How To Get Coaching Clients?

The word “coaching” can be traced back to the French word “coche,” which means carriage. So, ideally, a coach is one who “carries” or guides a student through all the challenges and hardships! Whether you are helping your clients figure out their dream job, advising them on a diet regime, or improving their finances, you need to get coaching clients to get started! 

Whether you are finding your first client or getting past the hamster wheel of determining your next bunch of clients. You would undoubtedly have come across the million-dollar question — how to get coaching clients?

While learning to attract clients certainly demands some skills, it’s essential to attract the right clients! 

That’s why we have carved a detailed roadmap in this blog! From identifying your niche to the fool-proof marketing strategies for expanding your coaching business, we have covered it all! So, let’s fasten our belts for an adventure ride!

How To Get & Grow Coaching Clients: 12 Strategies to Grow Your Coaching Business

According to ICF Global Coaching, the revenue estimate for the coaching business was $4.564 billion in 2023. So, coaching is undoubtedly a booming business! But the biggest pain point in growing your coaching business is getting new clients!

Here we enlist the 12 best strategies to get coaching clients:

1. Determine your Unique Niche

To start with any business, you need to identify a unique niche. Ensure that your niche aligns with your skills, passion and the market demand. Choosing the right niche is crucial as it influences your business’s success and total revenue.

While you cannot do everything the market demands, you can narrow down the best niches that work for you! An excellent way to do this is to consider your audience’s demographics and psychographic details. We will discuss this in detail in the next section. 

If you plan to start your coaching business, here are a few niche ideas to get you started!

• Personal Development Coaching
• Health and Wellness Coaching
• Mindset Coaching
• Financial Coaching
• Career Coaching
• Parenting Coaching
• Relationship Coaching 

2. Research more about your audience

You might wonder how a few coaching businesses succeed while others don’t make it ahead of a few clients. The key is to get your basics right—thoroughly research your audience.

Here are the key points to perform detailed audience research:

• Demographics and Psychographics

Demographics deal with the measurable characteristics of your audience, such as age, gender, education, income, etc. 

Psychographics involve the audience’s beliefs, interests, values, etc.. Understanding the demographics and the psychographics details is essential for the audience’s holistic understanding. 

For example, if you plan to start a life-coaching business, ask questions like Are your audience predominantly young professionals or retirees? Do they have an interest in personal development? 

• Pain Points and Needs

Identifying the audience’s pain points and needs is essential to offer solutions that resonate with the audience. While your audience might endure challenges, considering their ambitions, aspirations, and needs is essential to offer a unique business. 

For example, consider you are starting a financial coaching business for young professionals. The pain points could include balancing savings and spending, while the aspiration could be to retire early.  

• Building Long-term Relationships

While identifying the demographics and psychographics, needs, challenges, and aspirations is crucial, establishing a long-term relationship is also essential. This involves looking beyond issue resolution and offering a superior user experience!

3. Build Your Professional Website

A professional website is one of the first things potential clients look for when choosing a business. According to BusinessDIT, 84% of people find a professional website more credible than a business’s social media page. 

So, if you still don’t have a website, it’s time to consider building one!

Here’s a checklist of the critical elements of creating a professional website:

• Address the audience’s pain points, needs, aspirations, etc.
• Explain your business’s mission, vision, values
• Create a user-friendly and easily navigable website 
• Include well-placed CTAs and clear enrollment instructions
• Focus on building a unique brand name and voice 
• Ensure that your website is SEO-friendly to gain more online visibility 
• Diversify your services by selling both live sessions and self-paced courses

Take for example, Christine Gutierrez’s website. She is a self-worth coach who offers her services through courses & programs, coaching services, events, etc. Her website is a visually-appealing and a clean copy. She clearly states her offerings and conveys much with a minimalistic design! 

Source: Christine. tv

 

4. Set up Discovery Calls & Personalized Follow – Ups

Over 50% of the prospects you encounter aren’t ideal for selling your offerings. Discovery calls or breakthrough sessions are an excellent way to screen your prospects. They are the first and most important call of your entire sales process.

So, what happens in a discovery call?

Here, you understand your client’s requirements and whether your services fit in. Simply put, you find out if you and your clients can work together!

A free appointment scheduling software like Calendly is a great tool for scheduling discovery calls. Connect the software with your calendar to send links and confirm your availability.

Once you are done with the call, remember to send a follow-up acknowledging their interest and time. 

Here’s what your follow-up should include:

• A brief summary of your conversation
• Pricing details
• Enrollment details
• Starting date for coaching sessions 
• Attractive CTA stating your plan of action

5. Offer a Free Coaching Session

You might wonder how to get clients as a life coach or any other niche-specific coach initially. A free coaching session is an excellent way to give a fair idea of your offering! Although it might be a bit overwhelming to give a free session when you are just starting, offering value without return works here!

Most importantly, it helps to build trust and paves the way for further consultations. 

Given below is a free coaching session by Sherren Edkins, an inspirational leader and performance coach.

Source: Sherrenedkins

6. Build Your Email List

You would have certainly come across the expression — “The money is on the list!”. Targeting your potential clients through social media and paid advertisement is important. However, tapping into the power of email lists is a smart move!

Do you already have an email list? Then, you have got your first set of potential leads! While you might wonder if email marketing still works, the answer is yes! 

With an ROI of $36 for every dollar spent, email marketing is an indispensable tool.

Alternatively, you can build an email list from scratch using personalized landing pages, CTAs, referral programs, and other methods. 

What can you include in your emails?

• Send weekly newsletter updates about industry trends or case studies
• Mention the product announcements or feature-upgradation
• Share your informative and engaging blog posts
• Include detailed how-to-guides on a specific topic
• Occasionally, promote your business or ask for discovery calls
• Host contests and giveaways or offer product discounts and offers

An ideal ratio for email content is 90% educational and 10% promotional. Ensure your CTAs are clear, concise, and well-placed, and perform A/B testing before finalizing your emails.

For example, this email from Udemy offers interesting insights on having a learning culture at your workplace. At the end, there’s a well-placed download infographic button. Once you click on it, you are redirected to actual information and an interesting bait—infographics. You get the infographics only after you enter some essential details.      

 

7. Nail Your SEO-Content Strategy

Do you wish to build a credible coaching business?

Establish a long-term content marketing strategy to deliver some great content and build relationships along the way. Whether you create engaging blog posts, an insightful YouTube trends video, or even social media posts, a killer strategy is essential!

This helps to establish authority as a coach and scale your coaching business! 

Here are a few pointers for an effective content marketing strategy:

• Determine your offerings — whether you are selling an online course, group coaching session, or one-on-one sessions.
• Research the trending topics and ideas for your coaching niche. 
• Identify the most relevant keywords that align with user intent and optimize your content accordingly.
• Adopt a practical content framework like Hub Spoke or Pillar framework.
• Choose the right platform for your content and optimize it according to the platform

8. Leverage Social Media

When starting out as a coach, there is one common question you might come across! How to market your coaching business? Apart from creating a professional website, building a strong social media presence is an amazing marketing strategy.

With 5.05 billion social media users, social media is not just a choice but a necessity to grow your coaching business! Reaching a global audience, increasing your brand visibility, direct engagement, and targeted marketing are a few advantages of social media marketing.

Facebook is suited for different content types, such as blog posts, live streaming, groups, ads, etc. Instagram is for targeting a younger audience and is perfect for sharing visually appealing content, such as videos, images, reels, etc. 

With LinkedIn, you can establish yourself as a thought leader. You can share practical career tips, advice or the latest trends in the coaching business on LinkedIn. Furthermore, it is an ideal place to create connections and hop on to your next discovery call!

Here are some effective social media practices to get coaching clients:

• Create an engaging poll or online survey to understand the audience’s expectations
• Maintain consistency across all social media platforms to create unique branding
• Focus on one social media platform for a month and then explore other platforms
• Include a link to your coaching services in your social media bio
• Create a social media content calendar for consistency
• Use analytics tools like Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics to track your social media performance

Duolingo is known for its phenomenal marketing strategy on TikTok. It employs the Flicker, Flash, and Flare framework by posting videos related to trends, and in an episodic content format.

Source: Duolingo/ TikTok

9. Start a YouTube Channel

As a coach, you might have to struggle with the inherent question of how to get life-coaching clients. Starting a YouTube channel could be one way to achieve a six-figure business! 

With 2.5 billion users, YouTube is the second-largest search engine. If you are confident speaking on-screen, set the right lighting, and just roll on the cameras!

Many coaches have created an astounding empire on YouTube! 

Creating a YouTube channel helps you use content marketing as a sales funnel to build your business.

Here’s an exciting sales funnel for your YouTube channel:

• Create a searchable content
• Offer a lead magnet
• Mention a link in the description that leads to the lead magnet
• Email Sequence
• End it with the final purchase offer

For instance, consider Tony Robbins’s YouTube channel. The channel features amazing videos, podcasts, success tips, and testimonials.

In one of the video descriptions, Robbins includes a link to his Business Mastery program. Clicking on the link redirects to the program. People who are inspired by the videos would certainly click on the link.

 

10. Ask For Referrals

Growing your business might not happen overnight; it is a long-term process! Referrals are an effective way to get more clients. The first step is to identify who can refer you to these clients. It could be your family or friends, previous clients, professional network, etc. 

If your previous clients love your coaching services, ask them to share the referral link in their existing network. Ask your family and friends to share information about business with their acquaintances. You never know from where you might land your first set of clients!

Next, create a referral system to reward your clients with incentives, free sessions, or workshops. The ideal time to ask for referrals is after payment, during a follow-up call, newsletter, etc. 

11. Get Interviewed on a Podcast Channel, Start Your Podcast

You might have heard the phrase—it’s not about what you know, but what you share! Podcasts are a great medium to share your experience and insights and prove yourself as a domain expert. You can appear in the podcasts of other successful coaches or start your own podcast channel.

Getting interviewed on other podcasts helps you reach a wider audience. While your podcast might seem like a mere dialogue, it’s an opportunity to prove how your services are unique. It helps build trust among your listeners!

Remember to ask your host to mention your channels or portfolio in the podcast show notes for discoverability! Platforms like podcastsguests.com, podmatch, and podbooker are great ways to connect podcasters with guests.

Do you wish to build your own audience? Start your podcast channel; invite experts and influencers from related niches. This helps to tap into their audience! Coaching Life, The Coacher’s Journey, and Holistic Health Radio are a few popular podcast channels.

Consider the Coach’s Journey podcast community by Robbie Swale. It’s an amazing community where different coaches share their journeys, insights, and tips for growing their coaching businesses.

 

12. Promote with Paid Advertising

Are your organic methods in stagnancy? Or do you need a quick way to gain more visibility? Paid Advertising offers a host of benefits to grow your coaching business. From search engines to social media platforms, paid ads are an indispensable tool. 

Its primary benefits are targeted reach, increased brand awareness and visibility, and measurable results. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google are popular platforms for paid advertising. 

Although you have to incur the initial advertisement cost, it provides an essential boost to your business.

So, how do we get started? The first step is to choose the right platform based on demographics, interests, location, age, etc.

Here are the best platforms to promote your coaching business:

• Facebook ads
• Google Adwords
• Linked In Ads
• TikTok Ads 

With its enormous 3.1 million user base, Facebook stands out as an effective platform for targeted ads. If you have a solid offering to captivate your audience, Facebook ads are the perfect choice! Further, small budgets and deep engagement also add to its advantages.

What are the Different Models to Get Coaching Clients?

While there are many coaching models, you must know which one suits your business best. 

Let’s take a look at the prominent coaching models that experts swear by:

1. Cohort Coaching Model: This coaching model involves offering coaching sessions to cohorts or a class of like-minded learners. Group coaching helps improve knowledge retention and reduce the dropout percentage. This model can work for more generalized coaching.
   
2. One-to-one coaching model: This involves delivering a private coaching session for more personalized guidance. It comes most close to the traditional coaching model.
   
3. Blended Coaching: If you want to combine the best of both worlds, blended coaching works best for you. You can combine online platforms to communicate and get feedback while using face-to-face sessions to build a great rapport.

Once you have figured out the suitable coaching model for your business, it’s time you choose an excellent solution to implement these models!

How To Grow Your Coaching Business with Pinlearn?

If you are looking for a comprehensive platform to grow your online coaching business, Pinlearn is what you need!

Here’s an exhaustive list of features that make Pinlearn ideal for coaching business:

• User-friendly interface: Pinlearn’s dynamic and robust dashboard is easy to navigate. It also includes detailed analytics to create and manage coaching sessions and courses.

• Live Tutoring Sessions: Coaches can host live one-to-one and group coaching sessions through Zoom and LessonSpace.

• Sell Online Courses: Coaches can also create, upload, and sell courses using multiple learning methods, such as videos, PDFs, ebooks, audios, etc. The courses could be either paid or free.

• Convenient Payment Gateways: Pinlearn facilitates convenient and secure payments through popular payment gateways like Stripe. 

• Interactive Whiteboard: Integrate a real-time interactive learning environment with Zoom and LessonSpace integration.

• Recorded Sessions: Learners can download recorded live sessions for future use.

Conclusion

This blog offers a comprehensive guide on how to get coaching clients with proven strategies. While there is no silver bullet to growing your client base, the trick is to find what works best for you!

You can start with organic methods like creating blog posts, YouTube channels, and social media platforms and then move on to paid ads. No matter what strategy you adopt, spend time researching your audience and having an effective plan to move forward! 

Leverage several strategies instead of relying solely on the benefits of one! Remember to measure the performance of each strategy and make improvements along your learning curve!

FAQs Related to How to Get Coaching Clients

1. How to get your first life coaching client?

The best way to get life coaching clients is to establish yourself as an authoritative figure. Answer their queries in an engaging way and convert the leads to clients.

2. How to market your coaching business?

Create blog posts, YouTube videos, podcast channels, and paid advertisements to market your coaching services.

3. What are the strategies to attract high-pay range clients?

Demonstrate your expertise by sharing your knowledge, tips and latest trends on different platforms. Send them connection requests or schedule discovery calls to increase your chances of conversion.