In a previous blog, we broke down how to become a personal trainer or private coach in five steps. Now, with the new year upon us, we will be diving into each of those five steps to offer further insight into how you can most effectively get the ball rolling on your coaching endeavors. There are three things that CoachUp takes care of for coaches which others tend to struggle with independently: client acquisition, automatic payments, and, possibly most important, digital marketing. To effectively market yourself as a coach is to further widen your network, leading to more lessons and more financial opportunity in coaching. There are a number of marketing strategies that coaches use to get a leg up on their competition, so let’s get right into a few of them.
3 marketing strategies that every coach should use
Build a website
With so much content on the internet today, the prospect of starting your first website in 2023 may seem like a feeble effort. Try to push your inhibitions or intimidation to the side, because this is really a simple process and will pay dividends. Here are three website builders to consider for marketing yourself as a coach.
- WordPress
This is the most popular website builder in the world, and hosts over 40% of all domains on the internet. It is extremely user friendly, and will allow you a space to create content and, in turn, market your strengths as a coach. From blogs and photo galleries to infinite customizable plugins and social networking, the focus of your WordPress site can be whatever you decide best helps you to market yourself and your coaching business. - HubSpot
This is truly the website builder for small business owners and the marketing novice. It was designed to help individuals promote their business while also teaching them how to most successfully market it. Through their adaptive page testing, you are allowed to create a number of variations to your pages and HubSpot will automatically monitor and serve your best working variation. You could post your basic workouts or philosophy in a number of different ways, and your website would choose which won works best for you and your marketing outreach. - Shopify
Often considered simply as a product-based eCommerce facilitator, Shopify is actually a great option for people looking to attach their preferred payment method directly to their website. Consider this the “one stop shop” option on this list. Shopify also offers blog and gallery flexibility so that you can create content right alongside your “store” of coaching services.
Increase social media presence
Going viral is a random phenomena and shouldn’t be the sole intention of expanding your marketing efforts through social platforms. As a private coach or personal trainer, being active on the most popular platforms—Twitter, Instagram and TikTok—is a great way to get new eyes on your coaching business and can help to expedite the word of mouth growth of your business. Increasing your presence and diversifying your platforms will help you to get even more interaction and traction online, and will improve your chances of striking content gold by going viral. Again, this isn’t the goal, but should it happen, the ease of your marketing efforts will grow substantially. The algorithms on TikTok and Instagram promote some extremely random content, so if you can find a creative way to share what makes you great as a coach, it may just give you that bump. There is simply no sense in not taking advantage of these opportunities.
Be consistent in encouraging referrals
Once you have successfully knocked down the first pin of gaining clientele, the extremely delicate, yet massively important process of building continuity will begin. Being consistent in marketing outreach to existing clients—sharing your availability, checking in on improvements/needs, and encouraging more sessions—without becoming overbearing is the delicate part, but the good news is that you can lighten that pressure by requesting referrals. Rather than constantly pushing for repeated business, lay out your interest in helping your clients friends and family achieve their goals as well. Marketing your availability to your existing network will help it to expand organically through word-of-mouth.
