How to Find More Leads for Your Coaching Business

Updated by Willy Wood

Are you looking for more leads for your coaching business?

Kind of a rhetorical question, isn’t it? A pipeline of leads is critical for any business, but especially for a coaching practice, where fees tend to be high and sales cycles long.

So, if you have a coaching business, of course you’re looking for more leads. You always need to be looking for more leads.

Because if the leads dry up, bye-bye coaching business.

The real question is “How”? There are so many ways to generate leads and so many gurus out there telling you their way is the best way that it can be overwhelming.

So, what works and what doesn’t?

Well, that depends. Any of the ways you’ve heard about will work for someone. But will they work for you? Which approaches resonate with your skill set and the way you like to work?

It’s important that you get this right because just about any approach to lead generation is going to be time-intensive. You need to choose a few strategies that work well for you and apply them consistently.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss a variety of practical methods that you can use to find more leads. 

But getting leads is just step one, so we’ll also share some tips on how to convert those leads into paying clients. After all, that’s where all your hard lead generation work pays off.

And then, just to make sure you have all the strategies you need to take your coaching business to the next level, we’ll finish off by exploring some ways you can generate even more revenue.

Sound good? Alright, let’s get started!

What Is a Lead?

A lead is a popular term in marketing and sales that refers to a prospective customer who expresses an interest in your product or service in some way, shape or form, but who hasn’t yet bought from you.

A lead can be generated in many ways, such as through website visits, online forms, cold calls, personal referrals, and so on.

Once you have obtained a lead, it’s then your job to nurture them throughout the sales process until they become a paying customer using a lead scoring approach.

How to Find Leads for Your Coaching Practice: 9 Strategies

As a coach, the most important thing you need to do aside from providing your services is to develop a strong pipeline of prospective clients. Without a steady stream of leads, your business will simply never get off the ground.

Below, you’ll find 9 of the most effective ways to drum up new business for your coaching practice:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The home base or “hub” of your coaching business is your website. That’s where you describe your services and offer your lead magnets, blog posts, online courses, and other content designed for your ideal clients. 

There’s only one problem. You could be offering the best content and coaching services on the planet, but if people can’t find your site, they won’t see any of that valuable information you’ve created for them. They won’t become leads and they won’t become clients.

That’s why it’s crucial for you to learn–and apply–best practices in SEO to your website.

As a service provider with an online presence, you simply have to take the time to learn this crucial skill set. You don’t need to become an SEO grand master; just learning and consistently applying the basics will be enough to put you ahead of 80% of your competitors.

If you currently feel like you’re lacking in your knowledge of basic SEO practices, here are some great resources to check out:

• Backlinko’s Complete SEO Beginner’s Guide
• The Beginner’s Guide to SEO from Moz
• The Complete SEO Checklist from Neil Patel

Follow the advice in these resources and produce fresh content on your site consistently, and the leads you receive through organic search will skyrocket in no time.

2. Build Your Email List

Now that you have your website optimized and Google is delivering more traffic to your site, it’s time to capture those visitors and turn them into leads.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to make sure you’re offering a lead magnet (some free resource that your prospects will see as valuable enough for them to trade their contact information to get it). Your lead magnet could be any number of things: a checklist, an email course, a PDF, an ebook, a collection of templates. Just make sure that your ideal clients would see the information as valuable.

Set up an opt-in form on your site to capture these leads and place the lead magnet file in the content library of your email service provider. Then write a welcome email that goes out to your new opt-ins and delivers the link to your resource. It’s that easy!

Now you have a stream of website visitors being turned into leads. And now that they’re on your list, you can interact with them at any time and build a relationship. Which brings us to…

3. Lead Nurturing

If you have a coaching blog and are growing an email list through a lead magnet, newsletter, etc., make sure you use that connection to your advantage by dripping useful email content to your leads on a regular basis.

When it comes to lead conversion, people do business with coaches they know, like, and trust.

Your website and your blog check the first two boxes, but the third box can only be checked by nurturing your list over time through an email campaign aimed to help them solve their problems.

By dripping your prospects valuable content and resources over time, you’ll be making sure that when they’re ready to pull the trigger, you’ll be top of mind.

4. Online advertising

If you have a marketing budget, a great way to find leads is through online ads. Use Google Ads and Facebook Ads to target potential clients who are looking for your services.

For Google Ads, you’ll need to develop your ad copy around search keywords with high purchase intent, like “business coach near me” or “how much are business coaches”.

For Facebook Ads, you’ll need to craft your ads around people’s interests instead, such as “coaching”, “business growth”, “Tony Robbins”, etc.

Whichever route you go, ensure you are tracking your lead performance to know how your ads are performing, and optimize wherever possible for greater conversions.

5. Social Media

First, make sure all your social media profiles are complete and up-to-date (and include a link to your website, of course). Then, make a point of regularly posting content of practical and immediate use to your target audience.

By giving people coaching tips through posts and video content, you’ll be showcasing your capabilities and offering help without asking for anything in return, which builds trust and good will.

That’s not to say you can’t periodically make a more direct ask. The key word being “periodically” (make sure more transactional posts are always less frequent than other types).

For example, if you add a blog post to your website that would be of value to your prospects, don’t shy away from making a social post and offering readers a link back to your blog. 

Or if you have a new lead magnet that you think your followers could benefit from, you can post about it and link through to the opt-in form. Those who follow the link get the content you promised and have the opportunity to learn more about you and your services while on your website.

Even those who don’t follow such links to your website and just consume your social content will often reach out to contact you directly when they realize that they actually need a helping hand to solve their problems and you have the expertise to help.

6. Provide Value in Social Groups

Posting regular content on social media sites isn’t the only way to use social media to grow your coaching business. One of the most effective approaches is to join a few groups and provide great value in your posts and comments on others’ posts.

Since a coaching business is a time-intensive endeavor, you’ll want to be judicious about what groups you join and how many. 

Identify two or three groups where your ideal prospects gather. Join these groups and try to spend a half hour or so several times a week in them. Be friendly and be helpful. 

And don’t pitch your services directly. Just offer your best, most helpful advice. People who find what you share helpful will click through to your profile and the profile can sell you. 

Another way participating in groups can lead to new business is when people interact with your comments and strike up a conversation. These conversations often lead people to ask about how you can help them. At that point, it’s certainly appropriate to give them a summary of what you do and a link to your site to learn more.

7. Be Active on Quora

Similar to the previous strategy, you can also spend some time regularly answering questions on Quora.

Yes, it’s true that people ask questions on this platform about literally anything, but you can follow only those topics that are relevant to your ideal clients. And with over 300 million active monthly users, you’re bound to find plenty of your ideal clients on the platform.

When you provide valuable content and people interact with it, be as helpful as possible. If you’ve written a blog post about a topic related to their question, be sure to link to it. And don’t forget to take a look at their profiles to see what other ways you might be able to help them.

In addition to making connections and identifying leads, Quora offers two more big benefits:

• Answers on Quora rank well in Google, so people who are actively searching for the kind of help you offer in your postings will often find your answers through Google searches.
• In addition, Quora answers can be found and read years after you initially post them, so you never know when someone will find one of your answers and reach out to connect.

8. Networking

Networking is one of the best ways to find new leads for your business.

If you want to find more qualified leads, start by attending industry events frequented by your target audience. These gatherings provide an excellent opportunity to meet potential clients and get your name out there.

It’s also a good idea to develop relationships with colleagues by browsing professional online directories. These sites list contact information for coaches in a variety of specialties. Over time, you may be able to get referrals from them if their pipelines are full and they can no longer take new clients.

And don’t forget about your own immediate and extended networks. If you know someone who could benefit from your services, don’t hesitate to reach out and let them know what you could do for them–or ask them if they know of anyone who could benefit from your services.

9. Referrals

Once you build up a steady clientele, ask your clients whether they know anyone else who might be interested in hiring a coach. You can then add the referrals into a coaching software program to handle tasks like emails or introductions.

The best kind of referral always comes from current clients, since they act as your trust bank. As a result, these referrals often tend to stay with you for longer periods of time.

And never be afraid to ask your clients for introductions. You’ll find that they’ll be thrilled to help you out!

Tips to Convert Coaching Leads into Paying Clients

There are many ways to convert a coaching lead into a paying client. Here’s a brief overview of a few of the most effective methods for converting leads.

Offer a Free Consultation

One of the most effective methods is to offer them a free consultation.

This will give you an opportunity to learn more about their needs and see if you’re a good fit for each other. You can also send them a “personal manifesto,” that is, a document that expresses clearly how you work and what you will do for them.

If they decide not to hire you, be sure to thank them for their time and let them know that you would be happy to refer them to another coach if they need one.

Use a Free CRM Tool

Another tip is to use a free CRM tool like Hubspot to keep track of all communications with leads you’ve engaged with directly so you never forget to follow up regularly and continue nurturing your relationships.

The sales conversion cycle in the coaching profession often takes several months and you need to make sure that you can track your relationships throughout the cycle in order to stay relevant.

While there’s no silver bullet to convert coaching leads into customers, with the above tips you’ll be able to slowly but surely increase your client base and grow your business over time.

How to Generate Even More Revenue for Your Coaching Practice

In addition to the above practices, there are several other ways to generate revenue to grow your coaching practice.

Publish a Book

While writing and publishing a book might seem a bit old-fashioned in today’s world where there are so many other options for putting content out there (blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos), there’s still something about having your by-line on the cover of a book that just screams “credibility.”

Think about it this way: your ideal client is out there somewhere, browsing the internet for the perfect coach for them. They find your site and a site for one of your competitors. In addition to all the other information about your coaching services, your prospect sees that you have published a book, while your competitor hasn’t. 

Which one do you think your prospect is going to contact first? Exactly.

So, while most coaches don’t make much money from book sales, they often make a substantial amount of money as an indirect result of being a published author.

Public Speaking

Another option is to do public speaking at events that are frequented by your target audience, such as those run by professional/trade associations, non-profit organizations, schools, libraries, churches, etc.

While many organizations may not have a budget to cover public speaking fees, they may pay for your expenses and often even buy books in bulk for their members (another reason to publish a book).

Speaking from a stage is probably the second biggest credibility booster, behind only writing a book, so look for any way you can to get in front of a live (or even virtual) audience.

Guest Blogging and Appearing on Podcasts

We’ve covered quite a few ways to grow your audience in this post, but one of the absolute best ways to do so is by getting in front of other people’s audiences. And probably the two best ways to do this are to do guest blogging or appearing on someone’s podcast.

There are several major advantages to guest blogging or appearing on a podcast:

• You can identify in advance which blogs or podcasts attract your ideal clients and reach out to the owners with a pitch to provide valuable content to their audience.
• Simply appearing as a guest blogger or podcast guest puts you in a position of authority and credibility.
• Because the owner of the blog or host of the podcast asked you to provide content, they’re giving an implicit recommendation (or perhaps explicit) to their audience that you are someone worth listening to.
• You get your name and content in front of an entirely new pool of prospects.
• You have the opportunity, in the Author’s bio section after a blog post or in the podcast show notes to link to your lead magnet opt-in form or to some other piece of valuable content on your site (perhaps one that expands on the content you’ve just shared in your guest post or podcast appearance). This is a fabulous way to drive traffic that has already been warmed up to your site.

Online Courses

You could also create online courses and offer them on popular learning platforms like Udemy and Skillshare, or even through your own website. In addition to earning some income from course sales, online courses are a treasure chest of testimonials, another boost to your credibility.

Free Webinars

Finally, you could offer free webinars as a marketing channel to book free consultations or even as a sales funnel for paid offers.

Webinars average between 30 minutes and 1.5 hours, allowing you to go in-depth on a topic. Now, while not everyone in your audience will attend an entire webinar, those who do usually convert at high rates

Now Go Find Some Coaching Leads!

Coaching is a great profession that can help people achieve their goals and change their businesses and lives for the better. And coaching can provide you with a more-than-adequate income while you make a difference for others.

However, in order to be successful, you need to have a constant stream of leads that you can turn into prospects so you can eliminate the long idle times between clients that so many coaches suffer from.

This post has outlined some effective ways to build a pipeline of leads for your practice and then convert them into paying customers. And for good measure, we’ve shared some ways to boost the monetization of your coaching practice.

Follow these tips, and you’ll be well on your way to growing your coaching business and generating more revenue in no time!

One of the ways to boost your credibility as a coach is through developing online courses. To learn more about how to create an online course, you might checking out our free training, Hybrid Courses Bootcamp.