Once you have your coaching certification and you’re on your own, it can be really hard to find the right strategy to help you start from scratch. Marketing coaching is probably the hardest thing about building an online coaching business.

Most business coaches online work with coaches in every stage of business but have forgotten how hard it is to start with zero resources and little online marketing knowledge.

 

It can be discouraging to try everyone’s strategies and not see them work for you – but it’s not your fault.

It happens because the strategies they’re selling are not right for your business stage. 

Here are marketing coaching pitfalls to avoid if you want to start making money fast from your online coaching business: 

1. Top Marketing Coaching Pitfalls: the Cold DM strategy

   – the numbers are NOT in your favour according to webmart campaign DM-ing cold, results in a 1% enquiry rate. That means that you get 1 person interested (not buying) for every 100 people you are in touch with.
   
   Even if these people look like they’re exactly your target audience when you connect to them, a cold DM will often do more damage than good.
   This strategy works if you have your messaging on point + lots of testimonials and have enough time to message 1,000 people a week. (That’ll take you around 50 hours a week! And bring in 3 to 5 clients if you’re lucky).
   
   As a coach starting out, your conversion rates are going to be even lower because you don’t have experience closing a sale and you probably don’t have a very slick online presence yet. So as a new coach this strategy will discourage and probably also ruin your reputation – a good coach does not need to chase people and convince them they’re good at what they do. A good coach should be preceded by his/her reputation – this is what you need to focus on building. (more on that later/below)

    

    

   

2. Social Media Posts – Don’t get fooled by the algorithm, your marketing coaching will fall flat on its face.

   – social media is a great tool and I’m not here to diss it – well actually I am 🙂 on social media, you are distracting people into seeing your services and what you offer.
   
   In order for social media to work for you, you need, not only frequency but also medium diversity (posts, reels, live video, carousels etc) and quality content that stands out. The biggest problem it presents is once again time and resources.
   
   In a nutshell, if you’re just starting out, chances are your content is not gonna be great quality, and your target audience not very specific, so at this stage your time is probably better spent networking and finding clients in your immediate network. (whilst preparing for when this network dries out).
   
   The problem with social media is that although you can find leads there, they will not be high-quality leads and will need a lot of nurturing. So very often a new coach doesn’t have enough resources, in-house skills and clarity on their ideal client/messaging to be successful on social media. They can invest a lot of time and often see little to no return on their time investment.
   
   Social media works great as a strategy to amplify the results of other marketing strategies for coaches – but for beginners, it can be really hard if it’s the only medium you’re using to get your business off the ground.
   
   On social, a lot of frequency is required, but it cannot come at the cost of quality. It is far better to look at a core medium such as blogging and then repurpose on social media. Because this will cause your efforts to accumulate.   The blogs on your website will also help people find you on Google – and search engine leads are warm leads. They are people who are already taking action by looking for a coach like you, so they’re actively looking for a solution to their problem which makes them much more likely to buy. (Discovery calls booked from Google searches have a closing rate of over 90% in my coaching business)

3. List-Building – there’s a right way and a wrong way of dong it, just like any marketing strategy

   Now I know a lot of people out there are saying that you have to have an email list… however it comes with a few ‘ifs and buts’. So yes you do need to grow an email list if you want to eventually move to group coaching, however building your list needs to be done in a way that suits a new coach.

   Firstly, you need to make sure you learn how to create a great freebie (free training or pdf) that qualifies your leads. For example one of my best lead magnets teaches coaches how to optimize their website and blog to collect leads.
   
   This helps me qualify my leads – they are coaches, they have a website, they want leads from their website or blog, some of them even have a blog – qualified!. Anyone with these attributes is a potential client. But that is just the first step.
   
   Once they’re on your list you need to warm them up. You need to have an automated email sequence to warm them up and then offer them that discovery call.
   
   In my experience, the conversion rate from these kinds of leads is usually so low, that it’s not worth the time and money invested. (Your list will not grow without a regular ad budget to get more visibility for your lead magnet – a detail most forget to mention).
   
   What on the other works a lot better is combining list building with free training, challenges, or webinars.
   
   When you combine these strategies you’re warming up your audience more quickly because they actually can come and see you in person (or on live video), then they feel like they know you and of course, they also know what you sell because you have peppered your webinar with information about how you work with your clients. You also get the opportunity to pitch your coaching offer on the free training, resulting in a much higher chance of getting bookings right away.
   
   Once these people are on your list, you have a higher quality list than the ones that come from a freebie. You can of course keep warming them up, but it’s important that they come into your orbit in a way that gives them direct contact so that they self qualify and warm up very quickly. Those who stay on your list will be great clients.

   

Marketing your coaching business whilst avoiding these pitfalls…

 

So now you’re probably asking – In order to avoid these pitfalls, what should my strategy look like if I want to book more discovery calls as a new coach?

Here’s how to build your coach marketing strategy in 6 simple steps:

Step 1. Leverage your existing network to do your coaching hours and upsell them to some paid coaching too.

 

Step 2. Start building your authority by getting clear on your messaging, client struggles, ideal client persona – and then go ahead and build a simple website (ideally with the potential to add a blog because you’ll need that soon.)

Step 3. Build your reputable online presence – pick 1 social media platform and create great imagery, messaging etc. Get to know the algorithm of the platform you pick and make sure your ideal clients are active there.
Now get ready to blog.

 

Step 4. Start Blogging. Blogging will give you the opportunity to help people with their struggles right away. When written well, a post will take a website visitor from enquiring about their struggle to understanding why what you do could work for them. The natural next step is for them to discuss this with you on a discovery call.

Blogging can take a Google lead and turn it into a discovery call in minutes. Those prospects have been through your content – they have read your article and to some extent understood and agreed with your approach before booking the call. This is why they are way more likely to turn into customers. Your blog post also acts like a second qualifier (the first qualifier is the keyword they popped into the google search bar).

Step 5: Repurpose and share your blogs on social media to amplify your reach further and pick the low-hanging fruit in your network.

Step 6: Now build your email list. Turn your best, most loved blogs into webinars and start growing your email list whilst pitching your coaching packages.

You now have a repeatable, improvable marketing cycle that is guaranteed to grow your coaching business from zero to 100K in 12 to 18 months.

Would you like to build an automated lead generation system for your coaching business? Book your free discovery call here…

 

 

———————— About the Author: Stephanie Fiteni

Hi, I’m Stephanie, a Content marketing strategist and traffic growth coach, creator of the Profitable Content Marketing Method for Coaches. I help coaches generate more traffic, clients and discovery calls through their content and websites. And automate their social media posting.

My clients get fully booked with just 2 – 3 hours of marketing per week.

I have over 15 years of experience creating websites, writing blogs that convert, and ranking content on the first page of Google.
I can teach you how to create content that will convert your visitors into discovery call bookings. Let’s Talk