Marketing for Coaches

Not personal branding. Not funnels. The actual question of how someone decides you are the right coach for them.

Most coaches who come to me with a marketing problem do not have a marketing problem. They have a clarity problem. They are not entirely sure what they offer, who it is for, or why someone would choose them over anyone else with a coaching certificate. Until that is sorted, the marketing is noise.

What is usually wrong

A few things come up repeatedly. First: the offer is too broad. Coaching everyone who has a career question is not an offer. Second: the language is what coaches say to each other, not what clients say about their situation. Third: the conversion point (the moment someone decides to book) is not thought through. The website might look fine and still not convert because it does not give someone a reason to act.

Occasionally the problem is simpler. The coach is excellent but invisible. They do not have enough of a trail for someone to find them, check them out, and feel confident. That is a different problem and it has a different fix.

What the work looks like

We start with a proper look at your current situation. Where are your enquiries coming from? How many convert? What does the conversion conversation look like? What do you charge and how do you present it?

From that we pick the specific problem worth solving. One session might focus entirely on your positioning statement: what you say when someone asks what you do. Another might look at your enquiry-to-booking conversation and what is getting in the way.

I do not give you a content calendar. I am not going to tell you to post more on social media. If those are useful for your practice, that will emerge from the conversation. If they are not, we will not waste time on them.

A note on what this is not

This is not a course. It is a conversation about your actual practice. What I bring is over 10 years of watching what works for coaches who build practices that last, and 11 years previously in financial services watching how professional services businesses attract and keep clients. The combination is useful for this specific problem.

Talk about where your marketing is

Questions about the marketing work

How confidential is what we discuss?

Completely. Your business situation, your positioning, your client enquiry rate. None of it goes anywhere. I treat it the same way I treat supervision content: between us.

What is your view on personal branding for coaches?

It is overemphasised as a concept. Most coaches do not have a personal branding problem. They have a clarity problem. Fix the clarity and the branding mostly sorts itself. I am suspicious of anything that makes the marketing feel more complicated than the coaching.

Can you help if I have a live enquiry to handle right now?

If you have an enquiry and are not sure how to handle the conversation, book a call this week. I can usually fit that in quickly. It is not the normal format for this work but it is not an unusual request.

What if I need to rearrange a session?

Let me know at least 48 hours beforehand and we rearrange at no cost. Less than 48 hours I charge the session fee. Straightforward on both sides.

Will you review my website or professional profile?

Yes, if that is where the problem is. I look at whatever is relevant: your website, your professional profile, your enquiry process. I follow the trail, not a fixed agenda.

Work out what is actually getting in the way

A twenty-minute call. No pitch. We will see if this is the right conversation before anything else.

Book a call