Like it or not, marketing is a massive part of running a business. As a life coach, your experience lies in helping others, offering advice and ensuring your clients fulfil their goals.
You’re a great listener, you’re empathetic and you have a wealth of knowledge to share. But when it comes to marketing, many of us fall short and just don’t really know what we should be doing, and what will work best.
But we have little choice, especially in the early days of running a life coaching business. It doesn’t matter how talented we are at what we do if no one knows about it! You have to get your name out there and promote your services. You have to make your business stand out from the crowd, so potential clients pick you, and not the competition, when they’re looking to hire the services of a life coach.
Marketing doesn’t need to be scary and daunting. It can actually be fun, and when the work starts flooding in, you’ll soon see how advantageous a good marketing campaign can be for your life coaching career.
So let’s take a look at some marketing tactics that could work well for your life coaching business…
Image is everything
First impressions count, so before you start handing out business cards or posting on Facebook, be sure to have your business branding well developed.
Portraying professionalism is vital, in order to give your business credibility.
Choose a name that represents you and what you offer and try to make it memorable. You should also consider a catchy strap line that can used across your marketing materials, again, try to pick something that will stick in people’s minds.
Then you need a stylish logo. Think about how you’ll use it. It needs to look as good on your business cards and website as it does on social media. If you will be advertising in newspapers, then you’ll also want to think about how it will look in black and white. Unless you have excellent design skills yourself, it could be well worth hiring a graphic designer to create an outstanding logo for you.
The concept of image also carries over into the detail.
A website that isn’t mobile-friendly, or a Facebook post with a spelling error, will reflect badly on your business.
You need to give the impression that you’re a proficient, detail-oriented person. Careless mistakes don’t reflect well on any business.
Whenever you create written content, it’s a good idea to have at least one other person check it over for errors before you publish it.
If you don’t have anyone with a good eye for detail who can help you, consider hiring the services of a professional proofreader, or at the very least, use Grammarly.
Showcase your credentials
You know your life coaching skills are second to none, but how do you prove that to an audience that has never met you? How do you make your life coaching business stand out from all the others?
One way is to become a certified life coach and display these credentials on all your marketing materials.
By taking a life coaching course that rewards its students with certification on completion, you have something that makes you notable. Is someone going to choose the certified life coach over the life coach with no way to prove their credentials? Of course they are!
If you’ve considered life coach training but have been put off by the cost and inconvenience of it all, then it’s time to take another look as life coach training is totally achievable for anyone, without it costing a fortune or taking endless months to complete.
Look for short courses that can be completed within just a few weeks, courses that provide valuable training and give you a certificate for your efforts.
Choose a course that suits your own routine. Do you need to study at weekends? Would you prefer to learn remotely?
Our life coaching course starts at just $247 and can be completed online in your own time.
Have outstanding social media content
Social media marketing is a cost-effective form of advertising that can be very powerful if you get it right.
The key to great social media content is to make it relevant to the reader. No one wants a stream of posts that are all pure advertising. We get enough adverts in our feeds as it is.
To develop a fan base, to grab the attention of a wider audience, you need to offer value. It’s well worth spending time creating content that people actually find useful or enjoy.
Instead of simply telling them what you offer, you could provide a fun quiz that helps the reader find their ideal career.
You could share a list of tips for writing the perfect resume, or suggest techniques to use to combat nerves when making a speech.
People stay subscribed when they feel future content could be of interest to them, so you need to keep it interesting!
It’s also important to keep your posts reasonably regular. While you don’t want to overdo it and leave people feeling overwhelmed by your volume of posts, if a potential client sees that you haven’t posted in six months, it would not come as a surprise if they presume you’ve gone out of business and move on to the next life coach in their search results.
Don’t miss an opportunity to promote your services
Every person you reach out to could be a potential client, and every advert you place, no matter how small, could bring in new business, so never overlook a chance to spread the word.
Of course, the cost of putting a full-page advert in the national press is likely to be prohibitive, but if you look for them, you’ll find plenty of lower-cost ways to promote your life coaching business.
Look for local magazines such as church newsletters and business directories.
ook for opportunities to sponsor local events such as school fairs or local sports teams.
Are there stands available at career fairs? Could you volunteer your time offering free advice to people in need? You’d be doing a good deed while gathering some very positive exposure.
Be sure to keep business cards with you at all times, so you can easily pass on your website and contact details to anyone who may be interested.
Look for local networking events, where local businesspeople gather together to share their experiences and expertise, and make contacts.
Anyone you meet could one day need a life coach, so plant the seed now, and make sure, when the time comes, that it is your name that springs to mind.
