The most powerful way to get coaching clients is to have a scalable, repeatable and automated marketing system.
Having a great marketing system is the only tried and true method to generating consistent leads in your business.
This lead generating process should attract your ideal coaching clients.
Once attracted, your ideal coaching clients should go through a series of steps that help build their trust for you.
What is a Marketing System?
A marketing system is the series of steps and processes you put in place to get a client to go from lead to buyer.
A marketing system can include many steps and is also known as a marketing sales funnel.
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is a marketing system.
It’s the bread and butter of any successful online coaching business.
A sales funnel is used to generate leads into your business.
It begins by casting a wide net, attracting the ideal clients you want to work with, and then brings those ideal clients into your buyer’s journey.
Within their journey, you should be warming your clients up so they can ultimately purchase your services.
Where Can You Use a Sales Funnel?
You can use a sales funnel in an email series, to sell your online courses, or to get potential coaching clients into your webinars.
A sales funnel can be create offline or online.
The sales funnels me and my clients use are online and each process of the funnel is automated.
Putting together a great sales funnel has helped me build a multiple 6-figure coaching business.
I wrote a dedicated article on what coaches should include to attract clients into their sales funnel.
This article is more of a high-level look at the entire marketing sales funnel system you can use to generate leads and get more clients.
Once you get your marketing sales funnel in place, you can get coaching clients consistently.
You can also command the rates you desire.
Why You Should Use a Sales Funnel to Generate Your Coaching Clients?
Getting coaching clients will be very difficult if you haven’t perfected a great marketing sales funnel.
Why?
Because once you start working with coaching clients, you won’t have as much time to spend on marketing.
Even if you get only a few clients in the beginning, you have to split your time.
You ‘ll have to split your time between providing excellent coaching or finding new clients.
As a result you won’t be able to reach those you’ve been called to teach.
You also can’t earn the money that allows you to do the things you love.
So, you’ll be trapped in a cycle of working all hours of the day with any client who says yes.
You’ll be forced to work with clients, even if they’re not your ideal client.
Then, you’ll have to spend your nights trying to find more clients.
Your days will be full.
And you’ll never have enough time to recharge your own battery.
Whew! I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
A sales funnel allows you to escape the coaching trap!
But How Does a Sales Funnel Help You Get More Coaching Clients?
Once your marketing sales funnel is up and running, I’m confident you’ll be able to get more coaching clients than you’ve ever imagined.
You’ll attract the right clients as often as you like while your system works for you.
It will run even while you’re sleeping, travelling, or spending time with family.
You’ll never have to desperately say yes to coaching clients who might not be the right fit.
Why I Recommend a Marketing Sales Funnel for Any Coaching Business?
The last thing I want to see is more burned out coaches who quit.
That’s why I’m about to explain exactly how to set up a marketing sales funnel.
I want you to get your perfect number of one-on-one or group coaching clients.
And I want you to have as many leads as you’d like.
I’ll first explain what’s involved in each step.
Afterwards, I’ll dive into a few examples of how I’ve used this exact same marketing sales funnel to get coaching clients.
Then, I’ll show you a few examples of clients who have used this system to do the same.
How do I Know this Marketing System Helps to Get Coaching Clients?
I’ve spent well over $100,000 perfecting this marketing system for my own coaching business.
To be fully transparent, I’ve spent exactly one hundred and seventy-one thousand, eight hundred ninety-four dollars and eighty-seven cents to perfect this marketing system..
Here’s a screenshot from my personal ad account showing the investment I’ve made into perfecting this system.
As you can see, I’ve tested this system extensively, each time I learn what works today, and I discard anything that no longer works.
What Are the Results of my Client Gaining System Funnel?
What has been the result of my $171,895 investment in my coaching business’s marketing sales funnel?
These days, when I want to get more coaching clients, I just turn on my marketing system and almost magically, I get more coaching clients onto my calendar.
Don’t get me wrong, getting coaching clients hasn’t always been this easy for me.
It took me a few years to get here.
But now that things have been running smoothly for a while now, I can confidently get coaching clients, and use my results to fast track my own coaching clients’ success.
So, if you haven’t already, relax, grab a glass of wine and allow me the time to share how you, too, can get coaching clients consistently in only 4 steps.
If you’re truly serious about getting more coaching clients into your business, this time spent reading will be well worth your investment.
So, let’s get started!
Building a Marketing System to Get Coaching Clients in only 4 Steps
If I had to break my process down into steps, I’d argue there are only 4 main steps in my client gaining system.
That’s right, you only need 4 steps to consistently get coaching clients into your coaching business.
The Four Steps to Get Coaching Clients
The steps are simple: Engage, Exchange, Establish, and Enroll.
- Step 1 – Engage
- Step 2 – Exchange
- Step 3 – Establish
- Step 4 – Enroll
These 4 steps are all necessary in a successful marketing funnel that brings in coaching clients.
Let’s talk through each step.
Step 1 – Engage with Potential Clients
This means getting traffic and attention from the clients you want by engaging them with your free content.
This step is by far the most important to master and as such, it has several components that you must understand and perform correctly.
Required component(s):
- Know Your Ideal Coaching Clients
- Know Your Ideal Coaching Client’s Pain Point
- Know Your Best Traffic Source for Your Messaging
- Know How to Get the Right Message in Front of the Coaching Clients You Want
Know Your Ideal Coaching Clients
Remember these words when it comes to getting ideal coaching clients:
“If I’m trying to help everyone, I’m going to end up talking to no one.”
In other words, every person does not have the specific problem you want to help solve.
Only some people have the problem you’re trying to solve.
You have to get specific in your analysis, if you truly want to get coaching clients.
You have to drill down to the person you’re after.
If you need help getting specific on your ideal coaching client, I’ve written a detailed article explaining how you can create an ideal client profile for your coaching business.
I highly recommend you read it after finishing here.
It even includes a downloadable ideal client profile worksheet to help you determine where you’d find the clients you want to help.
What are your ideal client’s characteristics?
However, for now, think about your ideal client’s demographic characteristics.
- What personality characteristics does she have?
- Where does she hang out online?
- Is she a part of an organization or has any industry affiliations?
- If you were to see her out in public, where would she be?
Knowing these answers help you envision a personality to whom you’re writing, talking, and caring for.
When you don’t know these answers about your ideal client, you create four huge problems.
4 Problems You Create By Not Creating an Ideal Client Profile to Get Coaching Clients
- Targeting coaching clients you want becomes difficult.
- Getting coaching clients becomes difficult.
- Marketing becomes more timely.
- Marketing becomes more expensive.
You must be crystal clear on who you want to coach as a client.
When you’re clear on who your coaching clients are, finding them and solving the problems they have becomes much easier.
I want you to be able to get super specific.
An Ideal Profile Client Example
You should be able to same something similar to this about your ideal client:
“She is an Asian American, heterosexual, single mother, with two or more children. She has an income of less than $50,000 a year. She is overwhelmed that she can not find a soulmate because she can’t balance time among work, children, and herself. She spends her free time scrolling through Instagram, and these are the top people she follows on Instagram…[list of people]”
Do you get the point?
Of course you should, and must go deeper.
However, if you had an ideal client profile written out like the above example, it becomes much easier to find her online when you’re ready for the next component.
Know Your Ideal Coaching Client’s Pain Point
A lack of clarity is 90% of the reason why most coaches struggle to get coaching clients consistently .
If you’re not clear about the problem you solve and who you’re solving a problem for, nothing else matters.
When the majority of my coaching clients come to me, they all speak way too broadly about who they want to help, but they’re not exactly sure how they want to help them.
They say things like “I want to help women lose weight”, for example.
While this is a good start, I always challenge them to think further than this simple phrase.
I want my clients to get coaching clients of their own.
So, if they’re in the business of helping women lose weight, I want them to be able to articulate specifically why their ideal client specifically struggles with this pain point.
Your Client’s Language Matters
I also want them to know if they’re speaking the same language their ideal client uses to describe their pain point?
For example, losing weight to one person may have a very different meaning to someone else.
Losing weight may mean, “I want to shrink my arms.”
To another person, losing weight may mean, “I want to keep my figure but shrink my waistline a little more.” Or even “I want to get slim thick.”
Understanding the specific words your ideal client uses to describe their pain point, and why they struggle with it is important.
Hitting on a specific problem matters if you want to get clients.
Furthermore, knowing why your potential clients see their problem as an immediate problem they must solve now is also important.
For example, do they want to shrink their waistline because they have a wedding coming up?
Do they want to shrink their arms because they’ve always been told their arms were too large?
Do they want to get slim thick because they want to become an influencer, quit their soul-crushing job, and travel the world?
Your Client’s Exact Problems Matters
Knowing the exact problem matters.
It matters because you must be able to speak the same language as your clients, write messages that specifically address their specific needs, and show that you clearly understand what they are going through.
When you know exactly what and who’s problem you’re trying to solve, it’s easier for this potential client to find his or her way to you.
Survey Your Ideal Clients!
Have you taken a moment to write out exactly whose problem and what problem you’re trying to solve?
I make all my students complete a survey exercise in my coaching program, The Path to Six Figures.
I call it the BIP™ (Back into Profits) method, because with this survey, they find the pressing problems clients are willing to pay to solve.
With this survey, in addition to making them scour the places where their clients can be found online, I challenge them to get extra granular on the needs of their potential clients.
How?
By asking them specific questions about problems they face.
But it’s done in such a way that the survey respondents give answers to their problems in their own words.
So if you already have an existing audience, your first step should be to survey them.
If you don’t have your own audience, find a social media group where you can ask questions to the people you would want to get as clients.
In general, you’ll want to ask questions that’ll help you figure out their biggest struggle and what they want to accomplish.
The answers to these questions will help you write your advertising and help you produce targeted content.
But most importantly, it’ll help you get super specific on the problem you’re going to solve on your journey to get coaching clients.
Determine the Best Traffic Source to Get Your Message to Clients
The fastest way to get coaching clients, by far, is to use paid advertising.
Paying for advertising gets your message in front of the coaching clients you want, fast!
With paid advertising, you can leverage audiences already built by a company, such as Facebook or Google.
They’ve already done the hard work for you.
They have already put together a bunch of people in the same “room.”
You just have to figure out which “break out” room they’re in.
Social media giants like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and allow you to reach their audience for a fee.
Paid Advertising is the Key to Get Consistent Clients!
Websites like YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest, give you an opportunity to get in front of your ideal clients without spending money on ads.
But, when you choose to advertise, you can reach a specific audience on these platforms, and usually much faster than you could with free efforts.
Many offline businesses, like magazines, coupon mailers, and other direct mail companies provide a similar advertisement service fee.
Whichever paid advertisement service you choose, you should be able to find and get coaching clients fast, if your clients use the service.
An Example of How Paid Traffic is Superior
Think of this step like you’re attending a business conference that has breakout rooms, where you can pay to be the guest speaker.
And let’s say you’re a relationship coach.
Let’s further say that in one breakout room, you find people who are primarily interested in health.
In another breakout room, you may find people who are primarily interested in wealth.
And in the last breakout room, you may find people who are primarily interested in relationships.
In which breakout room would you pay to be the guest speaker?
It’s not a trick question.
Hopefully you picked the breakout where people are primarily interested in relationships.
This is very much like determining the traffic source for your business.
Be Where Your Coaching Clients Are!
You want to be where your clients are and you want the ability to get your message in front of them as fast as you can, even if it means paying for ads.
Getting clients is about spending your time, money and efforts in places where your message will be heard.
If you don’t pay to be the lead speaker in the breakout room, you’ll be in the same room as the coaching clients you want, but you won’t be able to talk to everyone.
You’ll only get to sit at the table.
So, the fastest way of meeting everyone and getting your message to them all quickly, is to simply pay the fee.
But you must know how and where to find those breakout rooms, which is why component one of Engage, Know Your Ideal Coaching Client, is so important.
Do You Have to Use Paid Traffic to Get Coaching Clients?
Obviously, there are other non-paid ways to get coaching clients, such as writing blog posts or creating native YouTube videos, but these are more long-term marketing strategies to get coaching clients.
Blogging, Tweeting, and creating YouTube content to get coaching clients can take months, especially if you’re a new coach without an existing audience.
So, go back to your ideal client profile sheet, revisit the section where you discovered where your clients spend the most of their time, and be prepared to pay for paid traffic to reach them.
Once you’ve found the traffic source where you can find your ideal clients, and have their attention, you’re in a powerful position to provide something they value.
Know How to Get the Right Message in Front of the Coaching Clients You Want
Once you find the traffic source of your choice, you must step back a little to construct the best message to get in front of them.
If you want to get coaching clients without wasting money and spending more effort than you need, this component is a must.
A marketing system for your coaching business only works if you can continually get in front of ideal clients and say the right thing to them at the right time.
This is why it’s so important to create an ideal client profile.
To get coaching clients, you must know how to find them and you must also know their hopes, desires, and fears.
Relationship Coaching Example Continued
As a relationship coach, if you talk about relationships to a room full of people only interested in health, you’ll very likely be ignored.
But, if you find a room where people are interested in hearing about building better relationships, you’ll very likely have all eyes on you.
When you finish components 1 and 2 above, you’ll already know what specific problem your ideal client wants solved.
So, all you’d have to do is tell them in words they understand how you can solve their problem.
Again, getting this messaging right is crucial.
An Example of How to Use the Right Messaging
Take one of the messages I’ve used in one of my advertisements for a while now.
I capture their attention by asking my ideal client, “are you getting your coaching business started?”
There is so much power in this question.
It’s clear that the person I’m talking to is someone who is new in the coaching industry.
They can’t help but to pay attention to the message that follows.
If I then tell them I have something I know they want, they can’t help but to pay attention.
In order to figure out if your messaging is right, you sometimes have to just “put yourself out there.”
After all, you’re the expert.
Your Ideal Coaching Clients are Looking for Experts
Your ideal coaching clients are looking for someone with the answer to their problem.
For this, I tell my clients in The Path to Six Figures to start sharing content related to those problems.
The comments from your engaging content will help guide your messages.
The comments will also let you hone in on the words your ideal clients really want to hear.
I have an entire module dedicated to perfecting a clear message in The Path to Six Figures.
Now that you’ve finally learned how to effectively engage an audience to get coaching clients, the hard part is over.
It’s now time to learn the second part of your client gaining system, Exchange.
Step 2 – Exchange A Valued Lead Magnet for an Email
Required component(s):
- A website or landing page to collect emails
- A shopping cart to collect telephone numbers
- An irresistible free offer
- An email service to send emails with downloadable files after confirmation
The Exchange step is all about providing something of value.
It helps to attract the ideal clients you want on your email list.
Provide something tangible of value to an audience, and in exchange, you’ll receive something of value.
The first item you provide can and often should be free.
Your free items are pieces of an entire marketing system to get coaching clients.
Your free items in this exchange step have one primary goal:
Get an email address or telephone number.
Use a Lead Magnet to Get the Clients You Want
Your free offer is often called a lead magnet.
I simply like to call it a freebie.
I rotate through freebies so they don’t get old or stale.
My current freebie is my downloadable coaching package template bundle.
It provides massive value to all my coaching clients.
And in exchange, I ask for an email address, which I do for a few reasons.
Reason 1: To make sure my potential clients receive exactly what they asked for.
Reason 2: To build a list of clients with whom I can continue to build a relationship with.
Take your Clients on an Email Journey
Once my ideal clients are on my list, I build a relationship with them.
I send a series of emails, which I call the Journey of Belief.
These emails help build my credibility as the number one solution to my client’s needs.
It also helps build anticipation for my ultimate solution, my high-ticket coaching program.
So, what should these emails to your prospective clients be, now that they’re on your email list?
The Journey of Belief includes emails that cover a journey.
The journey is what every client needs to take to believe you’re the right person to help them.
It also allows them to experience that your method actually works.
The 6 Steps of the Journey to Belief
The journey includes 6 steps: Desire, Solution, Fear, Doubt, Hope, and Commitment.
Each subsequent email builds on the previous email until they’re finally committed and ready to take action.
I provide the exact coaching email templates that I want my students in The Path to Six Figures to use.
They don’t have to think too hard about what to write and they all find them helpful.
Each email in the Journey to Belief series should have a call to action.
Where that call to action takes the reader depends on where they are in your marketing sales funnel.
Once you have an email address, you can move on to the next stage: Establish.
Step 3 – Establish Your Buyers and Provide a High-Value Offer
Required component(s):
- A low-ticket item
- A shopping cart so you can accept online payments
If you want a successful, long-term coaching business, you must build an email list.
You must be able to continuously provide value to your prospective coaching clients.
The first high-value item your prospective coaching clients receive is the free-item you’ll provide.
But, the immediate second item they should receive is a high-value, low-cost paid item.
This is the essence of the Establish step.
Establish Your Buyers
The Establish step establishes your buyers and helps cover the costs of your paid-advertising strategy.
This step is crucial.
The price of your high-value, low-cost item should be low enough to not scare your ideal coaching clients away.
But, it should also be high enough to cover your advertisement spending.
I’m not the one who invented this process. It’s been used by marketers for years.
Create a Low Cost, High Value Paid Item
This low-cost paid item is sometimes called a self-liquidating offer. It’s also been called a “tripwire.”
I hate that name.
I imagine a war zone with traps set, purposefully designed to trip you. That’s not the experience I want my clients to have.
I prefer to call it a “Wow on welcome.”
Wow Your Prospective Clients and Get an Unlimited Ad Spend!
I immediately offer my high-value, low cost item to my prospective coaching clients.
This occurs immediately after they join my email list, but before I send my Journey of Belief emails.
I give them their free high-value item in exchange for their email address.
Immediately after, I increase the value by offering my high-value, low-ticket item.
They are “Wowed” by the value they receive.
It’s a win-win situation.
I win because I get to establish who my buyers are, which allows me to further segment my email list.
And I also get to cover the cost of my ads.
Meanwhile, the clients win because they’re delighted by a high-value product that helps them along on their journey.
This strategy effectively allows me to get an unlimited amount of potential coaching clients into my marketing sales funnel.
Setting up the Exchange and Establish Steps
To set up the Exchange and Establish part, you need an email service provider that allows your to send files.
My preferred system is ConvertKit. (partner link)
You also need a landing page on your website where clients can enter their email details.
You can use ConvertKit for this also.
Last, you need way to accept online payments when they purchase their high-value, low ticket item.
My preferred system for this is ThriveCart. (partner link)
The implementation of this step alone will help you supercharge your ability to get coaching clients.
Actively Enroll Your Clients
The next and final step in the client gaining system is your bread and butter where you actually enroll clients.
Side note:
Even though the explanation of the first three steps was quite extensive, those steps are actually the easiest to set up.
This also happen quickly from the client’s perspective as well.
Clients could see your ad, sign up for your free offer, and purchase your WoW offer, all within a few minutes.
With the software you use to power your system, you’ll see their exact activity.
I won’t get into the details of the software because I don’t want to put you to sleep. But if you geek out on details like that, then come to my weekly live streams.
Side Note: Come to my Weekly Live Streams!
I host a free live stream every Saturday at 12pm EST (except for holidays and my birthday). I teach from how to make high-ticket sales to how to attract clients. I also talk about how to raise your rates and have the confidence to stick to them!
We also cover low ticket sales, creating cash on demand, and putting automated funnels in place. Because every coach needs a bit of passive income, right?
To join me, just go to my YouTube channel here and subscribe. Tap the bell so you don’t miss any of my training.
Ok, now to the final step: Enroll.
Step 4 – Enroll Ideal Clients into Your High-Ticket Offer
Required component(s):
- A pre-recorded online video presentation
- A phone call booking system
- A signature high-ticket coaching offer
- A way to receive payments
To get coaching clients, you’ll need this remaining step, which consists of 4 main components.
This step includes all the remaining required pieces of your marketing sales funnel.
Again, what I like to call your “Client Gaining System.”
Finishing up the Client Gaining Marketing System
You’ll have prospective coaching clients who are interested in getting their problem solved, once you make it to this step.
These prospective clients will be coming to your website and giving you their email address.
Whether you use “organic” or paid traffic to get coaching clients, a percentage of your traffic will convert to buyers.
They will purchase your low-ticket offer after receiving your free offer.
Their payments, in turn, will pay for your paid ads.
And now, these prospective coaching clients will begin receiving your emails.
The Journey of Belief emails you send in the Exchange step point here.
They all should have a call to action to watch your video presentation.
You’ll sometimes hear this called a webinar. Fun fact, this is a short-hand term for web seminar.
Which is probably why most webinars are boring!
That’s why I teach my students how to create an Anti-Webinar™.
The Anti-Webinar
The Anti-Webinar can be adjusted to fit the format that suits you best.
It’s never boring and you won’t have to tell viewers to turn off their phones (like they’re going to do it anyway 😏).
They are hooked from the very beginning.
In the Path to 6-Figures, we cover the formula so it practically writes itself.
It includes the must have persuasive elements and even the best structure.
This means it can appeal to your ideal client and fit your personality.
When structured properly, with the right persuasive elements, the Anti-Webinar will be your number one salesperson.
That’s what Dani experienced.
My Client Dani’s Story
She hosted her presentation and put the recording on her website.
She actually skipped the other three parts of the 4 step system but still booked a high-ticket client!
The client was pre-sold on her services and paid on the spot.
Her story shows you how powerful it is to have a salesperson that never sleeps.
That’s the Anti-Webinar.
But let’s say that you choose to write your own webinar without the Anti-Webinar formula. In that case, here are the most critical elements it should include.
What are the critical elements of a webinar?
Your webinar should provide an explanation of who you are.
It should also explain how you can help your ideal coaching client solve their most pressing problem.
Last, it should explain why you’re the one to help her solve their problem.
Pre-qualify your prospective coaching clients.
Your webinar should also act to pre-qualify prospective coaching clients.
It should also describe the features and benefits of your signature coaching program.
At the end of your webinar, you’ll invite the prospective coaching client to book a spot on your calendar.
To make this work you’ll need a calendar and phone number she can call.
Getting coaching clients to get on a phone call will be a seamless process.
Don’t be intimidated by sales calls.
If you got your messaging right in the Engage step of this process, you’ll have very little to worry about.
Your phone calls with your prospective clients will be just like you’re talking with a friend. The only thing left for you to do would be to make sure they’re a good fit and take payment.
Conclusion: How to Get Coaching Clients
Congratulations!
You now know everything that goes into creating a sales funnel marketing system that allows you to get coaching clients.
Getting coaching clients in your coaching business will be automated, once your system is built.
When you’re ready to book coaching clients on your calendar, all you’ll have to do is turn on your ads.
As you continue to get your prospective coaching client’s attention, all you’ll have to do is send them to a link.
That’s pretty much it!
So, in review, here are all the steps and components required to get coaching clients in a systematic way.
The 12 Sub-Steps of the 4-Step Marketing System
- Know who your ideal coaching clients are.
- Know the pain point you’re solving for your ideal client.
- Determine the traffic source where your ideal coaching clients are.
- Get the right message in front of the coaching clients you want.
- Get coaching clients faster by paying to get your message in front of them.
- Exchange a high-value free item for your ideal coaching client’s email address or phone number.
- Immediately offer them a high-value, low-ticket paid item so you can help pay your ad expenses.
- Establish a relationship through email and text messages with your constantly growing list of prospective coaching clients.
- Invite them to watch a presentation that shows them how your signature coaching program can solve their existing problem.
- Invite your prospective coaching clients to book a phone call after they finish watching your video presentation.
- Further qualify them during the call and turn your prospective coaching clients into paying coaching clients .
- Bonus: Every piece of your “client gaining system” should be connected together in a seamless user experience.
And there you have it!
You’ve just learned how to get coaching clients (consistently) using a 4-step client gaining marketing system.
Now’s it’s your turn to get even more coaching clients in your business!
Setting up this client-gaining marketing sales system for your online business shouldn’t intimidate you.
It should be fun!
Love This System? Want My Help?
I have a step-by-step training course that explains how to put this client gaining system together?
Check out The Path to Six Figures!
You get video sessions, done-for-you templates, hands-on strategy sessions, and resources.
You can directly implement the strategies into your business.
You’ll benefit from the program even if you’re just getting started.
To see details just visit the details page.