The Ultimate 2024 Guide On Lead Generation For Coaches (+Cost)

Lead generation for coaches is a vast topic.

There are so many options out there that it can be difficult for you to pick the one that will generate the best return on investment. 

Also, it’s probably a topic you don’t enjoy that much. You started your coaching business because you wanted to help more people, have more flexibility, and increase your income potential. 

But now, you are doing your job as a coach, and you also have to do the job of prospecting, qualifying leads, and selling.

What if there is a better way to grow your business? One where you can generate leads on autopilot and get to talk only with people who are a great fit for you and are close to making a buying decision. 

This is where having a great lead generation process can make a huge difference.

We are biased toward generating leads through blog content because it compounds.

Yet, we want to share unbiased insights so that you can have the necessary information to make a decision that is aligned with your business goals and the methods you feel more comfortable with. 

In this article, we’ll go over the most important steps you can take to dedicate less time to selling and more time to coaching your clients.

Note: On average, you can expect to pay around $132 per lead, as coaching is a business service. You can head over to this article, where we cover the topic in depth. 

BONUS: Take a look at the type of results you can expect when you invest in your personal brand as a coach to generate leads.

How do coaches get new clients?

Coaches get new clients by implementing a successful lead-generation campaign.

And the first step in any successful lead-generation campaign is creating an actionable lead-generation process. This can be as simple as a lead generation process flow chart where you write down your current lead generation efforts and then compare it to your ideal lead generation process. 

The important thing here is to be honest with yourself and understand what’s currently working and what isn’t.

Once you have a clear picture of how you are currently generating leads, you can look at ways to improve your process and increase the volume of leads you are getting. 

Here are a few key areas that you should focus on when creating a lead generation process: 

• Define your ideal customer 
• Create content that resonates with them 
• Create a lead magnet 
• Find the right places to distribute your content 
• Set up your tracking metrics

Another way to get new clients is to offer free consultations or discovery calls.

Offering a free consultation or discovery call can be an excellent way for coaches to connect with potential clients and showcase their services. During the consultation, the coach can learn more about the client’s goals and challenges, and the client can get a sense of whether the coach is a good fit for their needs.

Consider using lead generation services

Lead generation services are a great way to kickstart your lead generation efforts. 

You can use these platforms to source leads already interested in your services, which can help reduce the time and effort it takes to find new clients. When you’re just getting started, it can be difficult to find the right places to generate leads. 

Lead generation services can help you get your content in front of the right people much faster than you would be able to do on your own.

We’ve created a list of the top 5 lead generation services for small businesses in case you want to go deeper into that topic. 

Other lead generation ideas:

• Content creation 
• Content repurposing 
• Content syndication 
• Content partnerships 
• Public speaking 
• Interviews 
• Guest blogging  
• SEM / SEO  
• E-mail marketing 
• Social media marketing

In summary, make sure to use your expertise to create content that attracts prospective clients.

This can be in the form of written blog posts, podcasts, or videos. 

You can also repurpose your content by creating summary posts or slideshows and distributing them across different channels. Partnerships with other businesses in your space can also help you gain more exposure and attract more leads. 

And public speaking is another great way to get your name out there and connect with people. Not only are you able to share your expertise, but you’re also able to build your reputation as an expert in your field.

BONUS: Book a call with us if you’d like to explore how to build an engine or organic leads for your coaching business.

Lead generation vs. Demand generation

Lead generation is an essential part of any marketing strategy.

However, when you do focus only on lead generation you are only reaching a small percentage of your total market.

If you want to set yourself up for long-term success, you can also implement demand-generation strategies on top of your lead-generation strategies.

Demand generation is when you increase the demand for your product or service. 

You do this by creating educational and promotional content around your brand and actively promoting your business as a solution. 

Lead generation focuses on attracting people who are already educated about their problems and potential solutions. 

Demand generation focuses on making people aware of a problem they might face in the future, or a problem they are facing but haven’t realized yet. Combining these two strategies can help you achieve your company’s long-term goals while also generating short-term momentum.

Lead generation strategy for coaches

You do not have to pick between lead generation and demand generation.

You can do both at the same time. 

The way we recommend doing so is through content. The key is to first focus on creating “lead generation” content. These are the pieces of content that will attract buyers. 

These could be articles or videos on the following topics:

• Top 10 Business Coaches in <Your City>
• What is the Cost of Working With a Business Coach?
• The Ultimate Guide to Business Coaching Pricing 
• 5 Questions To Ask Before Hiring a Business Coach

As you can see, these are all topics that someone would be searching for when they are close to deciding to work with a business coach. 

You’d want to focus on these to generate short-term momentum in your business. 

Then, after you’ve been attracting and converting leads through those pieces of content, you can focus on creating demand-generation content. 

This is content that is a bit earlier in someone’s process of deciding to work with a coach. 

These could be articles or videos on the following topics:

• How Can a Coach Help Me Grow My Business?
• 10 Questions To Answer to Understand What Is Stopping You From Growing Your Business
• 3 Processes You Can Leverage To Identify Growth Opportunities In Your Business

The goal with these is to get people to know you, like you, and trust you before they even think about making a buying decision. 

Also, on average, these educational topics attract way more people than topics related to pricing or any other that people are searching for when they are close to making a buying decision. 

By covering educational topics, you’ll create a bigger pipeline of potential buyers. 

How can I grow my coaching business?

In its most basic form, revenue is simply the result of the number of clients you have multiplied by the price each of those clients is paying for your coaching services.

Revenue = Number of clients x Price of Service

This means that the two basic ways in which you can increase revenue are either increasing the number of clients you get or increasing the price of your services.

In a service business, we also have to be aware that there is a time constraint. Given that you can only take care of so many clients each month because you are likely having some 1-on-1 calls with them and you are likely also taking care of the lead qualification and sales process.

This leads us to add another variable to that equation which is time scalability.

Revenue = (Number of clients x Price of Service) / Time

If you can find a way to dedicate less time to some of the current processes in your business, or if you can find a way to create a productized service (i.e. a digital course) where you are not spending 1-on-1 time with all your clients, then you’ll be able to grow your business as well.

We will now go deeper into these three avenues we have identified as potential ways to grow your business:

1. Increasing prices
2. Getting more clients
3. Creating a scalable business model

Increase Prices

Changing your pricing is something that has an immediate effect.

If you increase your prices, you’ll immediately grow your business. Now, I know it’s easier said than done because you might be afraid of losing some clients if you increase your prices.

Here are some steps you can take to increase your prices with confidence. First, you can calculate the value you are creating for your clients.

It’s not always possible to calculate an exact dollar amount, but try to get as close as possible to a number you feel comfortable with. Then, compare that to the price you are charging.

If you divide the value you are creating for them between your prices and the number is 10 or higher, that’s a sign you can increase your prices.

Another step you can take is to do some research and see what other coaches are charging for services that are comparable to yours. If you see that you are in the lower range then that’s another sign that you can increase your price.

The third step you can take, to be able to confidently increase your prices, is to turn yourself into a luxury coaching service. But what does that mean? You might be thinking that you have to increase the quality of your service or the delivery of it.

None of that is needed.

In Confessions of a Pricing Man, Hermann Simon, Founder and Chairman of Simon-Kucher & Partners (the leading pricing consulting firm in the world), shares the 3 most common pricing strategies. The low-cost provider, premium pricing, and luxury pricing.

As you might be thinking, the difference in pricing between low-cost and premium products and services is related to quality. But that is not the case with luxury.

Don’t get me wrong, to position yourself as a luxury you do have to provide a better quality of service than most and especially when compared to the low-cost providers.

But you don’t have to be that much better than a premium service provider.

The main component of a luxury product or service is the supply/demand dynamic. In simple terms, luxury just means that a lot of people want it but only a few can have it. Even if a lot of people have the money, they will still not be able to get it.

As an example, Ferrari only manufactures a limited amount of cars. That’s why their prices are so high.

So, to become a luxury coaching service, you just need to have a lot of people wanting to work with you. Way more than the number of people you can actually work with.

This leads us to the second way in which you can grow your business. Getting more clients.

Getting More Clients

As we’ve covered in the first section, if you generate leads consistently, you will convert some of those into clients, and your business will grow.

The key is to have a predictable way to do so. As I said before, referrals are the best way to get new clients.

But you can’t depend on referrals if you want to grow your business in a consistent and predictable way.

You need to be able to set up systems that allow you to project growth in an accurate way. Thanks to the digital tools that are available, it is now possible to understand the actions that are leading to growth.

You must be able to understand what is driving growth. Referrals will keep happening. But you need an input that you can control that leads to growth. It could be running ads, creating content, running webinars, or anything else that you can quantify and track.

If not, you’ll keep having ups and downs in your revenue without knowing exactly what is causing it.

Creating a Scalable Business Model

You can also create a scalable business model to grow your online coaching business.

Even if you increased your prices and you are now getting a flow of consistent clients, you still have a limited amount of hours in the day. You will hit a ceiling if you depend on 1-on-1 services.

Once you have a consistent flow of clients and you have created luxury or at least premium offerings, you can now start creating other kinds of offers, even some low-cost ones, that are based on products.

Here’s when you can start creating your own digital course, on-demand webinars, e-books, or any other kind of digital product that doesn’t depend on your time.

And if you build the right systems and processes, there is no limit to growth when you create a scalable business model based on digital products.

As you can see, the real key to growth is to have a predictable and consistent way to increase the number of people who want your product or service.

If you do so, you won’t be afraid to increase your prices. And, it will also allow you to start scaling with digital products.

Let us, then, get into more detail about how to get more online coaching clients.

How do I get more online coaching clients?

To consistently get more online coaching clients, you need three basic elements.

1. You need to attract potential clients to your website,
2. You need to be able to measure and track what they do on your website, and
3. You need to be able to make changes to your website to increase the number of visitors that become clients.

It’s simple but not easy.

Let’s go over these three elements.

Attracting Potential Clients to Your Website

There are many ways in which you can attract people to your website.

You can create content on social media, you can run paid ads, you can create content to rank on Google and YouTube, you can do PR campaigns and try to get links, and the list goes on and on.

We are biased towards creating content that ranks on Google and YouTube (which you can also distribute on social media) because this is an investment that you make once but generates results for a long period of time.

In the case of ads, for example, the moment you stop spending money on these the flow of new clients will stop as well. But with content, you do the work once and reap the rewards consistently over a long period of time.

You do have to know that a content strategy will take longer than most other methods to generate results. Ads, and other outbound methods like sending direct messages or cold-calling, will likely generate results in a shorter period of time.

If you are interested in generating consistent and predictable results for the long term, then a content strategy is your best bet.

Yet, even within the content strategy approach, there are ways to focus on generating results faster.

What you should do is focus on creating content around topics that are closer to revenue. And what does that mean?

It means that you should first create pieces of content like:

• Top “X” Online Coaches in “Your City”
• The Cost of Working with an Online Coach
• Online Coaching Pricing
• Online Coaching Packages

These are the topics that people will be searching for when they are close to making a buying decision. They’ve already done the research. They understand they need a coach. Now it’s just a matter of picking the right one for them.

If you create content that ranks #1 on topics like these, you will start attracting traffic to your website from people that have a high likelihood of becoming a client.

Then, after you are ranking well for those topics, you can expand your topic selection to rank for others that might be higher in the funnel. Let’s say you are a career coach. You can then expand to cover topics like:

• How to negotiate a salary
• How to switch careers
• How to do well in job interviews

These are all topics related to the services you offer. But because of the phrasing, the people who are searching for these might be getting started in their buying journey.

They might not even be aware that there are coaching services available to help you negotiate a salary, switch careers, and do well in job interviews.

With your content, you can educate them and move them to the next step in your customer’s journey. And ultimately get them to either schedule a call with you if they are a good fit for your 1-on-1 premium services or get them to purchase one of your on-demand digital products.

This is when you need to have good data analytics tools on your website. To understand how people are navigating your content.

Data Analytics Dashboards

If you have a ton of people that are visiting your website but no one is buying, and you don’t have a way to visualize your data, you won’t be able to make the necessary changes to turn visitors into buyers.

Having no analytics is equivalent to having a shoe store you never visit. Your employees might tell you that many people are visiting the store but that no one is buying.

But you will not know why that is unless you can gather data.

If you had cameras, or if you worked at the store for a couple of days, you might get some insights.

Maybe people are raising their eyebrows when they look at the price tag. Maybe all of your employees have bad breath and when they talk to customers, they all go away.

Something similar might be happening on your website. Maybe something is unclear about the results you help people achieve. Maybe the scope of work is not clear.

The only way to know what is happening is to create an ideal customer journey map and then track it with a data analytics dashboard.

Track KPIs and Improve Every Month

Once you have that dashboard, you can then make improvements every month.

You should have key performance indicators (KPIs) for each important step of your customer’s journey.

Here’s an example of a customer journey and the KPIs that could be used to track it:

1. Someone searches for keywords you want to rank for (Impressions)
2. Then, they click on one of your pieces of content that are ranking (clicks)
3. Then, they stay for several minutes on that content (engagement)
4. Then, they go to another blog that contains educational content (page visit)
5. Then, they visit your services page (page visit)
6. Then, they visit your pricing page (page visit)
7. Then, they visit your get started page, fill out a form, and book a call (forms filled and calls booked)
8. During the call, they ask about the scope of work (calls booked)
9. Then, you have another call to review and sign the scope of work (closed deals)
10. Then, they pay the first invoice, and the project starts (revenue generated)

And this is just a sample of what a customer’s journey could look like. On average, it could take at least 10 touchpoints for someone to generate enough trust to buy from you.

The magic of leveraging content is that a lot of those touch points can happen asynchronously.

Once you are tracking those several KPIs (impressions, clicks, page visits, forms, etc.) you can then dedicate time each month to make adjustments to your blogs, landing pages, pricing pages, and all the other touchpoints.  So that you can improve your conversion rate and make sure that the growth in traffic is leading to more sales.

What is lead generation for coaches?

Lead generation for coaches is the process of identifying and attracting potential clients for your coaching business. 

According to a survey by the International Coach Federation (ICF), the most common way that coaches attract new clients is through referrals from existing clients, with 61% of coaches reporting that this is their primary source of new business.

The same survey found that online marketing, such as social media, email marketing, and website content, was the second most common source of new clients for coaches, with 35% of coaches reporting that they rely on online marketing to generate leads.

This means that only 35% of coaches have control of their revenue.

Referrals are great because it means you are getting results for your clients. But if that is your primary source of new business, it means that you are in for a feast-and-famine cycle because you don’t have control over the number of referrals you will get each month.

On the other hand, if you have a lead generation process based on online marketing strategies, you are in total control of your revenue (provided you have a process to gather and analyze data).

The two main ways to generate leads for your coaching business are outbound and inbound.

Outbound is when you reach out to your potential clients (cold calls, cold emails, social media DMs, etc.). Inbound is when you attract people to your website (social media content, ads, search engine marketing, sponsorships, etc.).

Overall, lead generation for coaches is a critical aspect of building a successful practice. By diversifying your lead generation strategies, targeting the right audience, and following up effectively with leads, you can attract a steady stream of clients and build a thriving business.

Take action to generate leads and grow your online coaching business

If you already have a consistent flow of new potential clients, you could try increasing your prices or creating scalable digital products to grow your coaching business.

If you need to create that flow first, then there are several ways to do so. As you’ve seen in this article, we recommend creating that flow by leveraging content that positions you as the go-to thought leader in your niche.

We can help you take the next step. 

If you are ready to grow by investing in your business, take a look at our services and pricing page to learn more about how we can help you attract, educate, and convert website visitors into clients.