getting new business relationships started with the purpose to make a profit. However, there is a nasty trend of people trying to get your business without building relationships. They will message you like: “Hey, we sell websites and you look like you need one.” And I am not joking, I have seen this.
Focus on building a relationship first:
- Introduce yourself and genuinely show interest
- Create and share high-value content for free
- Comment on influencers within your niche
- DM people that might be interesting to your business (just to introduce)
- Respond to all comments on your posts
After your trust levels rise, you may present offers to your connection. However, make sure that it helps them and don't try to sell too hard. And always provide value before offering services as that will truly give you credit.
The personal lead generation makes LinkedIn the best direct marketing for coaches tool.
Affiliate Marketing With Instagram
If you have a digital product for your coaching business and you want to increase sales, then your first choice should be Instagram. Instagram is a visual platform that is highly popular thanks to the rapid pace of content that it provides. Instagram is designed to keep people engaged with its content. That's why people spend a lot of time on Instagram!
Instagram and Facebook are also interesting choices to use paid advertising on. Their costs are relatively low (for the right keywords) and the conversions are good. Even more interesting is the fact that Instagram is the birthplace of Influencer Marketing. Influencers are people with large audiences which you can reach if you pay them a fee. They will share your post with their audience and your product/services will be shown. It increases your brand awareness and can lead to a serious increase in sales.
Affiliate marketing for coaches is an interesting area to discover if you are selling your e-products.
Tip: if you want to make use of influencer marketing for coaches, check out micro-influencers. They have audiences between 15k-100k users. Large influencers are often overpriced and therefore it will significantly increase your price per customer. Micro-influencers on the other hand are relatively cheap and have proven to be a worthy strategy for all kinds of online businesses.
Facebook Subscription Groups
Facebook itself is difficult to use as a content platform. Why? Because the number of posts is overwhelming and your post is easily lost between all the others. Facebook is therefore not my to-go stop for starters. However, Facebook does offer a fantastic opportunity for your coaching business. It can also be used as marketing for coaches. What do I speak of? We are talking about Facebook Groups.
The idea of Facebook Groups is to create a limited group which you can only join if you are invited. Often these groups are meant as communities where mentors and users come together and discuss their common interests. To name an example, ThriveCart has multiple Facebook Groups that you can join if you have paid for a subscription. Often businesses make different groups for regular uses and elite users.
Now how can you implement this strategy for your own marketing for coaches? You could offer mentorship for an X amount per year. One of the perks being that people are allowed to join your elite group on Facebook. Here they can interact with admins and users about the field in which you teach. The beauty of this structure is the fact that members will frequently answer questions that are meant for you. In this way you kind of employ your clients to answer questions without paying them!
Tip: in the beginning, you need to put a lot of effort into uploading content and starting discussions. It will take time before a community is built and it takes even more time before it becomes lively.
YouTube Marketing For Coaches
The number one upcoming marketing for coaches trend to invest in is YouTube. I know, you might be thinking: “Mark, YouTube has been around for ages. That’s not a new trend.” And yes you are right! Technically it isn’t new but as a marketing channel, it recently started to get traction. This is especially good news for coaches because the video is a sneak peek into what you have to offer.
YouTube is truly a remarkable marketing for coaches opportunity.
Serve first and get rewarded later is becoming a real thing within the coaching business. A prime example is Miles Beckler. Miles is a coach to anyone who wants to build a blog or business online. He teaches us both the basics and the advanced strategies of online marketing. And does he ask for anything in return? Nada, all of his content is completely free to us.
This free value marketing for coaches is working like a charm. You will build up trust and people will get a feeling that they owe you something. So when the time arrives and you make an offer, they will be more tempted to buy from you. Below you will find a video link to Miles where he shows us exactly how to build your YouTube channel and monetize it for the long term.
Miles Beckler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ExS_GzLx-w&ab_channel=MilesBeckler
Email Marketing For Coaches
E-mail marketing for coaches is one of the most powerful marketing tools that we have. E-mail marketing has the highest return on investment of all digital marketing for coaches solutions. It provides us with a gateway directly to our customers. With modern e-mail marketing solutions you can personalize your e-mail marketing campaigns. This will give your client the feeling like you are speaking directly to them instead of to an audience.
The key to successful e-mail marketing is to provide a lot of value and make offers only optional. If people smell that you are too keen on selling, they will unsubscribe and you will have lost a valuable asset. The ratio I would suggest is 1:4 of your e-mails are allowed to contain an offer. The other 3 e-mails should be focused on providing advice about your expertise. Be genuinely helpful and your patience will be rewarded.
For the frequency, I would suggest e-mailing between 2-4 weeks. Where every 2 weeks is the most extreme frequency to distribute e-mails. Personally, I would go once every month. Provide high-value e-mails that contain longer text than usual. In the 4th month, you will present directly offers. In the value posts, you can hide your services between the value but be careful. Only indirectly promote your offers in the value posts.
E-mail marketing for coaches is a delicate but highly profitable business.
Online Marketing For Coaches Package
It can be overwhelming to find the right starting tools without paying for tools you don't need at this stage. That's why we made an online marketing for coaches package, focused on the key essentials. These tools will tremendously help you grow online. They will accelerate your early growth and prepare your business for the mature-growth phase.
KWFinder – Build Your Coaching Business Organically
SEO is your best friend as a coach. It takes at least a year to gain serious traffic, but when it goes… It goes to the moon! SEO marketing for coaches is the play for sustainable growth and profit. To speed up this process you should consider buying SEO tools. For beginners, there is a clear winner. KWFinder! It's relatively cheap but more importantly, it has the best measurement system to find profitable keywords that will help you rank in Google.
In our article on KWFinder, we explain how you can use keywords to get found in Google and drive traffic to your website. Furthermore, we describe how you can make optimal use of the different tools and we tell you why the pricing is fair.
Find out more about KWFinder here.
ConvertKit – E-mail Marketing Increases Revenue
We spoke about the importance of e-mail marketing for coaches. It is a direct gateway plus it has the highest return on investment. Now that begs the question: which software provider should I choose for my e-mail marketing? ConvertKit is the best e-mail marketing for coaches solution. Period. It’s designed for selling online products. It has a clean design and solid deliverability. ConvertKit is favored by many successful affiliate marketers like Pat Flynn.
Find out more about ConvertKit here.
Thrive Themes – King Of Conversion
If you have a WordPress website (or want one) then you should consider using Thrive Themes as the Theme Builder. Thrive Themes is different from other theme providers. Often themes are made by programmers that don't understand marketing. Thrive Themes on the other hand speaks our marketing language. They design their software to help you grow your audience and convert them into buying customers. We use Thrive Themes for our agency and also for our clients.
Find out more about Thrive Themes here.
ThriveCart – Sells Your Digital Products
Let's say you want to earn more money with better margins, then it might be time to create your digital products e.g. e-books or courses. These products have often between 95-100% margins. Combined with your e-mail marketing for coaches you can strive for 6 figure revenues. But what software do you need for selling these online products? You will need a website builder like Thrive Themes and a shopping cart solution provider.
We recommend using ThriveCart (a different company than Thrive Themes) because they offer a lifetime deal for $495 you get unlimited lifetime access to ThriveCart. The software is feature-rich and provides more value than its competition. Furthermore, with the lifetime deal, it becomes a very interesting deal to at least consider.
Find out more about ThriveCart here.
Bluehost – Specialized In WordPress Hosting
For the coach that is about to begin his epic journey, you need a website that is up all the time. Bluehost is the number one recommended WordPress hosting provider by WordPress itself! It has an easy-to-use tool that will help you install WordPress without any coding. Furthermore, Bluehost is known for its sharp pricing. It's a great time to be alive because starting an online business has never before been this affordable. The best time to start your journey is… NOW!
Find the best Bluehost Black Friday deal here.
Marketing For Coaches Conclusion
The coaching business is booming. There is a lot of people to be helped and profit to be gained. However, all this glory doesn’t come without a challenge. The competition is fierce but not overwhelmingly powerful. If you make use of smart marketing for coaches, then there is a lot of money to be made within the coaching industry.
E-mail marketing and social media marketing for coaches are essential to growing your personal brand. You need to build trust by providing high-value content. Strengthen your online presence by investing in SEO marketing for coaches and optimize your conversion rate. After you take care of your essentials, you can start looking at expanding your business through digital products. Scale your business through the usage of paid ads and micro-influencers.
The game we are playing is a long-term one, but when the snowball starts to roll… It will bring you the entire mountain. Start today and don’t delay your journey any longer. You can do it!
For more marketing for coaches tips and advice, please leave us a comment below.