“Communities are a GREAT way to build an audience, provide value, and promote your offers!”
You’re now a certified health coach!! CONGRATS!! Whether you’re already working on gaining clients or not, we put together this blog to give you ideas for different ways to gain clients online and offline.
There is NO shortage of people out there who need your help. The health coaching industry is NOT saturated. There are literally hundreds of millions of potential clients out there for you to work with, and while we recommend narrowing your audience down into a more focused niche(more on that another time), even a focused niche can have millions of potential clients!
Now that you understand how BIG your potential client pool is, your goal is finding them, turning them into leads, and then converting those leads into paying clients.
The Business Blueprint: 4 Essential Layers of Customer Acquisition
First, we want you to understand when it comes to customer acquisition, there are 4 layers to creating a thriving business, no matter WHAT business.
1. Finding & building leads
2. Nurturing those leads through a customer journey
3. Selling/Converting/Closing leads into clients
4. Nurturing, retaining, and turning those clients into lifetime fans, customers, and referral machines
Sometimes, this process is fast-tracked based on WHERE the leads came from. Let’s say someone is referred directly to you by another client who had AMAZING results…you’re skipping steps 1-2 and moving straight to the “closing” and converting step.
This is why referrals are going to be your best friend and another reason to nurture your current clients! One happy client or detoxer could turn into 20+ NEW clients.
This blog is mostly about how to FISH and find both WARM and COLD leads, as well as a few ideas on nurturing them and getting them closer to becoming clients.
Make sure to check out the blog “How to Make Money as a Health Coach” to get ideas and ensure you have something to offer!
Lead Generation Strategies: Building Your Client Base Effectively
Before you dive in, remember, that if you’re already coaching and aren’t gaining enough clients, it’s because they likely don’t know you exist and don’t know how you can help them solve their problems.
Below are some ideas for building and nurturing your lead list:
Organic Social Media
Building and nurturing your current audience or building on a new platform. Keep in mind most conversions come from engagement, so while building your audience is great, unless you can get them to engage or reach out to THEM, it will be much harder to turn them into a client.
Once they follow you, you need to nurture them, build the know, like, and trust factor, turn yourself into an authority, and help them understand their problems and how you can help solve them.
TikTok
YouTube
Podcasts
Paid Social Media
This could be on any platform and drive traffic either to your profile, lead magnet, a blog, workshop, webinar, or your offer pages. If you’re offering free discovery calls, that’s a great way to fill your calendar.
Testimonials Help to Gain Clients
HUGE HUGE HUGE. Seriously, ask for them, and don’t be afraid to share! If someone follows you on social media, they want to see social proof that others have succeeded with your methods. This is a way to speed up the customer journey, just like referrals.
Write a Blog to Gain Clients
Blogs are a great way to not only build authority and have something to link to from social but also bring in free traffic and help you build leads from Google if you learn a little SEO.
Ebooks
These are a great way to build authority, provide value to your audience, and get them wanting more. Make sure in every ebook, you are providing a clear call to action for how to take the next step with you.
Create a Newsletter Sequence
This is an important one because it allows you to build a deeper connection with your audience, again build the know, like, and trust factor, and provide them value. When you provide value and show up consistently, you will be their go-to person when they are ready to work with a coach.
Gain Clients Through Lives/Collaborations
This is a great way to build your community and following on any social platform! Go live yourself, do joint lives with others, and collaborate on posts. This gets your content out there and lets people connect with you more.
Start a Free Group or Run Pop-Up Groups
Communities are a GREAT way to build an audience, provide value, and promote your offers!
Warm Outreach
Warm outreach involves sending messages, texts, or calling people already on your “leads” list. This could be people who follow you on social media, friends on your phone, or anyone you can contact. Warm outreach is a great way to gain new clients. On social it might look like engaging with other people’s stories (don’t wait for people to engage with yours)…you do the work and go to them!
Cold Outreach
Cold outreach involves reaching out with messages, texts, or calls to people you do NOT know and are not already leads.
Gain Clients: Outbound Engagement
On social this is going fishing. It means spending time providing valuable comments on other people’s posts. It means going to top hashtags in your niche and actually answering other people’s questions. Not selling, just providing value. You can do outbound outreach and get your name out there in countless ways!
Online Networking Events
There are TONS of events out there that allow you to connect with others. Maybe it’s a business event where you do 5-minute “speed dating.”…you tell them what you do, they tell you what they do. You’ll be surprised how many people will be interested in connecting after!
Gain Clients Through Networking Events Within Your Community
This could be in-person networking where you get to connect with people! Everyone needs help with something! The more you network and put yourself out there, the more clients you’ll have! Even if THEY don’t need you currently, they likely have a friend who does!
Host an Event in Your Community
This could be at a local gym or acupuncture clinic. Offer to talk about detoxing, healthy weight loss, improving sleep, you name it. They can all benefit from this event, and you’ll walk away with a handful of clients!
Partner with Other Businesses to Gain Clients
Create a network of other practitioners who can refer to you, and you can refer to them! They want to provide value to their community, and having you as part of their network will benefit you both!
ASK FOR REFERRALS!
This is an important one and can be a great way to gain new clients! But a lot of people don’t know you are taking on new clients unless you ASK and tell them you are. Ask if they know anyone who would benefit from working with you.
As you can see, there are MANY MANY ways you can gain clients on and offline. The number of clients you end up with and the size of your business is directly associated with the amount of work you put in.
The more outreach you do, the more REALLY happy clients you have, the more social posts you create, the more warm messages you send, the more you ask for referrals, the more in-person events you hold, the more clients you’ll have!
I hope this list got some ideas flowing!
If you are interested in pursuing a career in health coaching, check out our IHP certification programs here.
Check out our blog Ways to Make Money with Your IHP Certification for more strategies to grow your health coaching business.
