A Simple Digital Marketing Guide for Coaches
In today's digital era, coaches face the exciting challenge of standing out in a crowded online space. The key to success lies in a robust digital marketing strategy that not only reaches your target audience but also resonates with them on a personal level. We’ve created this comprehensive guide to help coaches navigate the digital landscape, ensuring your services are not just seen, but sought after.
1. Understanding and Engaging Your Audience
The foundation of any successful digital marketing strategy is a deep understanding of your audience. As a coach, your primary goal is to identify and connect with those who can most benefit from your expertise. To reach these people, it's crucial to have or create a marketing mindset.
Like it or not, marketing rules the world, for it is through captivating narratives and strategic influence that ideas spread, brands thrive, and perceptions are shaped. Your future clients will buy from you because they trust you and feel that you understand their problem.
They’ll trust you more if your marketing is a reflection of your authentic self. Someone who genuinely wants to see them succeed.
As a marketer, my goal is to help you in that journey so you can spread your message where it needs to be heard. Accomplishing this requires a well-thought-out approach, beginning with demographic research.
Demographic research forces you to answer questions like: Who are your potential clients? What are their ages, professions, interests, and challenges? The reason this is important is because not everybody is interested in your service. Approaching the wrong audience a sure way to failure.
Of course, you can simply Google these questions and research more about them.
However, another invaluable tool to use is ChatGPT. By now, most of us have heard about it, but a lot of people are not using it to its full potential. Don’t be afraid of AI. It's a tool just like everything else and will be useful if you use it correctly. Use it to your advantage to get answers to these questions.
Work smart, not hard.
You don't have to use it for everything but being guided into the right direction will save you a lot of time.
Another important thing to understand is that your audience goes beyond mere statistics. This deep understanding of your audience is a cornerstone of effective digital marketing for coaches, as it allows you to tailor your approach to meet their specific needs.
Marketing is about empathizing with your audiences struggles and aspirations. For instance, if you're a career coach, your audience might include professionals seeking career advancement or a change in their career path. They might struggle with resume writing, interview skills, or even confidence issues.
By creating personas (which is a detailed, fictional representation of a brand's ideal customer, based on data and research) of your ideal clients, you can tailor your content to address their specific needs, fears, and goals.
Engagement is the next crucial step. It's not enough to just know your audience; you need to build a relationship with them. This can be achieved through interactive content, such as webinars, Q&A sessions, and live discussions on social media platforms.
Encourage feedback and participation. Ask questions in your blog posts or social media updates to spark conversations. For example, you could write a blog post about overcoming common career obstacles and then ask your readers to share their experiences in the comments.
This not only increases engagement but also provides you with deeper insights into your audience's challenges, allowing you to refine your services and marketing strategies further. To get the ball rolling on this it’s important to interact with others in the community. Don’t be discouraged if nobody interacts with you in the beginning. Building a brand and trust takes time.
2. Keyword Research and SEO Optimization
Once you understand your audience, the next step is to ensure they can find you. This is where keyword research and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) come into play.
Start by identifying the keywords and phrases your potential clients are using to find coaching services.
Tools like Google Keyword Planner or even ChatGPT can help you discover the terms that are both relevant to your coaching niche and have a high search volume. (Be careful with the search volume data from ChatGPT since it's usually not accurate)
But keyword research is more than just finding popular terms; it's about understanding the intent behind the searches. Are people looking for information, seeking a specific service, or ready to make a purchase?
For instance, someone searching for "how to improve leadership skills" might be in the early stages of looking for a leadership coach, while someone searching for "best executive coach near me" is likely further along in the decision-making process.
Once you've identified your keywords, it's time to integrate them into your website and content. This includes your web pages, blog posts, meta descriptions, and even image alt texts.
However, it's crucial to use keywords naturally and avoid overstuffing, as Google's algorithms are sophisticated enough to penalize keyword spamming. Your content should always be written for humans first, search engines second.
SEO is not just about keywords, though. It's also about creating quality content that establishes you as an authority in your field. This means regularly publishing articles, guides, and case studies that provide real value to your audience. For example, as a health and wellness coach, you could write in-depth articles about stress management techniques, nutrition tips, or exercise routines.
By consistently providing valuable information, you not only improve your SEO rankings but also build trust with your audience.
3. Creating Compelling and Engaging Content
Content is the heart of your digital marketing strategy. It's the vehicle through which you communicate your expertise, share your insights, and connect with your audience. But with the vast amount of content available online, how do you make yours stand out?
First, focus on creating content that is both informative and engaging. Your blog posts, videos, podcasts, or infographics should not only provide valuable information but also be enjoyable to consume. Use storytelling to make your content more relatable. Share real-life examples, success stories, or even your own journey as a coach. This not only makes your content more interesting but also helps establish a personal connection with your audience.
Visuals play a crucial role in making your content more engaging. Use high-quality images, videos, and infographics to break up text and illustrate your points. For instance, if you're writing a blog post about goal setting, include an infographic that outlines the steps in a visually appealing way. Videos can be particularly effective for coaches, as they allow you to showcase your personality and communication style, which can be a deciding factor for potential clients.
As someone who’s had great coaches in my life this is just a big thank you for the work you guys put in. May you enlighten many more minds.
Interactive content is another way to increase engagement. This could include quizzes, polls, or interactive worksheets that encourage your audience to actively participate. For example, as a financial coach, you could create an interactive budgeting worksheet that helps your audience assess their spending habits.
Remember, the goal of your content is not just to inform, but to inspire action.
Whether it's signing up for your newsletter, downloading a resource, or booking a coaching session, your content should always have a clear, compelling, and relevant call to action (CTA).
4. So, where do you start?
This is probably the hardest question to answer. However, the reason is simple. The reason is that I don’t know how far along in your journey you are. I don’t know how much knowledge you possess at this point in time.
Unfortunately marketing is not a simple copy and paste system. Sure there are parts you can copy, but for marketing to work you need to add your own creativity. So we hope these steps help you along the way.
What’ll we’ll do is describe a couple of fundamental steps we believe are important. We hope some of these steps resonate with you and inspire you to take action.
4.1 Step 1: People need a way to contact you
You need a place where people can get to know and contact you. Now luckily in today’s day and age you are not bound to one platform. And no matter which platform you use, the end goal is simple: get people to book your service or schedule an appointment.
This can be done on many different platforms, giving you many creative options to help people reach that goal. The question you should ask yourself is: “how professional do you want it to be?”
Just like a suit and tie looks more professional than a plain shirt and pants, there are levels to professionalism in the wold of marketing. Looking the part and creating that perceived value will attract a different type of person. Sure, not 100% of the time, but more often than not.
So here is the list from most professional to least professional ways people can contact you.
4.1.1 A website
A good looking website is the suit and tie of the internet world. People trust and believe you more when you have a good looking website.
Over the years we’ve tried many different website builders.
Wordpress, Wix, Shopify and now Squarespace. Back in the day we believed we needed Wordpress because it had the most amount of plugins/extensions so obviously that would be better because it give you way more creative freedom…right?
Looking back we’ve wasted a lot of time fixing errors and maintaining the website. Sure plugins and extensions are nice when they work flawlessly.
However, the harsh reality is that some of these plugins will break your website from time to time. Also when two different plugins don’t work together you will end up looking like this chicken.
That’s why we decided to go with Squarespace for this website.
BEST. DECISION. EVER.
We will never go back to a website builder with too many options. Sometimes less really is more.
When you join Squarespace it starts out with three easy prompts to get you started:
What is your site about?
Choose the topic that most closely relates to your coaching field.What are your top goals?
Pick what you want people to do on your website.How would you like to get started?
Start from a template or start from scratch.
After that you get to pick a template or start from scratch and design the website to your likings. Don’t worry if the first version doesn’t look exactly like you want it. We’re still tweaking this website as well as we discover more features.
But you’ll be way ahead of people who do not have a website. As time goes on you’ll understand Squarespace better and better, and will be able to do more and more. That’s just how growth works.
For another website we’re creating we’re testing a completely different Website builder. We haven’t used it for a long time yet but the first tests we’re amazing! AI really is changing the way we create forever.
This website builder uses AI to make your journey even easier. We’re talking about Mixo.io.
Before we waste a lot of words talking about it, we recommend just watching this 3 minute long video to be amazed at the possibilities with an AI website builder.
If you’re not amazed at the possibilities, you should probably watch the video again. Imagine going from having to build websites with code just 20 years ago, to having your entire website build for you using AI.
This is an amazing leap forward and will make having an website accessible to more and more people, thus leveling the playing field for smaller creators.
We’ll probably give an update in the future about our journey using this AI website builder for one of our projects. But we’re excited about the possibilities.
4.1.2 A simple landing page
This solution is not as professional as a website but we’re equally impressed by the development of these type of landing pages. If you’re using any type of social media and go to a famous person’s profile you’ll most likely always encounter a link that redirects you to more links. A so called “Link in bio” strategy. They usually look something like this image.
Back in the day they used to be fairly simple, but we’re witnessing an evolution in these landing pages as well. One of those evolutions is called Beacons.ai.
Beacons.ai is a versatile platform designed for creators, offering tools for building a strong online presence. It's particularly useful for anybody that wants to create an easy landing page, providing features like a customizable link in bio, media kit builder, online store, and email marketing tools.
The platform is AI-integrated, offering insights and automation to enhance content creation and audience engagement. Beacon.ai allows for the centralization of important links through a customizable bio link, enhancing accessibility for audiences.
The platform's integration of custom .bio domains adds a professional touch, while its automation features keep content fresh and engaging. Additionally, its email marketing tools help maintain direct communication with the audience.
4.1.3 Social media and email
The last and probably least professional way to get people to contact you is by using a social media platform.
If you’re using Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or any of the other social platforms you can simply redirect people to your DM or have them send an email to you.
You will lose out on a substantial amount of people who simply don’t think this is professional enough but in some cases, especially if you’ve build a trustworthy brand, it can work out.
4.2 Step 2: Create content and engage with communities
Step 2 consist of 2 steps. Step 1 is the process of creating content and step 2 is the process of managing all your social media accounts across different platforms. AKA distribution of your content.
4.2.1 Creating content
Anybody joining the online world that wants to be seen has to create content. Luckily you don’t have to create everything fro scratch. As we mentioned before you can use AI tools like ChatGPT to give you many ideas for your content.
Simply start out with a question like “what type of content does [enter your audience] like to see and engage with?”, get the answer and build from there.
Using AI is like your personal side-kick and sparring partner. Not using it is just holding you back from joining the express lane and becoming a better marketer. Then there are places like Canva where you can create awesome infographics.
These tools really help remove all the hard work by giving you amazing templates to use. You can use their infographics and combine them with prompts from ChatGPT to create engaging content on a consistent basis.
This is just one example. Use your creative juices to come up with many more ways to utilize these tools to your advantage.
4.2.2 Distributing the content
Back in the day, if you had many different social media accounts on many different platforms you had to log into each social media account separately to post content. I cannot stress you enough how tedious of a task this was.
Luckily you, the reader, is living in the best of times where things are becoming much easier. One tool we’re using ourselves at the moment is called Metricool. Since we wanted to do this process good we really took our time to scour the internet in search of the best one stop shop for social media management tool.
We’ve looked at many of the famous social media management tools like Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social, and even many less famous tools.
We made a list of criteria for the social media management tool like: ease of use, scheduling features, analytics & reporting, automation and AI capabilities, integration capabilities, security and compliance, mobile accessibility, pricing and more.
Based on that list we went on a hunt and as you know we stumbled upon Metricool. Now besides its Cool name, it is a really cool tool. The simplicity, fastness, ease of use and best of all free price for the first 5 social accounts, it came ahead by far.
In my years of using tools this has probably been the easiest most user friendly tool I’ve used. It’s so simple that I don’t even remember following prompts to understand it. Everything just made sense from the get-go.
We wouldn’t talk about this tool like this if we weren’t highly impressed. So if you’re looking for a place to connect your socials while being able to post 50 posts for free per month, Metricool is by far the best one out there.
So now we’ve covered a way to create content and a way to distribute the content. That leaves just one important thing to remember.
4.2.3 Find your community
Create content, distribute the content and find communities that would love to read more about your content. There are countless communities on the internet. Look around, join a couple, engage with a few, until you find the sweet spot.
Posting your content to people who are not interested in your content is a waste of time. Don’t rely on your friends and family to support you because they might now be interested in that subject and that’s okay! Find people who are passionate about it and do what to learn more to engage with.
Once you find the communities don’t just recklessly spam your content! Build up trust over a period of time. Let people get familiar with your name and then provide solutions when you see necessary. Eventually people will see your value and you’ll attract value.
1 good client is beter than 2 bad clients. Quality over quantity.
Ohh and if you can’t find any community to join you are not looking hard enough. That’s just rule number 34 of the internet. If you can think it, it exists.
5. The Power of Paid Advertising
In the realm of digital marketing, paid advertising stands out as a critical component for coaches looking to expand their reach and influence.
Paid online advertising is essentially targeted messaging, where you can pinpoint your ideal audience with precision, ensuring that your marketing efforts are seen by those most likely to benefit from your services.
5.1 Understanding the Complexity of Paid Ad Platforms
While platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer robust tools for paid advertising, mastering these platforms is not straightforward.
Each platform has its unique set of features, targeting options, and ad formats, making it a complex task to navigate effectively. It takes time, patience, and a willingness to learn to use these tools effectively.
However, the effort is worthwhile as it opens up a world of opportunities to connect with your target audience in a more direct and impactful way.
5.2 Paid Advertising as a Dual Benefit
One of the intriguing aspects of mastering paid advertising is the potential to create an additional business model.
As you become proficient in using these ad platforms, you can offer your expertise as a service to other coaches. This not only diversifies your income streams but also enhances your value proposition in the coaching community.
5.3 Getting Started with Paid Advertising
Embarking on the journey of paid advertising is less daunting than it seems. There are numerous free resources available, particularly on YouTube, offering comprehensive tutorials and guides.
These resources make it easier to understand the basics and advanced strategies of paid advertising without the need for expensive courses. The key is to start small, experiment, and gradually build your knowledge and skills.
5.4 Streamlining Ad Creation with Tools
To further simplify the process of creating compelling ads, tools like AdCreative.ai can be immensely helpful. This tool automates the creation of ad visuals and copy, making it easier to produce high-quality ads for various campaigns across different channels.
By leveraging artificial intelligence, it customizes and optimizes ad designs, ensuring they resonate with the intended audience.
This tool not only saves valuable time but also enhances the effectiveness of your campaigns. It ensures that your ads maintain a consistent look and feel across various platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram, which is crucial for brand identity. Additionally, AdCreative.ai provides insightful analytics based on ad performance, allowing for continuous improvement and refinement of marketing strategies.
This makes it an indispensable tool for marketers seeking to maximize the impact of their advertising efforts with efficiency and precision.
6. The Coach-lusion
The first step before anything else, is to start. Trust me, you will fail. I still fail from time to time. But as time goes on you’ll learn more and more and fail less and less. That’s when you’ll understand the power of persistence.
By focusing on these key elements, you can develop a successful digital marketing strategy for coaches, building a strong online presence that attracts and retains clients. It can take months or sometimes years before it pays of…but the years will pass regardless. Might as well start now.
Developing a successful digital marketing strategy as a coach requires a blend of understanding your audience, mastering SEO, and creating content that not only informs but also engages and inspires.
By focusing on these key elements, you can build a strong online presence that attracts and retains clients, helping you grow your coaching business in the digital age.
As a coach your primary goal is most likely to have clients schedule an appointment to see if there is a connection.
That’s why we’ve created a free step by step guide to help you with your marketing strategy. Click the button below, create an account completely free of charge and get access to this marketing funnel.
PS: Feel free to ask questions in the comment section below and we’ll try to point you in the right direction.
