How do you attract your ideal clients?
When we think about coaching, we all have an idea of the perfect client in our minds. That one client that just fits in with your expertise and methods. But how do you reach them? How do you find a client that just clicks with what you offer?
This is a question I get asked a lot, and it’s something we teach about in the Mindset Coach Academy along with how to identify your niche and ideal clients. What it comes down to is the message you’re sending out to clients.
Attracting your ideal client is all about creating messages that really resonate with them. Focusing on those messages can help you identify clients you want to work with, which is so important in growing your coaching business.
In this episode of The Mindset Coach, I’ll take you through some of the key things to think about when creating your content plan to help you attract your ideal clients.
You can listen to this episode of the podcast below or keep reading….
Identify your niche
One of the most important decisions to make is what your niche is. Being specific about your niche, the outcome you help clients achieve, and who you work with is a great framework to focus your messaging.
This enables you to apply laser-focused thinking to your marketing because you’re speaking to specific people. Addressing these people directly shows that you identify with them and allows you to turn general marketing language into what feels like a one-to-one conversation. Your client can imagine that you’re speaking with them because you know and understand them so well.
Speaking to them directly helps to establish an immediate, one-to-one connection. This more intimate connection is far better and more fruitful than speaking to what feels like a crowded auditorium.
Understanding your client’s situation
On a similar note, you need to be specific about what your clients want to (and can) achieve with your help. To do this, you need to highlight the problems that your clients are facing.
A lot of coaches miss the mark here by using generalised statements like “are you feeling overwhelmed?” Something like this may apply, but it could apply to just about anyone.
What you really want to do is dig deep into the specific type of clients you’re helping. That’s where having a niche and a specific target audience helps.
To really understand your ideal client, a great method is to use the “S.T.E.A.R.” approach. S.T.E.A.R. stands for:
- Situation
- Thought
- Emotion
- Action
- Result
For example, let’s say you’re a nutrition coach and you work with new mums who feel overwhelmed. Let’s dig deeper into that specific client to understand their situation.
Say your client has reached the end of a long day. They’ve just put the children to bed and think to themselves, “I really deserve a glass of wine.” So, they go to get a glass and notice a packet of Doritos, they pick those up too, and before they know it, they’re on their third glass of wine and have eaten two bags of Doritos. That’s the situation part.
The thoughts could be, “I’ve really let myself down,” and the emotions could include disappointment or a bit of shame. An action that follows this could be to go ahead and get another glass of wine. They might think, “I’ve blown it, might as well get another glass.” But the result here is that the cycle continues, and the client puts themselves back in the same situation again.
Using an example like this in your messaging and marketing will have a much greater impact on clients than a statement like, “I can help you lose weight” or, “I can help you become healthier.” It’s these specific examples that will resonate with clients the most.
An exercise you can do is to write down a series of situations that your clients often find themselves in, the thoughts they have, the emotions they feel, the actions they take, and their results. Come up with around three or four fleshed-out examples and use them on social, in your blog posts, or in your podcasts. Talk about those specific client situations and show you understand where they are now versus where they want to be.
Show how you can help
Another mistake that a lot of coaches make is they will just do the above part. They’ll craft some fantastic posts over social media, and they’ll have potential clients nodding along. But they forget to include a call to action. They don’t articulate the next step for the client – how you’re actually going to help them.
This takes us back to our previous blog and episode on how to create coaching packages. Once you have a client interested and resonating with your content, it’s time to introduce them to your methods and frameworks that will help them succeed.
Be really clear about how you will help your clients uncover hidden beliefs and what working with you will entail. Don’t just say, “here’s my coaching programme,” explain exactly what you will do and how it works. This part is all about building credibility and trust.
What are your five key themes?
As always, being specific with your marketing and communication with clients helps. To really focus on your niche, pick five subject areas that you want to talk about religiously. These topics will become synonymous with your brand. They’ll be what you’re known for and will make you one of the go-to people in the coaching world.
These topics could be something like parenting, family life, communication, running a business, good nutrition, or healthy habits. Pick five things that you know well and could talk about for hours. For example, the busy new mother might be interested in things like parenting or nutrition, or self-care.
Let’s go even deeper than that. Under each of these topics, we can create subtopics. For example, with parenting, you could focus on things like how to keep your children entertained during lockdown or how to find things to do in the summer holidays.
This can require some deep thinking and research but make sure you keep notes of everything. I personally use Trello boards for mine, and it’s something I share with my students in the Mindset Coach certification programme.
Create a mix of posts
When creating content for your blog or social media, try to include a mixture of different content types. Make some of your posts educational and value-based to demonstrate your expertise.
Some of your posts can be more inspirational but avoid using bland quotes that don’t really resonate with your brand. Any quotes you do use, try to add your own commentary about it.
Other post types can include entertainment posts which are a bit lighter or fun. Depending on your brand and your audience, this could involve using memes, fun videos, or polls to boost engagement and show off your personality.
The final type of post that some coaches overlook is the sales post. These posts are how you let people know how to work with you. They need a very strong call to action, which could be heading over to the website, booking in a call, or enrolling in whatever you’re offering.
If clients don’t know what the next step is and how they can buy from you, they can easily go away and buy from someone else.
Think about where you’re showing up
Once you have a content plan and have worked on the key things you want to address, what I really want you to work on is where you’re showing up.
What types of content work best for you, and what do you most enjoy creating? If you hate videos, there’s no point forcing yourself to do them. Instead, think about the type of content you like doing and run with it. But also think about ways you can repurpose that content and adapt it for other mediums.
For example, if you do a video, you can turn the audio into a podcast. You can transcribe it and adapt it into a blog post. You can adapt the content from your blog post into smaller social media posts and so on.
That’s exactly what I do with my content. I repurpose it for other mediums to get the most out of it. It not only saves me a great deal of time and energy, but it also increases my reach for finding potential clients.
I hope these tips have given you some ideas on how to create messages that resonate and get them out there effectively. I encourage you to be as specific as possible with your marketing language and really take the time to niche down and focus on your ideal client in all of your brand messaging.
If you would like some help designing the perfect coaching package for your clients, visit The Mindset Coach Academy!