What marketing strategies can personal coaches use to increase their client base?

Identify your target audience and niche within the coaching industry. Whether you specialize in life coaching, career coaching, health coaching, or any other area, having a clear niche can make your marketing efforts more focused and effective.

Remember a niche doesn’t have to be vertical e.g. coaching leaders in the manufacturing industry. It can be a horizontal niche e.g. coaching Finance Directors of large SMEs.

My experience of working with 1000s of coaches, is that they resist niching because they don’t quite understand how it applies to them. Most professional coaching qualifications mean that you are able to coach anyone. This means that coaches struggle to understand why they need to niche. The reason niching is important is that although we may be able to coach anyone, we cannot market to anyone. All effective marketing is focused. For coaches to find a niche that’s perfect for them, they need to explore which demographic groups have a) a problem which coaching can help resolve b) whose language they speak (as in you must be able to describe the problem in the words of the potential client) and c) who can afford to pay you.

1. Speak to your clients and potential clients so you know what are the problems they want support with and what language they use. Keep asking questions so you know what your clients want support with. Remember coaching is a professional service. Clients pay for you to help solve their problems, not to "have a pleasant chat". 2. Be consistent. To build a following online or in person you need to keep talking about how you as a coach support people with specific challenges. 3. Engage with communities. Ask yourself "Where do my ideal clients hang out?" Virtually or in real life. Go and meet with them there and engage with them,

If you're an experienced coach then you can still continue to refine what you offer... A couple of questions I like to throw at people: 1. If your coaching business closed down tomorrow, who would be immediately in touch to say how disappointed they are? 2. If the marketing gods took away all of your customers, who is the one client you would want to be left with? These questions give you an idea of your 'superconsumers'. You can hone in on their personas to get really tight on your messaging and branding.

Content Marketing: Start a blog or create valuable content such as articles, videos, or podcasts related to your niche. This can help establish your authority and attract organic traffic from search engines.

Content marketing on its own is a game of hope, and hope isn’t a great strategy. Great content should be positioned to help, not sell, and engage your audience. Mix it up with videos, graphics and text and be clear about what you want to happen due to the content you post. If you don’t, you’re just playing on social media.

Content is what draws your audience to you. You need to constantly create powerful and catchy contents that will address the yearnings of your audience and will want them to hear more from you. Address their fears and inspire them to move forward. Nothing pays as much as your audience patiently waiting for you to drop your content daily.

Content creation is key to building credibility with a coach’s chosen audience. My experience to date (6 years working only with the qualified coaches) tells me that coaches create content about what interests them about coaching - that it builds confidence and resilience for example - rather than content that resonates with their audience. Choosing that audience (or niche) is something that coaches find challenging.

When you create "valuable" content, you need to ask yourself, "Who is it valuable for?" It's easy to find yourself creating content YOU want to create, rather than content that connects with the people you want to attract. A great way to approach this is to think about your ideal client. What is a specific problem they have that causes them an emotional pain? Create content that helps them understand the problem they're facing in a way that positions you as a guide who understand them and who cares. A problem many people make is that they try to solve the whole problem. Don't do that! Start small and give people an "ah-ha" moment where they realise "This is different."

Social Media: Utilize social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to connect with potential clients, share content, and engage with your audience.

Social media is an important tool in a coach’s marketing toolkit. For example, all professional coaches should have a well-optimised LinkedIn profile. However, it’s only necessary for a coach to be on the social media platforms where their chosen target audience (or niche) is. You don’t have to be all over every social media platform. This fact is a massive relief to many coaches.

The social media is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get your content across to millions of people around the world. Some love videos, some pictures and others short content... Make sure you satisfy all of them

I disagree with some of this. Pro-bono coaching may lead to a nice testimonial, but it rarely leads to paying clients. Coaches are taught that the way to find clients is by ‘demonstrating the value’ of coaching by giving away free coaching sessions. The truth is that giving free coaching sessions isn’t a sustainable way to build a coaching business because it doesn’t generate enough income. It is handy for the occasional testimonial though.

When you ask for a referral or testimonial, it can fill people full of fear because they don't know what they're meant to do for you! Ask them questions where they share what their initial doubts and concerns were. Ask them what made them decide the time was to start working with you. Ask them what they are now able to do, they couldn't before. Ask them what their challenges are, and what they still need to work on. When you use this type of approach, people love you because you're making it easy for them, and you get a deeply personal and believable testimonial that feels genuine.

Testimonies draw more people to you than normal regular adverts will do. Create amazing contents and give practical solutions that people will talk about and boom...

No one knows all, reading and meeting people who are in your industry helps you to stay ahead of your game always. Who knows where the next client will come from...

The problem with most coaches websites is that they’re all about the coach. They describe qualifications and coaching philosophies, as well as all the different kinds of clients that the coach can help. The reason this is a problem is because nobody cares about the coach, qualifications or coaching philosophies. What they care about is what’s in it for them. This is completely normal - everyone wants to understand what’s in it for them before they make a purchase. The main problem for coaches websites is that unless they have a focus for their marketing (and a website is marketing) and they can clearly articulate the outcome that their clients can reasonably expect to gain from working with them, their website won’t generate enquiries.

Create a Professional Website: Your website is often the first point of contact for potential clients. Make sure it's well-designed, informative, and showcases your expertise and services.

Most websites don't have enough calls to action, and if you don't tell someone to take action, they probably won't. Above the fold (the prime real estate of a website- everything before you scroll) This should not welcome someone on your website. It should do 3 things: 1. Tell what you do 2. Explain the benefits 3. Show how to get it