Marketing your coaching business online

Posted on December 18, 2016 by Wayne Farrell, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

It is a sad fact that around 80% of new businesses fail within the first two years. You have invested time and money in becoming a coach and you have a passion to make a difference in the world. So how you can ensure that you are one of the coaches who succeed? Marketing your coaching business online is one way to find paying clients and keep the cash coming in.

In this article we are going to look at a number tips to market your coaching business online. These are by no means the only way and is just an over view of what to consider. Marketing your coaching business online means that you will be found in the search engines, social media sites or sites like YouTube etc. One could argue that nowadays it is imperative to use online marketing to gain new clients.

Ways to market your coaching business online

Professional looking website.

One of the most common ways to market online is to have a website. The advantage of having a website is that people can search for the service that they need and potentially find you. When you get a website, ensure that it is professional looking. It does not have to be the most expensive site, but getting it done on the cheap is not going to serve you. This is one of the places I would recommend to spend a little more. Having a good website can level out the playing field to compete with larger companies.

A few tips to consider for your website.

• It is good practice to have your company name as your domain name. If possible, have your keyword in your domain name. Example, www.coachingwithnlp.co Potential clients will be searching for Coaching or NLP, not Wayne’s therapy services.

• Keep your domain name simple, easy to remember and easy to spell, without special characters. Remember what your potential clients might type into the search engine to find you.

• Use your country code in your domain name. Example using a .co.uk if you your business is in the UK.

• Your email address should be the same as domain name. Example wayne@coachingwithnlp.co. Using a Gmail or Yahoo email address looks unprofessional.

• You don’t need to have the most expensive website, but you certainly don’t want a “cheap looking” website either. For many potential clients this will be the first impression they get of you and your business.

• Your potential clients must be able to easily navigate your website and ensure you have large enough text as well.

• Don’t only use pages and pages of text. Make use of pictures and videos. Some people prefer to watch a video or listen to the message rather than read pages of text.

• Your website must be mobile and tablet friendly as more people are searching through devices other than PC’s.

• Have your contact details easily visible.

• Ensure your pages and posts have clear names. This makes it easier for Google to find. Example www.coachingwithnlp.co/nlp-training-in-london and not something like www.coachingwithnlp.co/123-post-124252346.

Blogging

One way to help people find you is to blog regularly. Blogs are simply articles that you publish on your website. You can also guest blog by publishing on other people’s websites. Example doing a guest blog on coaching to publish on somebody’s website who is a hypnotherapist. You can also make use of sites like www.ezinearticles.com where you can publish articles that point back to your website to generate traffic and link juice.

Articles should between 500 to 1000 words and focus on a relevant keyword you want to rank for. This article as an example focuses on the keyword “marketing your coaching business online.” Write multiple blogs for multiple keywords consistently over time. Ideally blog at least once a week, but whenever you can is better than never. These articles can be about anything, although it is useful to keep them to your niche or what people would be searching for to find you.

Your keywords in your articles should be aimed at what you potential clients might search for in Google, so that they can find your website. Have an image or video in your article. Your image or video should have the same keyword you want to rank for in the ALT tags.

Free listing sites and Directories

One factor for search engine optimization is having quality back links from other websites to your website. This allows people to find you through other websites as well as improve your search engine optimization of your website. One way to achieve that is to register your website link on free listing sites. This will give more quantity links, but not necessarily quality links. Please be aware that not all links are created equal and spammy links can actually be detrimental to your website rankings.

It is best to have links coming from an authority directory site in your niche as it adds more weight to the link pointing to your site. An example would be having a link on COMENSA, ICF or other industry related websites. Do your link building consistently over time. It looks unnatural to Google if you get 1000 back links in one day. Stay away from companies that say they will get your website to 1000’s of back links. These are typically spammy and will not do you any favours.

With all these links that you get from other sites, have them point to a few different pages on your website and have a few different anchor texts. Example, don’t point all the links to your home page with one type of link, example “life coaching.” Mix the links up a bit.

We have created a business directory for all our students to list their businesses on. So if you have trained with us, then please send us your details to add to the coaching directory.

YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google and it is owned by Google. Every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours of videos on YouTube. Many people look for “how to” or “explainer” videos. Creating a YouTube channel and posting videos with your keywords allows people to find you through YouTube. Placing those videos on your website, drives traffic to your website and can increase your website ranking. Keep your videos short, concise with good lighting and speak clearly. That being said, don’t over think it, just do it.

With the quality of cameras in mobile phones nowadays, there is really no excuse for not having videos. There are of course many other video sharing website available for you to post your videos.

Social Media

Social media is a really easy to use and yet very powerful way to market your coaching business online. This might sound a little strong, but I think avoiding social media in your marketing efforts is a huge mistake.

There are many channels to use including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and many others. The important thing is to be consistent in using your social media channels, so only pick a few of the main ones and do them well, rather than doing many and doing them badly. Be aware not to try to sell, sell, sell to your audience. Very few people like to be sold to, but most people like to buy. You want to create a following of people who want to hear about what you do, without hard selling them. This can be a very effective and low cost way to market your coaching business, or any other business for that matter.

Ensure that you have separate profiles on the likes of Facebook for your business page and your personal page. Your clients do not want to see you getting drunk on weekends and then advertise helping get rid of addictions on Monday.

Bonus tips on marketing your coaching business online
Continuity of your brand

Ensure to add your company logo, website, email address and phone number on each platform and marketing channels, both online and offline.

Give freely

You know how much spam you get of people trying to sell you things. Most people don’t like that. A much better way of marketing is attraction marketing. Meaning you attract your clients to you out of their free will. Those are much better clients and they will often be much more loyal to your brand. One great way to attract clients is to give them things for free. Example, on this site you can find the free introduction to coaching course, free 7 keys to achieving results course, the free EBook and now also the coaching directory for all our past students. These things need to be valuable to the client and they do not have to cost you a lot of money.

So how are you going to market your coaching business online?

Feel free to contact us if you need any help in marketing your coaching business online.