You’re ready to announce your new coaching business and finally live your dream. How do you get started with success, instead of struggle?
I talk to many coaches in this position who don’t know where to start. They’ve usually tried techniques recommended to them by their coaching schools with little or no success. Or worse, the sales process felt pushy or not authentic. As a result, they feel uncomfortable about marketing their services, but they don’t know what else to do.
Here are my favorite 8 ways to launch your coaching practice and get clients. And each method can be implemented in 30 days or less. These are the same methods my clients use to get more clients and more sales more often.
And they will work whether you are brand new and still in coaching school – or whether you’re already a certified coach but struggling to get clients.
#1 – Joint Venture Partnerships and Referrals
This is one of my favorite methods because it can be the easiest and fastest way to get leads, grow a list, and get new clients. In fact, you can build an extremely successful coaching practice on this one method.
All that is required is that you find someone who loves what you have to offer and wants to share it with others. For best results, connect with someone whose clients are also YOUR ideal clients.
For example, if you’re a divorce coach, you can team up with an attorney specializing in divorce. If you’re a massage therapist, you can joint venture with a chiropractor, life coach, or nutritionist (or all 3). If you’re a business coach, you can get referrals from webmasters, graphic artists, printers, bank managers – anyone who works with other businesses.
#2 – Speaking Engagements
I love this method because it’s a great way to get introduced to lots of people at one time. And when they see you in person and hear your message, it goes a long way toward building your credibility.
Many of my clients get off to a fast start by booking local speaking engagements for network meetings, JV partners, or associations.
#3 – Teleseminars and Webniars
This can work as well as speaking engagements – or even better if you prefer to talk over the phone than speak in public. Both teleseminars and webinars work great for coaches who are trying to get noticed and get clients.
Teleseminars are fun to do and easy to book. People can listen from any phone and don’t have to travel to the event. So you get great response when you offer a hot topic to your market.
Announce your teleseminar (or webinar) to your list when you have at least 50 people to invite. Or better yet, have a joint venture partner announce your teleseminar to their list.
You can grow your own list of potential clients fast by giving just one or two teleseminars or webinars a month. I used this method for my own coaching practice when I wanted to start growing my list, and it worked great.
#4 – Website with Opt-in Form
A website allows you to leverage your marketing efforts so you don’t have to talk to everyone personally. It allows you to give irresistible free information to prospects 24 hours a day. And with a web form that collects names and email addresses in exchange for that information, it becomes an automated lead generation tool.
My clients use this strategy to get clients calling them for appointments, often within days of launching their site. If you don’t have an opt-in form on your website, make plans to have one as soon as possible.
#5 – Blog
You don’t normally hear about launching a coaching practice with a blog. But this method can work really well in conjunction with other methods. And it works really well in certain tight niche communities.
You can become well know in your niche using only a blog if it has great content that gets passed around. We call this “social buzz”.
#6 – Article Marketing
If you would rather write than talk, you’ll love this method. Write articles on hot topics for your niche and post them all over the Internet:
[check_list]
- article directories
- as a guest expert on someone else’s site
- in public blogging platforms, like Blogger, Live Journal, or WordPress.com
- on your own website or blog
- announce the articles in social media sites, like Facebook or Twitter
- create RSS feeds
- the list goes on…
[/check_list]
You may have heard that article marketing doesn’t work as well as it used to because of recent Google changes. But let me assure you that great content will always get passed around. The key is to write articles that your ideal client will find irresistible.
For best results, combine article marketing with another method listed in this article. For instance, you can joint venture to write articles for another website and get published as a guest expert. Or you can write an article that gets added on your own website, is published in a newsletter, announced in Facebook, and gets added to an article directory.
#7 – Video Marketing
Did you know that YouTube gets more searches a day than any other site except Google? Today, someone in your niche is searching YouTube (and other video directories) for help that you could give them.
If you like being in front of a camera, this is a great way to launch your coaching practice. One of my clients, holistic health coach Shan Larter, had thousands of views on her videos and raving fans before she even launched her website.
Another plus is that it’s often easier to rank well for searches in YouTube than it is at Google because there is less competition.
#8 – Newsletter, Emails, and Personal Letters
This is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get clients. If you don’t have JV partners, you don’t have the technical skills for article marketing, and the thought of speaking in front of people scares you silly, then this is the place to start.
If you do nothing else, do this.
If you have an email list, send emails and newsletters. If you don’t have a list, send personal letters by mail and follow up with phone calls. Let people know about the fabulous transformation that you can help them (or someone they know) achieve.
When done well, newsletters, emails, and personal letters can help you get clients fast. There are people you know who would love to work with you if they only knew how you could help them.
A newsletter is also a critical part of marketing. It helps you keep in touch with your potential clients. So sending a newsletter isn’t optional. It’s a MUST.
Summary
You may have noticed that I didn’t include some essential elements in the above list, such as choosing a niche, branding, using tag lines, naming your transformation, or creating a signature system.
For maximum success, these things should be in place BEFORE you launch your coaching practice. These are the foundation of irresistible marketing. And once you have them, you will find it much easier to use the eight methods above to launch a successful coaching practice.
You’ll want to choose the method above that is easiest for you to start with and that will be the most fun for you to do.
Also, don’t try to do all eight strategies at the same time; it’s not needed and would be overwhelming to try. But do combine several that you like and that work well together, like joint venture partners and teleseminars.
Best wishes on launching your coaching business. Please leave a comment below, and let me know your favorite idea – or which one worked the best for you.