For coaches, clients are the very lifeblood of their business.
Aren’t they?
I know it can be overwhelming to get more clients, especially if you’ve just started your coaching business.
Also, I understand how critical it is for you to attract a steady stream of clients to grow in a competitive environment.
If you’re a coach struggling to get new clients, this post will teach you how to attract more of your ideal clients at the right times.
While you have to attract clientele, accepting just any kind shouldn’t be your strategy. You want to work with clients that you’re best equipped to help or the ones that can benefit from your services.
So here is the big question: What can you do to attract the right clients online and keep your business growing consistently?
You probably have asked this question or likely heard it several times already.
People looking for your services aren’t going to knock at your door unless you build an excellent online presence that is an exact representation of your brand or business.
Social media is one of the best places to make your presence felt.
From a unique selling proposition and networking skills to smart marketing and sales strategies, it's essential to learn how social media can help you achieve all of these goals.
Let me say it upfront that there’s no silver bullet. To excel and succeed, you have to work on your skills to network, build relationships, and strategically market your brand.
I’ll tell you how you can leverage social media to get your coaching clients fast and with ease.
💥Related Post: What Is A Business Coach?
How To Get Coaching Clients Online
For businesses, social media is no longer optional.
It’s a powerful platform to engage and connect with existing and potential clients.
Why? Because it allows you to prove that you’re an expert coach.
Most importantly, it opens up endless opportunities to build and nurture relationships with your audience, and eventually, conversions.
Before we dive into how to use social media to get coaching clients fast, let me list why social media is critical to succeeding in the coaching business.
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Show the world how your brand keeps its promises
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Establish yourself as a thought leader
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Build your audience trust
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Find and connect with the right people at the right times
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Partner with influencers
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Run ads to acquire new clients quickly
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Increase brand awareness
Here are 12 ways to get more coaching clients online:
1. Find An Audience
Social media is a massive place where billions of people share and seek information every day. Facebook alone has over 1.8 billion daily active users.
Let’s say you’re a leadership coach. You certainly don’t want to attract everybody on social media.
Your audience is likely to be individual leaders who need tailored help to become more effective leaders.
Am I right?
Or, if you’re a life coach, you need to find people who want to make progress in their lives to attain greater fulfillment.
No matter what coaching services you provide, there has to be a target audience interested in your products or services.
Let me put it this way: only a small chunk of people on social media would genuinely like to engage with your content because you’re not selling something that everyone should buy.
Therefore, your success would largely depend on your ability to identify that particular market segment and its needs.
The first and the most crucial step is to find that audience and learn about their interests. Then you can focus on tactics to continuously grow your audience.
The more people who know your name, the bigger your business or brand will be.
And if you are struggling to figure out how to grow an organic audience of your ideal people feel free to add these four steps to your daily life or marketing strategy and make sure to download our Customer Avatar Worksheet to learn who your ideal coaching clients are.
How to grow an audience in 4 steps:
1. Build Authentic Relationships With Your Audience
Your ideal clients are already out there looking for your services.
All you have to do is connect and build relationships with them using high-quality, relevant content.
2. Meet Them Where They Are
There are hundreds of social media sites. What platform should you choose for marketing your brand?
I would say be there where they are.
For example, if your audience is business professionals, you don’t want to miss out on Linkedin.
Likewise, if your audience likes to consume visually appealing content, go find them on Instagram or TikTok.
But there are universal platforms like Facebook and Twitter that host all kinds of people, and you should add these platforms to your social media marketing strategy.
Talk to your existing clients to learn more about their social media habits or what platforms they like to spend their time on.
You can even post polls and ask your audience what they prefer!
3. Have More Conversations
Long-term success on social media has more to do with how you have more conversations with your ideal audience.
Most businesses fail to engage their audience because they create generic, run-of-the-mill content.
Don’t be one of them - create valuable content that could drive your audience to start conversations.
Do your keyword research and answer the questions of your target audience, solve their problems, meet them where they are and make them feel like they are important.
4. Know What Your Ideal Audience Wants To Talk About
Having a clear picture of your ideal customer or client would make it easy for you to understand their problems. And we know people love to discuss their problems online.
For example, if your audience is CEOs, they might be talking about strategies to navigate a team or partners. Your job is to create content around those hot topics.
I’ll talk about how you can create interesting content later in this post. Stay tuned!
When you follow these four steps, it becomes easy to grow an audience of raving fans who just love to like, comment, and engage with your content online.
And that’s where you spot opportunities to turn your social media following into paying clients.
Now let's go into step two in how to attract more coaching clients.
2. Create A Plan
We created a plan for our blog in 2017 to write and publish at least one new blog post a week.
At that time, we had like two organic visitors a month.
After following the plan we set in place, we have grown our blog to around 50,000 readers a month.
It wouldn’t have been easy for us to grow our audience so quickly without a plan.
We knew where we were at that time, where we would like to be in a couple of years, and what strategies we need to use to achieve our goals.
As a coach, you know the importance of having a plan to combat specific personal and professional issues.
Just like you use strategies or planning to help your clients navigate through their problems, you can use the same approach to develop a solid client acquisition plan for yourself.
Ask yourself the following questions to prepare a client acquisition plan:
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Who is your audience?
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What are they looking for on social media?
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What kind of content would fit the context?
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What metrics should you follow?
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Who is going to do what tasks?
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Is your plan in alignment with what matters?
In this post, I’ll be talking about most of the things you need to cover in your plan.
3. Spend More Time Marketing Yourself Than Serving Your Clients
This means exactly what it says. Obviously, you will still serve your clients at an amazing level but you have to make sure you are taking care of yourself as well.
If you are in the weeds serving your client’s needs and doing the work for them, when will you have the time to do the things necessary to grow your own business?
When will you have the time to build a tribe online so you can get more clients?
Therefore, take some time out of your busy schedule and think about addressing your own advertising and client acquisition needs. That’s the only way to achieve sustainable growth.
One of the best things you can do to market yourself is paid advertising.
When done strategically, social media advertising can produce fast results for your business.
While marketing tactics like SEO require plenty of time before they generate tangible results, running an ad on Facebook can produce hundreds of leads in a matter of a few days.
Generally, it’s ideal to have a mix of paid and organic marketing. But I can’t recommend social ads enough when your client base is drying up and you need to get clients fast.
There is also an organic path to growth. There are many extremely successful entrepreneurs, business owners, and influencers who have grown to millions of followers and millions of dollars from organic growth.
However, be cautious that either path you take it could take some time to see the results you desire.
Sometimes it takes a few tries to get your messaging just right or to get your offer just right. So, try not to get discouraged if you don't get it right in the first try.
4. Create Interesting Content
💥 Related Post: 3 Types Of Content You Should Be Creating Everyday
Powerful content can help us achieve two major goals: revenue and impact.
Being a coach, you’re likely to have plenty of content ideas to inspire your audience because you’re creating content to solve their problems. Just make sure your online content reflects the interests of your ideal audience or person.
For example, if you’re a personal coach, it might be a good idea to create small videos talking about things like mental toughness or work/life balance.
Let me list some of the popular types of content you can create on social media:
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Written blogs, articles, guides, etc.
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Ebooks
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Images
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Videos
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Live video
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Infographics
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Contests
While there’s no wrong type of content, some of them are more effective than others. Sort out what suits your brand and what kind of content your audience likes to interact with.
Live video is probably an ideal form of content for coaches.
Whatever content type you create to engage your social media audience, make sure to align your messaging strategy. Everything you create or share must be valuable and relevant.
Besides, don’t forget to promote your existing content on social media.
5. Spend Time Engaging With People Online
Did you know brands who engage on social media get higher loyalty rates from their customers?
There’s no use of social media if you can’t find time to engage your people on a business level and also on a personal level when it makes sense.
The more you engage with people who are interested in things similar to your business or brand, the more people will start to follow and resonate with your message and services.
Let’s say you want to share a great video on Facebook. To engage your audience, ask questions at the end of the video or anything you share so that viewers can share their thoughts.
For example, ask them whether or not your content was helpful.
When you discuss your audience’s problems in your content, it boosts engagement. People really want to hear about things that make them stop in their tracks.
Another valuable technique is to comment on your audiences’ posts and you can even take it a step further and go comment on your competitors posts.
If their content is somehow relevant to your business, feel free to be a part of the conversation. But don’t just say something for the sake of saying something.
Simply put, do whatever you can to become top of mind with the people who matter the most.
6. Use Podcasting
⭐ Related Post: How To Promote Your Podcast
Let’s face it, getting noticed on social media can be pretty challenging. Podcasting can be helpful when the goal is to stand out.
Most businesses quit after creating a few episodes. They don’t know that real fun begins when podcasters show consistency.
Podcasting is an effective way to get people to recognize you as an expert in your field. Remember, it becomes easy to get more coaching clients online when people trust you. And that’s where you’re in a position to charge more for your services.
Have you ever noticed why some of the leading international coaches use podcasting to grow their revenue and following?
There’s no reason you should miss out on podcasting.
Either create a podcast, market the one you’ve already recorded, or be a guest on other podcasts to help you get exposed to more people.
Social media is an ideal place to promote your podcasts.
We have recently launched two podcasts:
7. Share Your Stories
If you’re not sure what to share with your audience, share your stories. I am sure you’ve some pretty amazing stories about how you helped your clients succeed.
Modern consumers like to see real-time demonstrations of how a product or service can help them.
You can tell your own story about how you become a coach. But your stories should be exciting - who does like to hear a boring story?
It’s not difficult to find a platform to tell interesting stories. Is it?
Seriously, this is as simple as going Live on Facebook or any other social media platform to tell whatever story you want.
Or even getting on Clubhouse and practicing speaking in front of people.
Clubhouse gives you the opportunity to quickly learn how to learn how to tell your story well or what messaging works best to get new clients or build amazing relationships with cool people around the world.
Be personable and interesting and let this be a way for people to really get to know you. This is a great way for people to get to see your personality and quirky traits.
Besides, telling your story is a critical part of building a great personal brand. Just be authentic - your prospective clients can feel when something doesn't feel right.
The end goal here is to connect with your target audience at a more serving and personal level.
8. Use Blogging
⭐ Related Post: How To Create A Blog Post From Start To Finish
This one is an old, evergreen technique to get more business online. I believe blogging is a highly recommended client acquisition strategy for entrepreneurs and coaches.
You probably feel the need for building authority among your audience. That’s exactly where blogging can help you out.
But where should you blog?
You can create a blog and share it on your site and social media. Or, you can publish your content on other reputable platforms related to your industry.
Harvard Business Review, Inc, and Forbes are a few of leading platforms for coaches to share their content.
Contributing articles on such resources get you exposed to a new audience that you normally wouldn’t reach.
This also creates Author Rank in the search engines which is very important when you are trying to get rankings in the search engines.
Author Rank is Google’s search algorithm that scores your content online. Just like search engines rank websites based on various factors, Google now ranks authors based on the following factors:
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Social sharing of your posts
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Engagement with your content
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Authority on other social networks
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Quality of backlinks
We published only four articles to SEJ in 2020 and reached over 30,000 new people.
So it's pretty interesting to see the amount of new people and new audiences you can reach just by writing one blog article for someone else.
Isn’t it amazing how small efforts can create a big impact for a long period of time. We have blogs that we published years ago that are still getting thousands of views today.
9. Engage In Facebook Groups
Believe me or not, you can get new clients from Facebook groups. I’ve seen many coaches and business leaders engaging with their target audience on the platform and generating a stream of leads for their business.
Even if you don’t have your Facebook page, you can join relevant groups and be a part of all those valuable conversations happening there.
Here is an example:
Let’s say you offer start-up business coaching services.
Now, you can browse through all the popular Facebook groups such as Young Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneur Hustle, or TED. And find entrepreneurs talking about the hardships they’re facing while building a new business.
Go even further and join in on those conversations and add any value where you can. You can even comment and answer questions on post or small acts like that.
Here is another example:
Let’s say people following Marie Forleo's on social media are the people you want to reach.
Now, you go to her Facebook page and see who comments on her posts and become friends with her. See what her audience is interested in or what they're talking about.
If you want her people to comment on your posts, then go find those people and start engaging with them.
See, how easy it could be to reach and engage your audience if you think smart and look for opportunities at the right places?
10. Use LinkedIn
As a coach, you can’t ignore platforms like Linkedin where over 760 million professionals have built their presence.
The platform hosts all types of individuals: employees, CEOs, brands, influencers, industry leaders, marketers, you name it.
If a person is on LinkedIn, they are already in the business mode so this is a great environment to bring in professional clients.
For example, if you build a relationship with someone on Facebook, go and engage with them on LinkedIn and start building your relationship there too. You should do this across all relevant social media platforms.
I guess you’ve probably signed up on Linkedin - I am not going to talk about Linkedin basics here. But let me give you some quick tips on how to make your Linkedin presence more fruitful:
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Get your profile to appear at the top of search results. For example, if you’re a business coach, your profile should show up at the top somewhere when someone searches for business coaching services on the platform.
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Make sure to carefully fill out the summary and experience sections of your profile.
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Update your status regularly to help your audience know what you’re up to.
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Connect to at least 100 people who could be your best clients.
The more you connect with others, the more you'll see the power of knowing the right people.
11. Create Videos
Video drives engagement more than anything on the web.
While scrolling through social media, what do you prefer to see? A video or a text-based piece of content?
Do you know why we like to consume video content? Because the human brain finds it easy to process information presented in a visual form.
Regardless of what platform you want to use to acquire more clients, be sure to create high-quality videos that show the personal side of your business.
It would be a good idea to create a series of videos highlighting how your coaching programs are making a difference or adding value to your existing clients’ lives.
The more visual content you create, the more opportunities you’re likely to get online. Live video streaming is probably one of the best things you can do to communicate with your audience.
Need to see examples?
Take a look at one of my Live streaming sessions in the TEC group on Facebook:
We’ve also created a YouTube video that tells how to create videos for different platforms to reach different audiences.
Your audience is on different platforms. The more places you can meet your audience, the better and bigger you become.
12. Engage With Hashtags
Finding the right hashtags can be the difference between getting potential clients and getting lost in the noise.
Before you start using hashtags, define your goals.
Will you be using hashtags to contribute to conversations or to discover content? You can do both, but the key thing here is to reach the right audience.
Do hashtag research to find hashtags that have around 200k or fewer posts.
It’s important because you need to use hashtags that are smaller or mid-range so your content can actually get seen and not lost in millions of other posts.
Also, the people using the smaller hashtags are probably using them to grow their business just like you. So, it’s a great way to connect with similar business and life coaches online.
Spend time caring and engaging with people like this on the internet.
How To Get Coaching Clients Fast
Let me give you a couple of pro tips:
PRO TIP #1
This is a simple one.
Listen to your current clients to know what they are asking for. Listen to what they need right now.
Then create a new service or offer that solves that exact problem. Sell more to the clients who are already paying you.
PRO TIP #2
Use the #R3MAT method, which means create the right message and put it in front of the right people, and at the right time.
Let me explain it further with the help of an example:
Let’s say you’re a life coach. Look at your current audience on social media no matter how small or big it is. And focus on what they’re talking about right now.
Once you identify the right conversation, be a part of it. Make an offer right there to win their attention.
You make that offer because that's what your people want right now.
They may not be interested in your signature program, but they’re likely to sign up for your new offer because they’re ready to take any help that could make their life easier.
They don’t know what they're going to get to do with their family this year.
So, it’s time for you to step in as a life coach with a four week series on dealing with stress through holidays and coach them through it.
You have to sell people something they is relevant to them to where they are and what they are going through.
Wondering why everything I’ve talked about in this post is important?
Needless to mention that it’s becoming very difficult for coaches to handle the intense competition.
You need to leverage social media and pay attention to things I’ve discussed in this post to set yourself apart.
While coaching is one of the fastest-growing professions, your objective is to find the right clients in an excessively crowded environment.
You don’t want to be too selective, but working with the wrong people can have a negative impact on your bottom line.
If you really want people to listen and pay attention to you, you’ve to consider implementing these strategies: planning, finding the right audience, content creation, social media marketing strategies, paid ads, and so on.
All of these efforts will make it easy for you to grow your online tribe.
When you use these strategies to build relationships with the right people and inspire them with your online presence, your ideal clients would be waiting for any offer you make.
Because you have pulled them into you with no gimmicks or games.
Final Thoughts
You can’t afford to give up on reaching new audiences and putting your business in front of potential clients.
But unlike others in the coaching business, you need to be smart in your marketing efforts.
