You’ve found your passion and studied hard to establish a successful career. Put your education, skills, and dedication to the test and hit the ground running as a life coach. It’s time to welcome your first client!
We’re confident you’ll make an excellent professional, and your prospective customers are in for a fruitful life. Here’s all you need to know about how to get your first life coaching client.
Before you know it, you’ll be changing lives.
Determine your offering
Let’s start from the beginning and learn how to start a life coach business.
- Establish the target audience: Explore the coaching world to determine a coaching niche to target the right audience –– there are many life coaching niches to choose from such as relationship and family, health and wellness, as well as spiritual. Be hyper-specific about your services and their scope. Also, research how much clients are willing to pay for wellness services to understand the market. Gather results and draft a marketing strategy as well as a budget.
- Design your business’s vision and mission: Once you finalize the niche and target audience, outline your business’s mission and vision to help clients understand what sets your business apart and why they should choose you over your peers. Include your business’s unique selling point (USP) to drive new clients.
- Define your services and costs: Conduct a thorough market research to understand your competitors’ services and price points before setting your own rates. Once you have an idea, outline each of your services in detail, along with charges, and roll out the service and price chart on your website and social media handles.
Market your offering
Once you determine your USP, delineate the target audience, and establish financial resources, it’s time to launch your life coach marketing strategy, market your services to your target group, and find coaching clients.
Up your social media game
Social media is one of the top places to find clients, so savvy marketing strategies usually contain a social media component. Follow these steps to create a stellar social media marketing strategy:
- Target customers: Research your ideal clientele’s habits to learn the type of accounts they follow or content they interact with. Design and mold your posts per their preferences, ensuring your followers engage and reach out to you for services.
- Business account: Create a professional branded account on all social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, to establish your business’s legitimacy and post about your services. Boost your content, if the budget permits, to gain followers. Launch ads on social media by setting demographics and geography to reach a more niche audience. Once your follower base is set, call users to action and ask them to spread the word about your services to social media friends.
- Giveaways: Take your social media marketing to the next level by asking followers to participate. Launch a giveaway for a complimentary coaching session, and have people enter the “raffle” by sharing the word with other followers.
- Tips: Through your posts or reputable articles, advise followers about coaching and invite more clients to your social media pages and eventually your practice. This helps users better understand the industry and makes you a knowledgeable authority figure, building trust between you and your future clients and making sure they reach out to you to seek services.
- Website: Finally, don’t just rely on social media platforms to interact with your followers. Instead, provide them an avenue such as a website to understand your business in detail. Drop a link in your social media bios to your professional site. And before linking or driving traffic, ensure the website is visually coherent, helping your business look “serious” and fostering trust from future clients. Include the following in your website:
- Simple yet aesthetically appealing design
- Company logo
- Consistent fonts and colors, and the same design elements as on all social media accounts
- Services, coaching packages, and pricing
- A form or a double opt-in to capture visitors’ information
Bring in clients
Your marketing campaigns are sure to turn a few heads, but they aren’t the only way to find new clients.
Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most common and trustworthy sources for seeking new clients. Surely, plenty of people in your circle, such as friends and family members, would be happy to recommend your coaching practice, which is why offer free consultations to them so that they better understand your services. In exchange, ask them to recommend your services to people they know. As your practice grows, request satisfied former clients for referrals and testimonials to build your client base.
Always try to attend networking events to meet new people and promote your services. Keep your eye out for local events that might attract your niche audience and show up ready to network. Talk to potential clients and tell them about your business and services. Don’t forget to carry a stack of business cards with you.
Alternatively, try networking online, such as in Facebook groups, to build an online community. Facebook groups are an excellent avenue to collaborate and interact with a target audience. Share your services with a catchy title, linking your website and social media handles, to invite traffic to your posts and business.
Tips for bringing in new clients
Here are some tips for turning people interested in your services into those who pay for them:
- Offer packages and discounts: Package deals and reduced pricing are great motivators for anyone who's on the fence about trying your services. Discounted sessions could be just the push they need.
- Use CRM software: Customer relationship management (CRM) tools won’t bring in customers, but they’ll help track your life coach leads. Practice’s CRM feature offers a messaging platform to chat with clients –– new or existing. It also allows you to store client data, share documents, and receive payment in one central place.
- Develop your coaching model: We’ve said it, and we’ll say it again: successful coaching businesses know their niche. Once you understand the types of clients you’ll coach, devise your programs to suit them. And don’t stop there. Decide what you’ll cover in each session and each coaching program’s goals. Research any tools and techniques you’ll need before taking your first coaching client.
Keep your head in the game with Practice
Clients seek life coaches when they’re in a rut and want to improve their lives or see beyond their limiting beliefs. Life coaches have complex work on their hands. They listen attentively to clients’ concerns, help them identify roadblocks, and chart a path to achieve goals.
To keep your focus on the finer points of your work and become a successful coach, we recommend leaving the admin work to the CRM platforms made especially for it. Practice’s features help you organize client data and onboard people new to your services. Share your coaching agreement, worksheets, and welcome materials all at once. Also, store files, create invoices, and schedule appointments seamlessly. Try us today.
