Pitching your services to the wrong audience is like singing to an empty concert hall. Worse: spending to advertise your business and losing money on misdirected marketing campaigns.
But the good news is that the right “listeners” are out there. It’s about figuring out how to build an audience that’s appropriate for your coaching business. Once you understand your target group and tailor your message, you’ll cater to a full house.
Bring in and retain clients who are a perfect fit with our guide to audience development.
Defining audience development
Audience development includes finding, connecting with, and retaining clients in the market for your services.
A strong audience development strategy gets the right clients through the door, fosters repeat business, and establishes relationships. Any company (or a coaching business) trying to grow its client pool can benefit from an audience development strategy.
Building an audience vs. finding clients
Audiences are niche segments with a range of interest in any given service, while potential clients are already familiar with the service and may have even been referred to it.
When entrepreneurs, such as coaches, want to fill a few holes in their schedule by taking on new clients, they have a finite goal — one they can fulfill with a handful of referrals. But when business owners want to build a pipeline of clients and grow their company, they need to reach out to the masses. Although not everyone will be interested, a vast chunk will want more information.
To ensure many people feel riveted, a business owner should target the right audience with the right message. On the other hand, an entrepreneur gains more leads and starts connecting with potential clients by speaking their language.
4 essential aspects of audience development
A solid audience development plan is a conversation between a business and its existing and potential clients. Here are four critical aspects of any audience development strategy:
- Create a community: Your business is part of a community, even if a virtual one. Interact with local or online neighbors, participate in events, and support noble causes to connect with your audience on all levels. These efforts allow you to meet new people and establish a caring, active image for your brand.
You can also create communities around relevant issues. For example, start a Facebook or LinkedIn group where clients and professionals can discuss the practice.
- Build connections: A personal touch goes a long way with clients. Respond to social media messages and emails and avoid rote responses.
Connecting with your audience not only makes them feel seen but also lets you build a rapport with your existing clients. And, if they’re comfortable with you, they can refer you to their contacts.
- Collaborate: Teaming up with other people, companies, and brands results in cross-promotion. If your budget allows, consider joining hands with a local social media influencer to outsource advertising and marketing. Or, sign a contract with them where they promote your services in exchange for free coaching sessions –– a win-win situation for both parties.
Alternatively, work around featured content –– ask your audience to share testimonials or visuals of them using your services. This way, you achieve first-hand organic marketing, and your clients can feature on your social media pages.
- Display emotions: Clients help you sustain your business’s operations. Show them you appreciate their loyalty by listening and creating an offering around their needs.
When pitching that offering, remain as authentic as possible to avoid coming off as too sales-focused or distant. Establish a brand voice that sounds like the one you use while conversing with clients.
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How to grow an audience
Build an audience for your business via an engaging audience development strategy. Here’s how:
- Define your offering: Decide what products and services your business will offer in this growth campaign. For example, if you own an established coaching practice, try reaching this new audience with your best-selling services.
- Determine your target audience: This is an essential data point because it helps you establish the voice and aesthetic for your outreach. If using social media or browser ads for your campaign, provide the target demographic so social networking platforms and search engines put your content in front of ideal customers.
- Use your social media platforms: If you’re wondering how to build an audience with social media, as it’s a huge space and houses millions of people and brands, well, social media is one of the most important marketing platforms. The only catch is to stand out — but there’s a solution. Thanks to these networks’ powerful algorithms and in-house analytics, you can pay for advertisements to target content at the right audience and evaluate metrics to assess your campaign’s success. Plus, these platforms gravitate toward visual content, allowing you to create a consistent image across all your socials and generate brand recognition. Conversely, you can still make great strides on social media if you're on a budget. Opt for free content marketing to draw new followers, such as giveaways and calls to action (CTAs) in emails.
- Use a customer relationship management tool (CRM): CRM tools let you store customer data and send information to leads securely. In fact, those with email marketing integration allow you to stay in touch with your contacts through automated messages and one-off campaigns. Practice’s CRM tool is a perfect fit for coaches who want to securely save sensitive information, take bookings, and maintain communication with clients.
- Be consistent: Once new audience members start following a business’s social media accounts or sign up for its email list, the company has to hold their attention. Make sure you’re regularly posting new content. Set up an email cadence that includes everything from automated appointment reminders and purchase confirmations to promotional content such as discount campaigns. Establish content creation pillars and a calendar for your social media posts. Content pillars are categories of information you consistently release, such as Wednesday wellness tips or monthly contests. If you think your sessions might collide with your content calendar, schedule posts on all your socials to avoid delays.
Your coaching business deserves an audience
As a coach, scale your business by targeting the right group of people. Create a stellar marketing strategy and let leads trickle in.
It’s also worth creating an audience to spread the word about your practice. You can help many more people if you speak to a worldwide audience online and provide information and tips that pique someone’s interest in the field. You may help someone halfway across the world find the perfect coach or inspire another to join the profession. But between helping global clients, don’t forget to organize your calendar.
Leverage Practice’s Client Management Software, designed with coaches in mind, lets you manage client data, files and folders, and contracts –– all in one place. Try it today.
