When you think about life coach marketing, it’s actually more complex than people think. I think the best way, when you ask yourself how to market yourself as a life coach the best way is to be the best life coach you can be. That’s crucial. That’s the best marketing.
To get to the top depends largely on how well you market yourself as a life coach. Below are the ways to help you reach higher levels of success. Remember, you can do any of these, but please don’t try to do all of them. This large list of ideas is not intended to have you get overwhelmed. Choose a few strategies and focus on doing them well. See how they work and then keep what works best for you…then try a few more.
Help First. Get Paid Second
Find ways to help as many people as you can in as many ways as you can. Speak to groups. Deliver webinars. Give anyone 5-15 minutes of your time to answer questions. The more you help people, the more you'll be recognized as a valuable resource. Once you've established yourself as a valuable resource, you can be very selective on who you actually take on as a paying client.
Ask the Right Types Of Questions
When you have total clarity on the type of results your clients receive it's easy to ask the right kinds of questions. Having a clear intake process and asking the right questions ensures you are managing your clients’ expectations. The power of your coaching partnership comes with managing those expectations.
Leverage Your Experience
Coaches love to serve and believe they can serve anyone. That said, fit is important to coaching success. Finding commonality in experience is a way that has worked for me to gain clients. Corporate leaders seem to want to work with executive coaches that have been corporate leaders as well. What experiences do you have in common with those you want to serve?
Use Video To Attract Clients
It doesn't need to be fancy. Just authentic. We are a screen-fixated society, and when you feature yourself in a video, it can lend credibility to your practice. A short video that shows potential clients how they may benefit from your coaching will resonate with others. Those who don't resonate with you or with your offer, won't bother to respond.
Network With Other Coaches
Your competitors do not have to be your enemies. Connect with other coaches, and even go as far as to join a local networking group. You do not cover every aspect of coaching, and they don't either. If you make the right connections, you can start referring clients to each other. Your strengths are their weaknesses, and what they loathe, you may love.
Identify Your Target
Identify your niche — look at what problems you like solving and at prior clients you excelled with. Now, attract your desired clients by doing. Write on topics relevant to them, speak at events, make presentations, add value to their mixers. This gives you credibility via authenticity. When prospective clients view you as part of their landscape, you will feel natural instead of risky.
Spell Out Your Sweet Spot
A targeted branding statement that clearly delineates:
1. who is your ideal client
2. what you can do for them, and answers for the reader
"So what?" and "Why you?" will spell out loud and clear who exactly falls into your sweet spot. Incorporate this messaging into all of your marketing collateral, from your website to LinkedIn to your association profiles.
Know Your Brand And Convey It
Attracting the right clients is all about knowing your brand and being able to convey it the right way. If your target clients are high-powered executives, your branding statement has to hinge on how you can help those executives transcend the competition. Identify and differentiate your value so that your clients can recognize it easily.
Spend Time Where Your Potential Clients Are
The easiest and most efficient way to attract clients is to spend your time where your potential customers are hanging out, and tell them how your coaching can change their life, health, weight, business, or whatever you specialty is. You must get out among your customers and show them why they need you.
Care About People
This is the most important step of all. None of the prior steps will work without this one. As you may have heard, people don’t care what you know until they know you care. With any marketing strategy, offer your benefits and services first.
