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How to Get Coaching Clients


In this blog post, we’re going to go through 5 different methods to get coaching clients.

A business is nothing without customers, and a coach is nothing without clients. Starting your own coaching business from scratch is no mean feat, especially if you’re new to the world of marketing and you’re working with a limited budget. But with the help of a website hosting provider and a well-executed marketing plan, you can not only attract clients but ensure you attract the best clients for you. 

Here’s our guide to the five best ways on how to get coaching clients, alongside a walk-through of the importance of setting up a website as a coach so you can start adding clients to your books today!

READ: Full Guide to Starting Your Online Coaching Business

Attracting clients: what you need to know

When you start as a coach, one of the most important things – if not the most important thing – is your clients. There are two things you need to focus on when finding clients for your coaching business: firstly, attracting clients. Secondly, ensuring the customers you attract are the best fit for you and your area of expertise. 

To ensure you attract the right type of client (e.g. those who are struggling in areas you specialize in, or those who will benefit the most from your methods of coaching) you need to establish what type of coach you are and what your niche is. 

Your niche is the area you specialize in as a coach; for example, life coaching, business coaching, or health coaching. Knowing what type of coach you are will establish clarity between you and your clientele and will ultimately affect how you market your business and the techniques you need to use to get coaching clients.

Why you need a website

If you know what type of coach you are and you’re ready to establish yourself in the industry, you’ll need a website. Setting up your own website is the first step to getting coaching clients, and it’s also the most important. Without a website, you won’t be able to implement a lot of the techniques needed to attract clientele – and you won’t look very professional, either. 

There are lots of reasons why you need a website as a coach, such as: 

  • It establishes trust and credibility with clients
  • It boosts your SEO 
  • You can offer memberships and scale your business up
  • You can create mailing lists and enhance your booking systems
  • It’s a hub for advertising and promotion
  • You can access and analyze your visitor stats

A website is a springboard for better promotion, better opportunities, and ultimately, more bookings. Creating a website for your business doesn’t have to be difficult, either. A WordPress hosting provider can make the process really quick and simple and offer everything you’ll need to take your business online, such as free domain registration, pre-installed WordPress features, and helpful hosting services to guide you through every step of the way. 

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How to Get Coaching Clients – 5 Methods

Once you’ve got your website up and running, the next step is to start attracting clients. Learning how to get coaching clients can seem daunting, but it’s just a case of learning what marketing techniques work best for you and your budget, and how to implement them. Here are five trailed and tested ways to get coaching clients: 

1. PPC

PPC, which stands for pay-per-click, is an internet marketing model where a business can pay to run an advertisement online. By opting into a PPC model, you can run ads for your coaching company that will appear at the top of a search engine result page, will selectively target your identified audience, and/or that are keyword optimized to maximize your digital impressions (depending on what PPC campaign you opt into).

Using a PPC service like Google is a great way to increase traffic to your coaching website and convert site visitors into clients. By running a paid advertising campaign on Google, you can outrank your competition in search results, increase your brand awareness, and even choose to target your marketing campaign at your desired clientele to sift through your client base automatically.

PPC is a great option for small business owners, but smaller companies often shy away from running pay-per-click campaigns because they fear it might be expensive. PPC typically requires a bigger investment than other marketing tools, but around 79% of marketers report that PPC campaigns have been hugely beneficial for their business and are worth the price tag.

2. Content Marketing

If you’re looking for a cheaper way to attract clients, content marketing is an easy, cost-effective approach to marketing your coaching business.

Content marketing is a form of online marketing where you create a range of material such as blogs, social media posts, and vlogs/videos to share with a defined target audience. The content shouldn’t be about creating a hard sale, but more about creating interest in your services which can ultimately lead to more sign-ups.

If you execute your content marketing strategy well, you can build credibility as a coach and start to build a digital platform where people get to know you and your services better and are more likely to invest. 

Content marketing is very cheap to run and is a brilliant long-term strategy because you’ll create a pool of interested viewers who have the potential to become clientele. But you’ll need to invest a lot of time and effort into keeping your content ecosystem running and ensure you’re regularly updating and refining your material in line with your customers’ demand. 

3. Online Communities

There are lots of benefits to joining an online community as a small business owner, and attracting potential clients is one of them. By joining an online community, you can receive and share advice, meet like-minded people, and approach individuals who are seeking the services you specialize in. In 2019, 68% of branded communities said that using a community had helped create new leads for their organization. 

Online communities are a brilliant way to network and create contacts. By signing up for an existing community in your niche, you can connect with fellow entrepreneurs who might be more experienced in the field who might be willing to share advice. You can acquire new marketing strategies and tools from other professionals, and you might even be able to generate some leads and business opportunities by widening your pool of contacts.

Joining a community can also be used as a free marketing tool, where you can set up a profile that promotes your services and links to your website. You can also try to build your own community using social media or owned community platforms, but this might be something to explore when your business has taken off. 

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4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn passive income as a coach. By promoting other companies’ products or services, you can get yourself seen by a wider audience who can then be converted into clients. And, best of all, you’ll be earning money in commission at the same time. 

Affiliate marketing currently generates 16% of all orders placed online and is a great way to essentially turn other entrepreneurs into your salespeople.  You can choose from a growing range of affiliate programs to join and select which offers you want to promote (either on your social media platforms, blog, or website). Choosing products and services that are relevant to your niche and your client base will grow leads and sales for your own business, and you can use the affiliate program as a platform to market your own services.

5. Social Media 

If you haven’t got social media pages set up for your coaching business, you’re missing a trick. It’s estimated that 71% of small businesses use social media to market their company, and that number is increasing rapidly.

Social media is one of the best tools for advertising and marketing your business – especially if you’re looking for an easy and inexpensive way to attract clients. Social media is an organic way to get clients and having a strong social media presence will create opportunities to engage potential prospects, advertise your services, and direct traffic to your website. 

You can also tailor your social media campaigns to your ideal client base, by using the sites that they’re most active on (whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube) and by following people who already follow coaches, or show an interest in your nice. Your social profiles are a great place to collect testimonies from existing customers and to give your business credibility in order to draw in new customers.

The best way to get coaching clients

PPC, Content Marketing, Communities, Affiliate Marketing, and Social Media are all trial and tested ways to get coaching clients; but ultimately, the best way to secure clients is to create your own website for your business. You can attract as many potential clients as you like through marketing and advertising but without a website, you won’t have a hub to direct all your potential clients to, to convert them into paying customers. 

Gemma Saunders is a freelance copywriter and published author based in Hampshire. She has a first-class honours in BA Creative and Professional Writing and has a passion for all forms of content creation.

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