You have just become certified to offer life coaching services, but now you must start the hard work of finding people to offer your services to. 

As a new life coaching business, where can you go and what marketing strategies can you use, to find new clients and grow your business?

In this blog post, I will give you ideas, to help you implement some effective client attraction, by using current and easy strategies that work, so you can start getting clients in a short space of time as possible. 

What You Will Learn in This Blog Post:

• How to get coaching clients without a website 
  • Networking events
  • Ask friends or family
  • Tap into your business community or circles
• How to get coaching clients on Facebook
• How to market your coaching business
  • Blogging and guest posting for life coaching clients
  • How to get life coaching clients with paid ads
  • How to get life coaching clients from guest podcasting
  • How to get life coaching clients by starting a YouTube channel

How To Get Coaching Clients Without a Website 

Whilst having a website can act as your business card, in the event you’d like to demonstrate expertise and professionalism, you do not need one to start getting clients to your life coaching business, if it is not a priority for you from the start. 

Just remember, that along the way, prospects may request to see some type of content or material to prove your experience and to even take you seriously, so decide what that is going to be, in the absence of a website. 

So let’s say that you’d like to start your coaching business without a website, how can you attract clients?

Networking events

One way to do this is to attend networking events that are related to your niche. This is the best place that you can find real people to talk to, to build a relationship with and possibly open the lines to work with them, one day. 

Now you’re probably thinking, isn’t there a better way to attract clients without leaving my house?

Well yes there is, but I’d like you to consider the possibilities that networking has when you actually meet people in person. 

The relationship is built so much quicker, plus the fact that you committed time to showing up at a networking event, already shows that you are committed to your business and people are likely to trust you faster. 

Think about it this way. Would you rather give your money to someone you have seen in person and met a couple times, or someone who is behind a computer screen? 

I don’t know about you, but there is something about meeting someone in person, that can really help you seal the deal.

Here’s how to find the right networking event for you:

Step 1

The easiest place to find the most relevant networking event, is by using the internet to see what’s going on.

Sites like Meetup.com, Facebook groups or local organisation websites, provide you with some good information on the type of networking events there are in your area.

When using these websites, be sure to use keywords to find relevant events. For example as a life coach and using Meetup.com, you can search for “goal setting” within 50 miles of Leeds and get results like this.

Step 2

Once you have found some networking events, be sure to understand what type of people will be attending.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

• Does that audience match your target audience?
• How big is the likely audience at these events?
• Do you have to pay to attend the events?

Keep in mind that if there is a price to pay to attend networking events, you may also find people who are likely to invest in programs like yours.

It makes no sense investing in something, that is unlikely to give you a return on your time invested. So make sure that the networking event, will have your ideal audience in attendance. 

Step 3

Plan and strategise your meet up. Remember that you sought out this meetup event because you’d like to get something out of it – that is, clients.

As a result, it is important to do some pre-planning, so you can make the most of your networking. Some preliminary things you can do, is find out who’s attending and see what they do.

Do they have a social media profile that helps you understand what they do? If those people match the description of the type of prospect you’d like to talk to, be sure to list it down so you can make an effort to meet up with them at the event.

Also it’s worth connecting with them before the event. Send a short email such as “hey I noticed that you’re attending XYZ event. Me too. I see we have XYZ in common. I’m looking forward to connecting”.

When you connect in this way, you’ve already started building the relationship, you’re 10x ahead of the next person and are likely to build stronger connections. 

Ask friends or family to help you out

Friends or family are the lowest barrier to entry as a beginner life coach. How about offering free services to friends or family in exchange for a referral.

Or you can offer free services to friends or family in exchange for a testimonial to help you build your portfolio. 

Asking friends and family is an easy task, and if they want to see you win, they are more than likely to do this favour for you. 

One way of starting the conversation is by making a post on your Facebook profile. 

Here’s how that will look:

“Hey everyone, I have started my own personal life coaching business and I am looking for experience. I would be happy to work with you for the next month for free, to help you achieve your life goals and in exchange, all I ask for is a testimonial from you. If you are interested comment below and I will personally reach out to you”

If you do not want to post on your Facebook wall, then ask the question in person. 

Tap into your business community or circles

Are you a member of any business communities or circle of people? Sometimes you may already be a member of a community where you regularly show up. 

Use this circle as a stepping stone to highlight your coaching services and potentially get leads for your business. Here’s how you do that. 

Before you advertise your life coaching business to your community or circle, show up by offering free, valuable advice to the group, so people can take notice of you. 

Why this works? Because it allows people to pay attention to you when you speak. This is how you stand out. Once you have appeared a few times, start pitching your services by offering free consultation calls. 

A consultation call is a great way to see how many people are actually interested in your business, and gives them the opportunity to ask you questions, so they will know whether you’re a right fit for them. 

At the end of the call, be sure to ask for the sale. This is one part that most people leave out, because they are afraid of actually selling their product or services. 

If you do not ask for the sale, you won’t get it. When you ask for the sale, speak about how your services can benefit the prospect and the types of results that they are likely to get if they work with you.     

How To Get Coaching Clients On Facebook

If you want to use Facebook as a means of getting life coaching clients, there is a right way to prospect and a wrong way. 

The wrong way is pitching your coaching services and asking your audience to sign up with you now without giving any real value that helps them get to know you, like you and trust you. 

The right way is delivering valuable content that helps build a relationship with you, so they can see you as an expert in your niche. 

One really great way of finding life coach clients, is in Facebook groups. 

Step 1

Seek out Facebook groups that match the description of what your target audience subscribes to. So as a life coach, you may be looking for people who need to get on track with their life goals. You know that these people may be interested in goal setting, vision board creation or the law of attraction. 

You can easily find these groups by using Facebook’s search feature. So when I type “law of attraction” and I filter the results to show me only groups, this is what my result looks like. 

Once you have joined the group and been accepted here’s what you do next. 

Step 2

Introduce yourself. This way people know of your presence and what you do. When you introduce yourself, do not try to immediately sell your services by saying: “Hi my name is Dawn-Marie and I am a life coach looking for new clients”. 

Instead say something like “Hi my name is Dawn-Marie and I am a life coach. My goal here is to learn how others are using the law of attraction, to improve their lives and make whatever contribution I can to help them on their journey”.

By introducing yourself this way, you do not come across as being sales-y and you will begin to form a genuine relationship with the group’s members when you help them with their questions. This is the way to attract people to you. 

Step 3

Once the introduction is made, another way to attract people to you, is by responding to other user’s questions. Provide helpful answers as a way to show your expertise and do not be afraid to remind people that you are a life coach.

For example, when commenting instead of saying “I am a life coach and you should do XYZ”, instead say “I would do XYZ, as this is one of the things that I teach my life coaching clients and I have seen a big improvement in their progress”. 

Step 4

Try and take the relationship building off of Facebook. When you help people, through commenting and offering help without expecting anything in return, you may find that people start messaging you to get more information from you.

You can also offer to message people that you have assisted on the comments section, by politely asking if you can provide more information to them in their inbox.

Take care of any Facebook group’s rules about private messaging. Obviously if this is not allowed, then don’t do.

Whenever you decide to take the message away from the Facebook group and into a private message, continue to offer valuable insight and always end by recommending that your new prospect get more information by accepting a free lead magnet or read content that navigates towards a lead magnet, such as a content upgrade.

The goal for any social media prospecting, must always be to get your prospects on your email list, so you can market to them further.

How to Market A Coaching Business

If you’re seeking out prospects online, a great way to market your coaching business, is with a sales funnel. 

A sales funnel, is the journey you take your prospects on, from the time they opt in for a lead magnet, to the time you convert them into a sale. 

Many life coaches, offering high ticket products, have used this strategy effectively to sell their coaching packages. 

If you already know what a sales funnel is and you’re looking to design your first life coaching sales funnel, then I highly recommend using Clickfunnels or LeadPages to build and design your funnel.

Here are some ways you can implement a sales funnel strategy into your marketing efforts. 

Blog and guest post with lead magnet

If you have a blog, then consider guest posting on other highly-trafficked, highly targeted blogs, so you can access an audience that wants to learn more about improving their lives through goal setting. 

When you guest post, make sure that you write a well-written, thorough blog post as this helps to attract the blog audience to you and your expertise because of your content. 

Once the guest post is published, remember to engage the audience by responding to any comments that they may leave under the post. This helps you to connect with the audience and can be the stepping stone for commenters to reach out to you, to ask questions about your expertise and then for you to offer your services. 

Usually guest posts do not allow you to promote your product or service within the content. This is where you use the Author Bio, to not only tell the audience about yourself, but also recommend an offer that is completely relevant to the blog post. 

Here is how Sonia Thompson achieved this and promoted her own coaching funnel, when she guest posted on Smart Blogger.

Just be sure to ask the owner of the blog for permission to place a link back to your lead magnet, so as not to cause any awkwardness. 

Run paid ads to a life coach funnel 

Another way to use a sales funnel for life coach marketing, is to use paid ads to drive traffic to your sales funnel. 

With this strategy, you can either use search engine ads, such as Google Adwords or Microsoft Ads, to target people who are looking for your services, or you can use social media ads, Facebook or Instagram Ads, to target people who may be interested in your services but do not know that it exists. 

If using either of these methods, keep in mind that the sales funnel that you build and design, will be completely different for search marketing and social media marketing. 

With search marketing, as you are promoting a product or service to people, who have actually searched for what your business can offer, your sales funnel will specifically address their needs.

With social media marketing, however, the audience here do not know that they need your product or service. Therefore your sales funnel should identify the problem and offer your product as the solution.

Related Articles

• How to Use an Automated Sales Funnel For Any Business

Podcast and end with a life coaching funnel 

Just like you would do with a blog post, appearing as a guest on a podcast is another way of borrowing someone’s audience and sharing valuable content with them, so you can make an offer that leads to your coaching funnel. 

If you are considering using this platform, remember to seek out those podcast hosts, that have a large audience, so you have a better chance at being heard and your funnel converting for the audience that listens in. 

There are many ways that you can get on a podcast and I will share the following tips with you. 

There is a website that I found called Podcast Guests. You can sign up with them for free and find podcasters that are actually looking for guests. 

You can also do a search of Google, using the keywords “be a podcast guest” and find all the websites where this keyword is found. Herein you will find podcasters who are in need of guests.  

Another great place to find podcasts is on the Apple Itunes directory or you can look at Apple Podcasts.

Once you have found a few podcasts that you’d like to be a guest on, it’s time to prepare your pitch to the host, so they can understand the value that you can bring to their audience. 

A pitch is usually a short introduction to you and your brand and the type of content you’d like to deliver to the podcaster’s audience that may solve a problem. 

So when pitching, keep in mind that the podcaster is looking for fresh ideas that will help their audience, rather than it be a promotional piece of content that is all about selling your product or service. 

Don’t worry, usually podcasters do allow you to promote your content to their audience and this is mentioned at the discretion of the podcaster. 

Here is a sample pitch I prepared for a podcaster when I wanted to appear on her show. 

Pay attention to what’s in the highlighted box. 

The Rachael Academy Podcast features small business owners and entrepreneurs and her audience is mainly those persons who are looking for ways to start and build their own business. 

I identified a problem in the small business arena, that is, small business owners or entrepreneurs who believe that in order to be successful they must have a large audience or email list to promote their products or services to. 

I mentioned a solution to that problem that I’d like to focus on in the podcast. I said that I’d like to teach her audience, how to start a blog and get traffic to it using a free traffic source. 

The offer was not just any offer. It was useful and helpful to her audience – listeners will be able to learn how to monetise a blog in a strategic way by building their email list and then selling their products or services to that list. 

I also included my area of expertise in my pitch. I mentioned that I was a blogger and digital marketing strategist and had experience in selling my own digital products to a small audience.

With that in mind, here is what your pitch should focus on: 

• Introduce yourself
• Mention your area of expertise
• Identify the problem
• Offer a solution that you’d like to talk about in the podcast

After drafting your pitch, send it to the podcast host. If you are able to find their personal email or an email that goes directly to the podcaster, then that would be better. 

Ideally you’d want to avoid any gatekeepers (middle men), so look out for podcasters who have a direct email and if you are still not sure, send the email to the attention of the podcaster’s name.

Don’t forget to always follow up if you do not have a response to your pitch. It’s a good idea then to keep a spreadsheet of the podcasts you wrote to, the date you wrote to them, whether you received a response and the date you followed up with them.

If you are accepted to be a guest on a podcast, this is when you should offer to promote your life coaching services and it is always best to provide a direct link to your life coaching funnel, that is designed to generate leads and potentially lead to a client sale.

Create a YouTube video and end with a life coaching funnel

Another simple way to promote your life coaching business, is to start with a YouTube channel. 

If you are good with video, consider sharing free, valuable information to help build an audience. 

One thing that you need to remember when starting a YouTube channel, is that it will take time to build traction and an audience on this platform. 

Building a YouTube channel is like building a blog. You need to put out great content to attract an audience and then nurture them, to encourage them to consider your products. 

Before you sell any of your services on video, always lead with value and remember to include a call to action at the end of your video, telling your viewers what you’d like them to do. 

Whether that is checking out a blog post or opting into your life coaching funnel. 

To engage your audience you could also tell them to leave a comment on your video, like the video or subscribe to your channel. 

These bits of action, help to skew the YouTube algorithm in your favour so that your videos are recommended to more people. 

Wrapping Up

If you know how to find people to promote your product or service to, you will know how to become successful as a new life coach. 

The key takeaways from this blog post is: 

• Find targeted groups of people who are likely to require your products or services in the future.
• Lead with valuable information that will help your audience see you as an expert in your field.
• Capture the names and contacts of those people who expressed an interest in you, by inviting them to enter your sales funnel. 
• Nurture those leads who expressed an interest in you, with exclusive, valuable content.
• Pitch your products and services to convert those leads into sales.

Ready to do whatever it takes to get your first coaching client with sales funnels? The One Funnel Away Challenge will help you launch your first coaching funnel, so you can get a steady stream of leads and sales in less than 30 days.

The One Funnel Away Challenge is for you if:

• You’re just getting started and have no idea where to start
• You want to start your own life coaching business and work from home
• You may already have your own life coaching business, but there’s no growth and you feel stuck
• You are trying to figure out a way to reach more people or have a bigger impact on the world
• You are about to launch your life coaching funnel and want to have a huge success.

Join the 30-day challenge, so you can start building your thriving life coaching business today.

Thanks for reading guys.

Tell me in the comments what strategies you have used to get your own coaching clients.

Cheers

The post How To Get Clients As A Freelance Life Coach appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.