Getting new coaching clients can be a tiring process - chasing possible clients for months, never getting a straight answer, only for them to disappear. That’s why it’s important to attract the right people and maximize your efforts where possible.

The good news is scaling your coaching business can actually be an easier process than you think, and new clients are often closer to home than you imagine. It’s often a lot easier leveraging your current community than having to fish further afield and there are likely to be some low-hanging fruits that are ready to take the jump.

Here are five ways how you can maximize the potential of your community and get more coaching clients:

Engage your social audience

Your social audience is perhaps the fastest and easiest way to engage with your community. It’s also the most scalable. All social platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, are built perfectly for engaging with your target audience. And it doesn’t all have to be a long slog. You can incorporate both organic social posting (regular posting, having conversations with people, commenting and so on) with paid placements.

Paid ads on Facebook, Google Adwords and LinkedIn are great to target new clients with precision. For example, Facebook targeting allows you to choose your ideal coaching clients demographic, interests, behaviours and so on. For all paid activity, test and measure the results. You’ll then find out what ads work best with what audience. If you social community love you, they will spread the love and share your posts. Win, win.  

Get strategic with partnerships

In your community, there are probably lots of opportunities readily available that you aren’t utilising yet. One of these is finding strategic partnerships that can be profitable for you. The key to this is seeking out a business or person who provides something that can compliment your coaching offering.

For example, if you are a health and wellbeing coach, consider partnering with a health blogger or nutrition brand. The right partnership can quickly expand your community and promote your coaching offering to their readers/customers.

Position yourself correctly in the community

In order to leverage your community to get more business, you need to be positioned as an expert. The question is, how do you actually do that? To start with, get posting with valuable content that is authentic, credible and original.

It doesn’t matter if it is a blog post, social post or video, if it’s valuable then people will share it, people will read/watch it, and people will trust you more. The key is in delivering content your audience actually want. What are their challenges? Write something that will address that issue and leave them wanting more.

Grow your skills

Of course, your community doesn’t always need to just be about getting new clients. Growing your coaching business is another way to expand, grow your skills-base, and therefore get a bigger community and more clients in.

Get new staff, with skills you might not have, is a great way to boost your offering and expand your reach. How do you do this? Try using online approaches to recruit, or why not try a ‘now hiring’ banner to grab the attention of potential employees?

Remember, your community is only as big as yourself. Expanding your team also helps expand your community, meaning a lot more potential clients.

Build a better network

While building a bigger network could be seen as a good opportunity to get more clients, building a better network always works best. Quality trumps quantity. A smart way to do this is to host an expert event, inviting interesting parties to hear you speak about a certain topic. Not only will this engage your community but it will also bring people interested in your services to you. If you impress, you now have a great shot at getting new clients.

Not only does this work for improving the quality of your network, but it also positions yourself as an expert. You’ll be seen as someone people can learn from, and it’s not as difficult to start as you might think.

Choose a topic people will be interested in, find a venue, spread the word through your community via all channels available, network like crazy at the event. There are plenty of free resources available to help you promote your event, such as Meetup or Eventbrite. If you nail it, you’ll come away with a load of hot-to-sign potential clients. Alternatively, you could try hosting a workshop where you can educate and inspire if you feel your offering works better like that.

Conclusion

These are five quick ways you can get more out of your community and get the clients rolling in. The best thing about your community is that if you position yourself well and engage with relevant people, you’ll find they can do a lot of the hard work for you.

Remember, word of mouth recommendations are always the best method of getting new clients, so impress people and enlist your friends and family to spread the word.

About Michelle Deery

Michelle Deery is a content writer based out of the UK. She writes on a variety of topics within the marketing niche. Her work helps businesses attain continued success. Follow her on Twitter: @MichWriting