How to sell yourself as a coach and dominate your market niche
In this article you will discover 10 effective tips on how to promote yourself as a coach.
Whether you’re a coach just starting out or an experienced coach, you’ll find in this article essential tips on how to grow your practice and make a better living from coaching.
Before we get to the tips, I want to provide some answers to questions you may be asking yourself right now as you develop your coaching business.
How do I sell coaching online?
There are several strategies for selling coaching online.
The strategy I recommend is to optimize your website so that it meets the needs of the clients you are targeting.
A good SEO strategy is still the cheapest and most sustainable way to attract clients who need your expertise.
But once you have attracted these people, you need to convince them that you are the right coach for them.
One effective strategy to convert potential clients who can’t decide is to feature testimonials from your past clients.
These testimonials include the text of the testimonial, the first and last name and the photo of your client.
Without further ado, here are my 10 tips.
1 – Sell a transformation
To sell yourself as a coach you should not offer your solution as a number of coaching sessions at a given price.
You don’t sell coaching sessions, but you help your clients to transform themselves, to evolve from a current unpleasant situation to an ideal situation.
When you create and sell your coaching sessions, highlight how your clients’ lives will change for the better through your coaching and focus on all the side benefits of their transformation.
2 – Appeal to the two biggest sources of motivation
You can sell your coaching services by highlighting the benefits of your customized coaching for your clients.
You can also grow your coaching business by focusing your audience’s attention on all the downsides they will face if they decide not to take advantage of your expertise.
You can do even better by using pleasure as well as pain.
Since your prospects are all different and you don’t know if they are more motivated by success or by avoiding failure, the most effective solution is to sell your coaching as the total solution that avoids negative consequences as much as it maximizes the probability of success.
3 – Focus on micro-niches
In previous articles, I have already explained to you the fact that in a competitive market such as coaching, you cannot develop your business by simply remaining a very generalist coach.
In addition of being a specialist in one or more market niches, if you want to promote yourself as a coach and develop your turnover quickly, you should focus your marketing efforts on micro-niches.
Why should you do this?
Simply because if it is true that it is more likely to get coaching clients if you focus on a specific niche, it is even easier to generate revenues from coaching by becoming a leader in a micro-niche.
Why should you focus on a micro-niche?
Because you can get results faster as there are fewer competitors and with relatively little content you can attract new coaching clients.
4 – Follow the news
By following the news, I am not advising you to watch the news on TV, read online and spend hours on the newspapers.
My idea is very simple.
According to the evolution of the news, try to identify the new needs of people who may need your skills, in order to create a link between your coaching offer and the new challenge they are facing.
To effectively market yourself as a coach, you will need to tailor the name and content of your coaching or training accordingly.
You will need to create and share content that is directly relevant to this new challenge and show how your coaching offer is a relevant solution to quickly improve the lives of your potential clients.
5 – Listen and ask questions
As a coach, you have a major advantage over any other self-employed person.
The active listening you practice in coaching is fundamental to better sell yourself as a coach.
But what you need to listen to are the more or less obvious objections of your clients.
If, for example, after having had an interview with a prospect, the latter says to you: I appreciate the valuable information you provided but I am at the beginning of my research and I will contact you again, you should not agree and hanging up your phone.
Why not?
Because this person is searching for an excuse to stop the conversation because they have doubts about your ability to help them.
If this person really needs a coach, you should listen to them to identify their objections, fears and doubts.
If you manage all the objections, the only difficulty to overcome is money.
6 – Use social proof
Your satisfied former clients are the best ambassadors of your coaching business.
Why not capitalize on their testimonials both on your website and on social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook?
The only things that can stop you are fear and patience.
The fear is the fear of rejection and the patience is the time you will have to spend following up on your testimonial request.
Remember that even if you have been successful with a particular client or company, the testimonial is not something that occurs automatically.
The responsibility for requesting and obtaining a testimonial belongs to you.
The more testimonials you have, the better your chances of earning the trust of new clients in a shorter period of time.
7 – Create strategic partnerships
A very effective way to market yourself as a coach is to create strategic partnerships with other professionals that you are not in competition with.
For example, you can create a new coaching service by combining your expertise with the one of another coach specialized in another field.
You can also create a new package in which you offer coaching and another professional offers a service that will be complementary to your coaching package.
For example, you collaborate with a relooking coach who will manage the person’s appearance while you help him develop his mindset.
The possibilities of collaboration with other professionals are almost endless, it all depends on your ability to improve your coaching offer and that of other professionals.
As far as I am concerned, I have created an international network of bilingual coaches where each coach brings a very specific added value and this allows me to meet the needs of several market niches.
8 – Put in evidence a competitive advantage
If you want to develop your coaching business, you need to identify and promote a competitive advantage that will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition and gain market segment.
There are many ways to highlight a competitive advantage, but the key is to choose one that is perceived as being valuable by your target clients.
Ideally, this advantage should also allow you to reposition your coaching offers by providing something that doesn’t yet exist and that satisfies an important need for your future clients.
If you don’t showcase a benefit to your potential clients, they won’t perceive what you can offer that is different from your competitors.
As a result, you will be less able to convert these prospects into customers.
9 – Ask your former clients for referrals
We’ve already talked about the importance of using testimonials to grow your coaching business.
Another way to grow your coaching company is to ask your former clients to help you promote your business.
To motivate them you can offer them a fixed or a variable fee for every new client they are able to bring to you.
You ask your previous clients to talk about the positive experience they had when they had the opportunity to take advantage of your personalized coaching.
By doing this, you will be able to better promote your coaching services.
10 – Use the right marketing tools
There are a variety of marketing tools you can use to better market yourself as a coach.
Here are a few tools I’ve been using for a few years that will help you grow your coaching practice faster and more effectively.
The first tool is GetResponse which allows you to create:
- sales pages to collect prospect email addresses from a lead magnet
- newsletters
- surveys
- many other features for your marketing
You can test GetResponse free for 30 days.
The second tool is Postcron which allows you to automate the distribution of your articles and videos on the main social and professional platforms. It will save you a lot of time.
You can try out Postcron.
If you regularly make videos and publish them on YouTube, I recommend the Tubebuddy extension.
It will help you to develop your YouTube channel faster.
I highly suggest you try Tubebuddy.
How to sell online coaching on the internet?
Next, I’ll present three low-investment strategies for selling coaching online. I will not discuss advertising on Google and on other platforms.
1 – Implement an SEO strategy
2 – Promote yourself on YouTube
3 – Market your services to a list of prospects with a lead magnet
1 – Implement an SEO strategy
To sell online coaching you need to be found on Google by clients who need your skills.
This is really essential!
You can be a very competent coach but if you are not visible on the internet you won’t get any clients. To achieve this, you need to be on the first page of search results.
This method requires you to have a website and to learn SEO.
It takes time but it is the best approach in terms of value for money.
With this strategy, you keep total control of your communication and you can adapt very quickly to the changing needs of your customers.
2 – Promote yourself on YouTube
This is a solution that can be combined with the previous one or that can be implemented on its own.
This marketing strategy is particularly suitable if you are very comfortable in front of the camera and want to develop your credibility more quickly.
This option is interesting because access to YouTube is free, and your smartphone and a few small accessories will be enough to start creating your first videos.
On the other hand, with this solution, you don’t have total control over the content you produce because YouTube could decide to suspend your channel if you don’t respect their terms of use.
3 – Market your services to a list of prospects with a lead magnet
This third option allows you, with a very low monthly investment, to make people aware of your offer who may need your skills.
As you read earlier, you can use a lead magnet to attract the prospects that interest you.
This alternative allows you to keep full control over your list of prospects.
On the other hand, it has the disadvantage of attracting many curious people and competitors.
If you are communicating on social and professional networks, you will need to constantly update your list and spend a lot of time prospecting.
Conclusion on how to sell yourself as a coach
In this article, I have given you 10 tips from my experience on how to better sell yourself as a coach.
To go further in the growth of your coaching practice, check out now our marketing services for coaches or write to us using our contact form to book a free initial meeting with a business coach.
This article is also available in other languages
Français : Comment se vendre en tant que coach et dominer votre marché
Italiano: Come promuoverti come coach e dominare il tuo mercato