Increase visibility, authority and sales efficiency to build your life coaching business
You’ve uncovered your passion for helping people, opened a life-coaching business…and now you need clients. But chances are, you don’t have a background in sales.
The good news? You’re probably familiar with social media. And you can use social prospecting on your social media accounts to get clients as a life coach.
We’ve got a three-step approach to get your business off the ground using your online presence.
3 steps to growing you life coaching business:
- Create your online presence
- Build your reputation
- Start selling
Create your online presence
In life, looks aren’t everything—but online, they can be. Your online presence establishes your professional brand. You want your website and social media accounts to draw people in, build trust and increase brand recognition.
We’ll walk you through building your online presence for your:
- Website
- Social Media
Craft your website
First impressions matter—and your website is one of the first places people will go for information about your coaching. Make sure the content on your site demonstrates that you’re empathetic, helpful and qualified.
Additionally, stick to a color palette and design scheme that you can apply across all content you create (online and otherwise) so you can build brand recognition.
Your website should include:
- A section about you! This is an opportunity to connect with your clients—tell them your story, your goals for them and include a video or photo to help build trust.
- A coaching services page that outlines what type of coaching you offer, lengths of sessions, packages, pricing etc.
- Highlight your ideal clients through testimonials from past clients, as well as mentioning what areas of life coaching you specialize in.
Spruce up your LinkedIn
Make your LinkedIn page both visually appealing and searchable by fully filling out your profile. As a life coach, you can use your personal LinkedIn page rather than a business page, which will make it easier to build personal relationships.
Start with the basics from this LinkedIn lead-generation guide:
- Upload a professional photo of yourself.
- Making use of your header image for brand-building, with your brand colors and optionally, your tagline.
- Add a strategic headline that is clear and searchable. For example, something like “Life coach for big life changes”.
Use your about section to highlight what makes your coaching business different. It’s easier to build clients when you get specific on who you want to help — whether that’s a life stage, coming to terms with a diagnosis, moving on in life after a significant death etc… Talk about who you help, and how.
Lastly, fill out the rest of your profile information like contact information, your location, education, work history etc…
Create or update your social media accounts
Social selling—growing your client base through relationships built online—is one of the most popular ways to scale a business these days. While lots of social selling takes place on LinkedIn, other social media platforms are a great place to build your reputation as a life coach.
To set yourself up for success—and avoid stretching yourself too thin—pick only a few platforms that will be most effective for you. Consider your primary demographic, and where they spend the most time. Here’s a breakdown of demographics by platform to help.
Once you know your platforms, create an account or update your existing one. Make sure you’re using the same images and messaging you used on your website and LinkedIn. Consistency in both written content and visuals will help you build brand recognition.
If you already have an account but weren’t experiencing a lot of success, consider auditing the content. Archive or delete posts that didn’t do well or don’t align with the messaging you’ve been adding to your website and socials.
Build your reputation
Now that you’ve set up your online channels to support your brand, it’s time to start bringing in your audience. Social selling is all about building relationships with others by being visible, responsive and helpful.
You can start building a portfolio of clients by:
- Posting on LinkedIn
- Creating for other social channels
- Engaging with others
Posting on LinkedIn
Creating posts that bring your audience value is a key component to social selling on LinkedIn. It’s a great way to show others you’re knowledgeable, trustworthy, and empathetic.
Not all posts will take a long time to create, but you do want to focus on adding value. Some ways establish yourself on LinkedIn:
- Ask questions or post polls to stay on top of your audience’s top concerns.
- Post insights on hot topics or thoughts on articles and videos.
- Sprinkle in some self-promotion through client testimonials, case studies, or stories about what you do.
LinkedIn has recently updated their algorithm, and one of the changes is prioritizing content from people in your network. That means making connections on LinkedIn is more important than ever if you want people to see your posts.
The new algorithm also favors professional content, so make sure your posts don’t feel like they belong on Facebook. As a life coach, you’re in a unique industry where personal stories can fit nicely in a work-related narrative, but make sure there’s a clear takeaway for your audience if you’re getting personal.
Creating for other social channels
More personal social media can be an excellent place for you to build relationships with potential clients.
As a life coach, your personality is an important part of your brand. People want to work with someone that is the right “fit” for them. Showing up on video, in particular, can be a great way to help clients get a feel for you as a person while showcasing how you can help.
Draw people in with success stories, things you or clients have overcome (get permission to share client stories!), life tips and a bit of your behind the scenes personal life.
For example, maybe you show off your favorite spot to relax on a weekend, or share something about a hobby that keeps you feeling creative.
You always want to focus on bringing value to potential clients—with tidbits of advice or perspective—but social media is also a great place to make things more personal. What better way to show people you can help them navigate life, than showing them how you navigate yours?
Engaging with others
Social media is about more than just content creation. A successful social media marketing strategy is a two-way street. Listen and engage with potential clients and other experts in your field.
The easiest way to engage is of course to respond to DMs or comments on your own content, and this is a great way to warm up potential leads. But to really increase visibility in your space (while staying in the know on what’s going on), comment on or share content from other life coaches.
You can even look for comments on other creators’ content looking for advice, and offer some of your own.
Whether you’re on LinkedIn, Tiktok, Instagram, or Reddit, you can easily find discussions others are having by searching relevant questions or keywords like “Why do I need a life coach?”. From here, you can comment or create new content around what people are currently saying.
Start selling
Okay, so you’re here to get more clients for your life coach business, not social media followers.
But closing sales is a lot easier once you’ve built your online reputation. Think about any form of ad you’ve received online, in your inbox, etc. You’re more likely to pay attention to it if you’ve heard of the company or service before.
Now that people are familiar with you, it’s time to start making sales.
Here’s three ways to get clients for your life coaching business:
- Digital ads
- Sales Navigator
- AI for sales
Digital ads
You’re probably most familiar with digital ads. These are the ads you see scrolling social media, at the top of Google results under “sponsored”, before YouTube videos and placed on web pages you visit.
There are many advantages to using digital ads to get clients as a life coach, including:
- Cost: Not all digital ads are expensive, and you have a lot of control over how much (or little) you can spend.
- Targeting: Digital ads allow you to target your desired audience with specific filters around age, income, life stage, education and more.
- Direct conversion: All digital advertising is clickable, meaning you can drive clients right to a page on your site with more information and a call to action like “book a consult now”.
You can explore digital ads on LinkedIn, Meta, Google and a host of other online ad options.
Sales Navigator
You may or may not already be familiar with LinkedIn’s sales tool, Sales Navigator. Sales Navigator lets you target your ideal demographic, and send them a personal message.
Since people who spend time on LinkedIn tend to be people who invest in their personal and professional development, it can be a great place to market your life coaching business. Just make sure you have a strategy before you go sending off InMails (LinkedIn messages).
Start by filtering your search for your target demographic. For example, maybe you want to help freelancers, people in certain industries, or a certain age range.
Craft a message that resonates with that demographic. To optimize your efforts, make the message personal enough that your target audience will connect with it, but general enough that you can send it to more than one person.
You can look to blogs for sales professionals for tips on how to write and target your messages so they’ll actually convert clients. These blogs will also give advice on your social media ads and content creation efforts.
AI for sales
We know, we know. AI seems to be everywhere. And people have mixed feelings on how effective it actually is.
You can definitely test out ChatGPT for your LinkedIn posts or social media captions. But there are also AI tools designed specifically for prospecting and sales.
For example, if you want to use AI for LinkedIn messages, CoPilot AI helps you implement the strategies above with a fraction of the time and effort required to do it yourself. Once you’ve drafted messages that resonate with your audience, CoPilot will help you get them out to the right people—plus automate follow-up, provide insights on how strong your leads are, and more.
How it all comes together
All of the strategies in this guide complement each other, ultimately helping grow your life coaching business.
Having a recognizable brand (both visually and through cohesive messaging) and increased visibility and authority through your content make it easier to convert clients when you reach out.
Think about your own experiences with businesses. You’re probably the most skeptical of businesses you’ve never heard of before. And if you are looking for a service (or product, for that matter), you likely look them up online and have certain expectations of what their website or social media looks like.
We know it can be a challenge finding time for it all. Creating marketing strategies and content is a lot of work. But you can work smarter instead of harder by using sales tools like CoPilot AI and less involved marketing strategies like social media ads.
