Life Coach Marketing Plan
A promotional strategy you can actually run: identifying who you are speaking to, choosing where to reach them, and turning that into a weekly habit rather than an occasional burst.
What it covers
- Who you are speaking to, described by situation rather than demographics
- The one channel you will do properly, and the ones you will not
- What you will publish, and how often, in a rhythm you can keep
- How somebody goes from reading you to booking a conversation
- What to measure, and when to change your mind
What this plan is for
Most new coaches do not have a marketing problem so much as a consistency problem. They post enthusiastically for two weeks, hear nothing back, and stop. A marketing plan exists to replace bursts with a rhythm small enough to keep up while you are also coaching, running the admin and, often, still working another job.
It also exists to stop you marketing to an imaginary audience. Life coaching is bought on trust, and trust starts with people who already know your name. The plan therefore works outward in rings, from people you know, to people who meet your ideal client before you do, to strangers who find what you have written.
Building the plan one ring at a time
Begin with a list of everyone you could reasonably message: former colleagues, friends, people from groups you belong to. For most people this is somewhere between fifty and a few hundred names. The first marketing task is to tell them, individually and plainly, what you now do and who it is for. This is not selling. It is making sure the people most likely to refer you know what to refer.
The second ring is the people who meet your client first. If you coach people returning to work, that might be recruiters, parent groups or career services. If you coach people through a separation, it might be mediators or financial planners. Write down five of them, and plan one useful conversation with each over the first two months.
Only then choose a public channel, and choose one. Pick it by where your client already spends attention, not by where coaches are loudest. Decide what you will publish there (for example, one short post a week answering a question a real client asked) and put the day in your calendar.
Finally, write down the path from reading to booking. Somebody who likes a post needs one obvious next step, usually a short free conversation with a clear booking link. If that step is missing, even good marketing leaks.
Measuring without fooling yourself
Track conversations booked, not likes. Set a review date at twelve weeks and compare the number of first conversations that came from each ring. Most new practices find the network and referral rings produce far more than the public channel at first, which is a reason to keep going with the channel rather than to stop, since content compounds slowly.
Unit 9 of the life coach course covers this in detail, including how to time a referral request so it arrives after the work has settled and how to build relationships with the people who meet your clients first.
A filled-in example
| Speaking to | Parents about to go back to work after a long break, who feel behind |
|---|---|
| Ring one | Personal message to 80 named contacts in weeks 1 and 2 |
| Ring two | Coffee or a call with two recruiters, one parent group organizer and a career adviser |
| Public channel | One professional network only, one post every Tuesday |
| Post source | A question a client or pilot client actually asked that week |
| Next step offered | A twenty-minute call, booked from a single link in every post |
| Measure | First conversations booked, by source, reviewed in week 12 |
Mistakes to avoid
- Starting with strangers. An audience takes months to build. Tell the people who already know you first, because they are the ones most likely to hire you or pass your name on this quarter.
- Choosing a channel because other coaches use it. Coaches cluster where coaches are. Your client may not be there at all. Choose by where the person in your positioning sentence spends time.
- Posting without a next step. Every public piece should end with one clear, low-pressure action. Without it, people who were interested simply move on.
- Changing strategy every two weeks. Set the review date before you start and hold to it. Twelve weeks is the minimum that tells you anything about a channel.
Questions
Do I need to be on every platform?
No, and trying is the most common reason a coaching practice has no marketing at all. One channel done properly for three months beats four done badly.
How long before marketing works?
Longer than the first three clients take, which is why the plan starts with your own network rather than with an audience you do not have yet.
Should I pay for advertising at the start?
Usually not. Paid advertising works best once you know which message makes people book a conversation, and you learn that from the network and referral rings first. Spending before then mostly buys data you could have gathered for free.
Training to be a life coach?
The Life Coach Certification is ten units, an open-book exam and the C.L.C.P designation, from $247 with a 30-day money-back guarantee.