Content marketing for coaches: 7 essential tips
In a world filled with business coaches, making your coaching business stand out can be difficult. That said, with effective content marketing approaches, setting yourself apart from competitors can become easy. But where should you begin? We’ve put together this guide on content marketing for coaches to get you on the right path.
We’ll walk you through how to create a content marketing strategy that draws business owners to you and gets them eager to hire you as their coach.
Don’t underestimate the importance of content marketing for coaches. Done well, it can lead to great results.
In fact, content marketing generates around three times more leads than traditional marketing. And it costs 62% less.
What is content marketing for coaches?
Content marketing for coaches is creating and delivering frequent high-value, high-impact resources. Each resource should meet your ideal coaching clients’ needs and answer their questions. This content should provide value and help you build relationships with your ideal clients. Your content should also inspire these people to buy your services, programmes, or products.
As a business coach, your clients aren’t only buying your services. They’re buying the opportunity to work with you. Personal branding is essential to content marketing for coaches. This is because it’s your personality that will attract clients and make them want to work with you over other coaches.
Therefore, your content must be true to you. Don’t try to build a brand that doesn’t resonate with who you really are.
Who are you serving as a business coach?
You can start preparing your content marketing strategy as soon as you know who your ideal client is. Don’t fall into the trap of supporting business owners of all kinds. This could leave you with a niche that’s too broad to resonate with anyone.
When choosing your niche, consider your ideal coaching clients’:
- Day-to-day lifestyle.
- Biggest problems and challenges.
- Goals and objectives.
- Age.
- Education.
- Location.
- Income.
If you need to niche down, here are some audience ideas. How about serving:
- Women business owners?
- Single-parent business owners?
- Business owners in an industry that you’re experienced in?
- Business owners who come from marginalised backgrounds?
- Business owners who are working to scale to six figures?
Content marketing for coaches can only be successful when you know exactly who you’re serving. It’s easy to get started without doing this groundwork, but you’ll never regret putting this thought in first.
What will your business coaching offer be?
It’s a common misconception that the more coaching services you offer, the more clients you’ll attract.
In reality, several offers can lead prospects to decision fatigue. If they feel overwhelmed (or even confused) about how they can work with you, they may not work with you at all.
However, if you handhold them to one amazing solution that fits their needs, they’ll be much more likely to buy.
Quick tip: Unsure what this amazing solution is? Do some market research with your ideal clients.
With a detailed survey, you can pinpoint their needs and come up with one ideal offer that meets these.
It’s much better to have one great offer than multiple offers that don’t hit their pain points.
And if you can’t convince your ideal clients to have a video call with you, a £10 gift voucher can go a long way.
As a business coach, your offer may be a series of one-on-one sessions, a group coaching programme, or a course that clients can follow in their own time. Or you might have a unique idea that sets you apart from any of these usual offer variations in the coaching industry.
How can you become your ideal client's business coach?
When you’re happy with your offer, you can work backwards, creating the content that will attract your ideal clients to this offer.
Content marketing for coaches becomes much easier when you know exactly which offer you’re marketing.
Rather than waiting for someone to hire you as their coach, become your ideal clients’ coach right away.
You can do this by coaching your ideal clients in the content you create. This way, you can build trust with your ideal clients and prepare them to book you.
Few people book a business coach straight away. They usually have objections (often to do with price) or fears that get in the way.
Your content will ease them in gradually, making them feel comfortable to become a client. Without content, this transition is unlikely.
This is where our tips on content marketing for coaches come in. So, let’s get started with your roadmap to creating the content that attracts business coaching clients.
What types of content marketing for coaches should you use?
There are lots of types of content marketing for coaches to leverage. Some of the most popular types are a blog, social media, email marketing, a podcast, or a YouTube channel.
It may seem that more marketing channels equals more success. But this is only the case if you have the time, resources, and/or budget to manage each channel well.
If you’re pushed for time, pursue one type of content marketing only. You’re more likely to see results if you market on one channel consistently than on several channels inconsistently.
We recommend starting with a blog. Blogging for business is important because:
While no one will see your social media posts after a few hours (at best), blog posts can attract leads for years. When it comes to blogging vs social media, blog posts have more longevity.
You need an email list, but you might not have many (or any) subscribers yet. A blog can give your business visibility while encouraging prospects to join your email list.
A podcast or YouTube channel requires you to have audio and video creation skills. This may be overwhelming earlier in your entrepreneurial journey.
Once your blog is up and running, you can start introducing new marketing channels. We recommend adding these one at a time as your business scales. When you gain the time or budget to introduce new marketing approaches, you can build without burning out.
7 content marketing steps for coaches
With the above in mind, in this guide to content marketing for coaches, we’ll focus on creating blog posts as your core content.
We’ll then explore how to repurpose this content to cover your social media and other marketing channels as you grow. This way you can take your content marketing strategy from a blog to a comprehensive campaign.
Here’s how to:
- Produce a content calendar to keep your marketing on track.
- Launch your blog as the core of your content marketing campaign.
- Choose which Google searches you want your blog to show up for.
- Repurpose your blog content for other marketing channels.
- Guide ideal clients to take the next step to work with you.
- Attract ideal clients at each stage of the buyer journey.
- Track what’s working with analytics.
1. Produce a content calendar to keep your marketing on track
Many business coaches start creating content with great intentions.
But then they run out of ideas for their content. Or they run out of time to create content.
This is especially common when creating content for various channels. Many business coaches run straight into burnout if they tackle too many marketing channels too quickly.
You can avoid burning out by creating a content calendar.
Before you produce any content, have a brainstorming session. Maybe two or three brainstorming sessions. The prep is essential, so resist the temptation to start creating content right away.
Instead, get creative and come up with as many content marketing ideas as possible for your blog. Feel out as many ideas as you can, even if they feel silly at first.
From here, you can make a spreadsheet or simple list that lays out this content with deadlines for each. Whether you create a quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly calendar, you can tick off the idea generation for months to come.
And then breathe. You’ve finished what is often the toughest part of the content marketing game.
2. Launch your blog as the core of your content marketing campaign
With all your ideas laid out in a content calendar, you can start sharing your expertise with your ideal clients on your blog.
Unsure how to launch a blog? Develop your blogging skills with our blog post, 10 steps to start a holistic blog. This post explains how blogging works and explores several best blogging practices.
3. Choose which Google searches you want your blog to show up for
We Google our problems pretty much every day.
This is especially true of business owners. These people wear many hats, which means they come across several conundrums and turn to Google all the time with their questions.
Imagine if your business coaching blog could show up in the search results with the perfect answer. And if, by extension, this blog allowed you to become your ideal clients’ go-to source for guidance…
The good news is, this is possible. As long as you know what your ideal coaching clients are Googling. All this takes is a little SEO.
SEO focuses on finding the keywords your ideal clients are Googling. You can include these keywords in strategic places across your blog and website.
4. Repurpose your blog for other marketing channels
One of the best things about blog posts is that they make it easy to create content for other channels. You can transform every blog post into social media posts, a podcast or video script, at least one marketing email, and pretty much anything you want.
Download our free guide on how to repurpose your blog for all your marketing channels from our Finer Library.
The great thing about repurposing your blog across all your marketing channels is that you can reach your ideal clients who like to consume content differently.
Some will read your blog. Others will watch your YouTube channel. Some will follow you on social media. Others will tune into your podcast. Your audience will grow in a way that feels manageable.
Placing your blog at the centre of your content marketing campaign allows you to reach all of these people without having to reinvent the wheel. You can also double, triple, or even quadruple the amount of your content that appears in Google search results.
5. Guide ideal clients to take the next step to work with you
Whether it’s a blog post or a podcast episode, make sure every piece of content guides your ideal clients closer to working with you.
We can’t tell you how many blog posts we’ve seen that give readers wonderful coaching advice, only to tail off without a next step.
This is a big blogging mistake to avoid: these blog posts leave readers getting free advice and then… closing the tab and walking away.
With so much going on in our lives, we can’t expect these people to remember us and come back for more.
We don’t want this for your blog (podcast, YouTube video, or social media).
So, come up with a list of actions that you would love your ideal clients to take when they finish consuming your content.
You’re going to help people take this action, bringing them into your world. (And who wouldn’t want to spend more time there?)
Action examples may include:
- Downloading a cheat sheet, checklist, guide, brochure, ebook, or similar.
- Signing up for a free introductory coaching session.
- Joining your email list to get weekly business growth tips.
- Booking a business coaching offer.
- Enrolling for a coaching webinar or masterclass.
- Applying to work with you.
- Joining a Facebook group where they can watch helpful Lives.
These action steps are your calls to action (CTAs).
You should include these as often as possible in your marketing content.
Include them at the end, in the middle, and near the beginning of content wherever possible. Remember: not everyone reads, watches, or listens until the end.
6. Attract ideal clients at each stage of the buyer journey
As your audience grows, this audience will include business owners who are in different stages of the buyer journey. Therefore, you need content that targets each stage of this journey.
There will be people in your audience who:
To attract these people, create content that reveals the value and benefits of business coaching. Ideas include: how to, secrets unveiled, and other tips-based content
To attract these people, create content that highlights your personality. You need more than your credentials to stand out against competitors. Ideas include: insights into your personal life, your take on trending topics, and your origin story.
To attract these people, create content that showcases your irresistible offer. Ideas include: promotional content that creates fear of missing out, builds hype, and shows business owners that there is a way through their problems.
To attract these people, create content that keeps you and your offers fresh and exciting. Ideas include: content that offers referral benefits, results-based posts, and a combination of all the content ideas given above.
All content marketing for coaches should position the coach as the go-to expert who can solve ideal clients’ most burning problems. So, make sure your knowledge shines through your content, no matter which marketing channels you pursue.
Step up your content with a style sheet (don’t overlook this)
You’ll also want your content to feel consistent so ideal clients instantly recognise the content as yours. Whatever your competitors are doing, create your content differently.
Keeping track of your tone of voice, brand identity, and stylistic choices makes upholding consistency easy. We suggest creating a simple style sheet to make sure all of your content feels ‘you.’
(In fact, we care about this so much that we create a free style sheet for all of our clients if they don’t already have one.)
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a style sheet is only for large businesses. Style sheets are quick and easy to create and ideal for businesses of all sizes to develop a successful brand.
7. Track what's working with analytics
Content marketing for coaches isn’t complete without tracking progress and tweaking accordingly. Make use of tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and your social media platforms’ analytics.
These will tell you what’s getting engagement and where your traffic is coming from. You can use your insights to focus on the platforms and calls to action that are working best.
The power of a blog in your content marketing strategy
Keep in mind that blogs don’t take off straight away. But when they do, they attract ideal clients without you having to do any extra work. They can become the powerhouse of content marketing for coaches.
A blog is the long-term investment of the marketing world. It won’t offer instant results (but what does, really?) However, if you put in the work, your blog will start to pay off serious dividends. In our clients’ cases, we’re talking up to 1,000 new website visitors a day.
But you won’t only have a blog that attracts ideal clients. You’ll have a knowledge hub of content to convert into social media posts, video scripts, podcast talking points, email newsletters, and other marketing initiatives.
About Finer Things Editorial
Finer Things Editorial writes for businesses that help others achieve abundance, whether in the form of profit, self-love, or physical health. Our content helps these businesses attract their dream clients, so they don’t have to chase them. Having taken businesses from 0 to 1,000+ primed-to-buy website visitors per day, we take businesses from unknown to really known.
Our credentials include writing/communications undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, HubSpot qualifications, and Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading qualifications.