Marketing for Coaches

Key Principles of Marketing for Coaches

There are some key principles you need to follow to successfully market your coaching services:

1. Give people a good idea of the benefits of working with you

Your potential clients want to have a clear idea of the benefits of working with you. It’s less important that they understand what you do, as it is for them to understand what they will get from working with you.

Also, it’s essential they understand that you have more than just information or advice to offer. There is so much free information out there, it can be confusing. Your clients need to understand that your work together will go far beyond offering the same old trite advice. And most of all beyond the books, blogs and endless articles. To be good at marketing yourself as a coach, you need to also be good at helping your clients see how you can help them.

If, for example, you want to market a Somatica sex and relationship coaching practice, your clients need to understand the core of your business. In short – that you are empowering them to change their lives by practicing the tools of erotic and emotional intimacy in real-time. No blog, or book, or informational talk ever gives a person the experience of success. They need a real person to help them feel confident enough to take their new tools into their day-to-day lives.

Whatever coaching service you are trying to market – you need to tell people how the service you offer is uniquely helpful to their goals. Find out what they want. Then let them know how you can help them get it.

2. People Need to Feel They Can Trust You

To gain trust from potential clients you need to be both trustworthy, and connected to an accredited training organization with a great reputation.

Being trustworthy with clients means returning their email or phone call right away. When people reach out to get help with their sex life, they are taking a big, vulnerable risk. They could get cold feet any second. You need to reach out to them promptly after they make contact with you. When you do make the connection, it needs to be personal, supportive, and full of guidance and leadership. They need to feel like you know what you are doing and know how to help them.

One piece of feedback we consistently get about Somatica from our coaches: our training is the philosophical, theoretical, and most importantly, practical foundation of their work. Even if they have done extensive training elsewhere. If you really know what you are doing – and can communicate it – clients will sign up with you.

As a coaching organization, Somatica has a good reputation. Reviews from medical doctors and therapists talk about how our information is thorough and accurate. And Google agrees – we rank very high in search engine results for a lot of sex and relationship coaching-related topics.

In our own marketing, we’ve worked tirelessly to make Somatica ever more visible in the sex and relationship coaching marketplace. Having a strong organization, with branding that people recognize and embrace, is very important for you as a trainee. Particularly if you want to become a certified sex coach. Somatica grads are also now accredited by the American Board of Sexology (ABS) and can apply for individual ABS membership as sexologists.

3. Be a Part of a Referral Network

Being able to get some help from the beginning with filling your practice can be extremely beneficial. A good way to get coaching clients fast is by being part of a referral network from an already established organization.

Our own referral network has helped many coaches kick start their business. Eventually, they get to a place where they no longer need referrals from Somatica anymore. In addition, our training is so well-respected, other referral organizations have put Somatica-certified coaches onto their websites.

4. Have a Supportive Network to Co-create, Cross-promote, and Cross-refer

Somatica is a large and growing community of coaches and graduates. Here, you find people who might be willing to co-create business ventures, as well as cross-promote and cross-refer clients with you.

It also offers you a place to keep growing your skills with supervision and Mastery Classes, so you don’t have to be alone on your journey. For coaches wanting to attain certification, Somatica offers an on-going marketing group to keep you motivated towards launching and expanding your business.

5. Beyond Marketing, You Will Also Need to Be Able to Retain Your Clients

Marketing for coaches is time-consuming. To minimize the time you spend marketing yourself, you should work on retaining your clients. This is done by giving them real results and moving them along a growth path.

Explaining what they get from working with you is powerful. But delivering is even more so. Working with real people’s real problems takes time and practice. And really understanding how they tick has endlessly interesting complexities to it. The more you learn how to really help your clients, the more they will feel the impact and will want to come back for more. Getting clients is amazing – but keeping them is so much better.

A Coaching Business Plan

Once you have a clear focus and a strong message, it is time to do the diligent work of marketing. This is when creating a coaching business plan can be helpful. If you feel overwhelmed when you hear “coaching business plan”, don’t worry – it is actually rather simple. Just answer these few essential questions:

1. Your niche: What kind of work do you really want to focus on?
2. Your sandbox: What kind of people do you most want to work with?
3. Messaging: You need to find your unique voice, and then produce content that represents who you are and what you have to offer.

A coaching business plan helps you dive into the practical marketing work of how to get coaching clients. This work includes:

1. Learning about your niche and its unique needs
2. Crystallizing your message
3. Creating your website: one that really reflects YOU, who you are, and what you are offering.

Messaging And Social Media

It’s essential to find outlets that you can stick with when you are looking for places to market yourself.

Figure out which channel (or a couple of channels) is the most comfortable for you. Are you better at writing blogs, or do you love Facebook? Maybe Instagram or TikTok are your avenues. No matter where you make yourself heard – don’t overwhelm yourself. You don’t need to do it all. If you spread yourself too thin, you won’t stick with anything. Doing one thing consistently is much better than doing a little bit here and there. Just know that it is really hard to maintain lots of channels.

Somatica has grads that have shown great success in their messaging. Emily Morse from Sex with Emily has a massively popular podcast and YouTube channel, with thousands of subscribers. Amy Baldwin from the Shameless Sex Podcast found her calling, creating podcasts, and spreading Somatica’s principles in the world. Other people are really good at schmoozing in person, meeting people for lunch, going to yoga and talking about what they do, etc.