Marketing yourself as a life coach is key to attracting clients

If you’re a life coach, you want to find life coaching clients. Finding life coaching clients requires marketing yourself. When it comes to marketing, you’ll want to learn the basic foundations of marketing and how to use marketing to attract coaching clients.

Marketing life coaching is different than marketing other businesses

Marketing yourself as a life coach is different than say, marketing widgets for a company or selling financial services.

When you’re marketing yourself, it can bring up a lot of thoughts like:

• Who cares what I have to offer? Nobody wants to buy coaching from me.
• Why should anyone listen to me? There are lots of other coaches out there.
  
• I don’t want to market. I’ll just wait until the clients come to me.

Marketing yourself can also bring up lots of feelings like:

• Feeling self-conscious or inadequate about sharing images of yourself, telling your story, or “going live” on social media
• Worrying about what people will think or say about you when you do talk about your coaching business
• Feeling scared that you’ll mess up or look stupid when you’re marketing yourself.

All of these thoughts and feelings are normal when you’re starting to get visible as a life coach. You’re putting yourself out there and that can be scary. The more you can work on managing them, the better you’ll become at marketing.

How to market yourself authentically as a life coach

So you know you need to do marketing for your business, and you know what you don’t want to do. The question is, How can you market your business in a way that feels good to you and for your audience?  

The way to market yourself authentically is about showing up as your true self, using your gifts and talents, and connecting with those you can serve. It really does come down to that.

Marketing is sharing what you do; selling is inviting people to work with you. The more you can adopt that mentality and make it part of your daily life as a life coach, the easier it becomes.

Here are 7 tips to market yourself as a life coach

1. Show up as your authentic self.

Coaching is a very personal business. When someone hires you as their life coach, they are putting a lot of trust and faith in you. That trust actually starts being established in your marketing. You want to use your marketing to help people get to know you and trust you, so that they will feel comfortable hiring you as their life coach. Don’t be afraid to show up as the real you and be authentic in your marketing.

2. Don’t try to be anyone’s savior or guru.

Any life coach worth their salt knows that coaching is not about giving the client answers but about helping the clients find their own answers. (In my mind, coaching is about removing the blocks so the client can see the answers that are already there.) Your life coaching client should be at the center; not you. People want to hire life coaches who can help them get what they want; not coaches that have a million followers.  Focus more on sharing how you can help your clients get the results and experiences they want and less on vanity metrics like follower count.

3. Focus on building relationships.

People hire people, not brands. This is true especially in the coaching industry. While in the past, people may have flocked to a specific expert due to name recognition, we now make decisions based on who we personally connect with. It’s more effective to focus on providing value and building relationships, versus simply paying for space in a social media feed and hoping for a decent conversion rate. Find your life coaching niche and then make sure you’re speaking their language in your marketing copy.

4. Identify your ideal life coaching clients.

Many a life coach has uttered the words, “I don’t want to choose a niche. I just want to coach everyone!” A coach (or any small business) who tries to appeal to everyone will appeal to no one. (Meaning, your messaging and marketing will be watered down and will fail to reach the right folks.) This is exactly why you want to identify your coaching niche. ideal clients. Take time truly understand those you want to serve. Don’t be afraid to narrow down to the specific type of person you would love to work with and speak directly to them… that’s exactly what will attract those right fit clients.

5. Be able to articulate what makes you unique as a life coach.

Messaging is a really important part of marketing; some would say the most important part! The words you use — whether on your website, your Instagram feed or your podcast — need to resonate with those you want to serve. You also want to be able to articulate the value of working with you as a life coach. When you can communicate what working with you is like, and what makes you unique, you will attract the people who want what you have to offer. It’s worth taking the time to get your message right since it will magnetize your audience.

6. Choose a few key marketing activities to market your coaching business.

When you’re a new life coach, you need to experiment with marketing strategies to see what works. If you don’t know where to start, you can check out this list of ways to market your business. But you can’t possibly do all the things all the time; it’s not sustainable. Instead, you want to hone in on 3-5 key marketing activities that you can learn and improve over time that generate the most results for your business. Yes, you’ll have to do some experimenting to find out what those are. If you need help in this area, hiring a marketing coach is a great idea!

7. Work on your mindset around marketing.

Many life coaches and other purpose-driven entrepreneurs have a mindset that marketing is “evil” and so they want to avoid it. Yes, marketing can be used to manipulate. But marketing is also how good and reputable companies and coaches get out there and share their services with clients. No one will known about you if you don’t market your business. Explore the limiting thoughts and beliefs you have around marketing and be willing to shift them to see another way. Remember that, like anything, you are in charge of your attitude, approach, and your actions. Market your business from a place of wholeness and worthiness.

How to start marketing yourself as a life coach

If you’re a new life coach and just getting started with marketing, check out this article on Marketing For Coaches: The Ultimate Guide for Attracting Clients.  This guide takes you through all the foundational steps of marketing for your life coaching practice.

If you want deeper, expert support in clarifying your niche, defining your messaging, and  developing a marketing strategy that allows you connect with life coaching clients, schedule a free consultation today.