Social Media Marketing for Life Coaches: Strategies for Building an Audience and Creating Income

The life coaching industry is one that is focused on personal branding and helping individuals achieve their goals. While some argue that the industry is becoming over saturated we believe that as the industry becomes more well-known, it's easier for life coaches to build an audience and create income for themselves as the potential audience expands. But they need to understand how to market themselves effectively so that they:

1. Cut through the noise of endless bad content to attract the attention of their target audience
2. Convert the attention into purchases

Understanding the goals

The first step in marketing your life coaching business on social media is understanding that you operate a business with a very clear goal - converting attention to clients. It not only means that you need to have a clear understanding of the value you offer, who you are targeting and why, but also that you have a clear messaging about your services.

To reiterate, there are two key parts and they cannot be skipped or overlooked:

1. Command attention
2. Convert attention to purchases

Many people are jumping onto social media to announce that they are life coaches and show their lifestyle, thinking that attention will automatically lead to purchase intent.

But it's not enough, you have to have a clear marketing message about your services that will give your clients the understanding of the value of your services they need to convert.

Building your marketing message

To take this into practice you need to position your marketing message that attracts the right people. The three things in this framework are:

Your impact - how you make an impact in people’s lives, what is it that you know how to improve

Your values - how you carry yourself, what adjectives you can use to describe you

Your channel - how you bring you communicate - TikTok, Reels, static content, or text etc.

Once you understand those three things, you can  start to make your message specific and put most of your content through this lense.

Building attention with video

Video is king when it comes to social media - TikTok and Instagram (also, Youtube!) prioritises video content, and even if you prefer not showing your face you can make reels and TikTok’s with text and atmospheric backgrounds. It will increasingly be important for reach, engagement and conversion.

• You can be more candid and personal - show your face to the camera and address the audience with the simple framework: “Hi, this is who I am, here’s what I believe in, follow me in this continuous exploration and learn the full story”
• You can be more mysterious and message focused - use atmospheric and lifestyle backgrounds that reflect your values, but write really clearly with moving graphic text covering the same framework as above.

Don’t overcomplicate this but you absolutely need to create video content which follows the messaging framework and brings out a clear marketing message for your coaching services. Let your followers know who you are and what you believe in, and most importantly invite them to embark on this journey with you.

Drive attention to action

1. Offer free resources and lead magnets: One way to demonstrate your value and expertise is by offering free resources to your followers. This could include things like ebooks, webinars, or other types of content that provide valuable information and help to establish you as a trusted source of information. Learn more here on how to set up a digital product store.
2. Invite followers to learn more about your coaching services: Once you've built relationships with your followers and demonstrated your value and expertise, you can start inviting them to learn more about your coaching services. This could include offering free consultations, sharing testimonials from satisfied clients, or providing more information about the benefits of working with a coach. You should drive the attention to your link-in-bio site that is capable of hosting your services (Checkout Pensight) and can help you close the consultations in the moment when the client’s desire is at the highest point without sending them through multiple services.
3. Follow up with interested followers: Not everyone who is interested in your coaching services will be ready to make a commitment right away. It's important to follow up with interested followers and continue to engage with them to keep them interested and build trust. This could include sending periodic emails, offering special discounts, or providing additional resources and information.

Tips on Consistency and Engagement

Consistency in your marketing efforts is a must and it comes with a plan - that’s why it’s important to create a content calendar and stick to it (get our free content calendar template here). Think of what message you want to get out every day, in different formats, and make sure to follow up on it.

You can also link content by creating a narrative that guides your followers on the journey. Keep track of the hashtag so you can join conversations and get to know what your followers are thinking and talking about

When it comes to engagement, it ’s important to reward your loyal followers. Have calls to action or even chat with them, show them you appreciate them and be open to feedback.

Get your message right

In conclusion, it's important to remember the reason you run social media marketing is to command attention and convert it to purchases. Once you have a clear positioning framework, and tailor your approach to your specific strengths and preferences you can build an audience and create income for your life coaching business.

Read more here on how to acquire organic clients for your coaching business.

Find out how to use hashtags as a life coach and which ones to use