Your funnel to capture potential coaching clients is wide open, ready to usher prospects from consideration to conversion.
But, there is a problem.
You haven’t created an audience to speak to, heck- you haven’t made it possible for people to discover your coaching business. The main reason why you haven’t landed any coaching clients is that you haven’t been active online.
Your online presence is not so much a presence but more like a cardboard cut out of your existence. Meaning you have a few online profiles set up, but you haven’t posted anything or taken advantage of the organic traffic some of these online resources provide.
In a nutshell, the reasons why your client funnel is empty are because of these five mistakes you are making.
Why You Aren’t Landing New Coaching Clients
- No Social Media Presence
- Not Paying Attention to your Personal brand
- Scared to Niche Down
- Not Involved with the Community
- You haven’t Collaborated with Other Coaches
Let’s unpack each of these mistakes you could be making that stop you from landing new coaching clients. Plus, I share helpful suggestions on how to reverse these mistakes into actionable game-changing steps.
Let’s get started!
No Social Media Presence
There is just no way around it. You need to have an online presence on a social media platform to land new coaching clients.
Whatever feelings or thoughts you have on being more active on social media is what’s holding you back from reaching new prospects.
So, before you continue to convince yourself that you don’t need to be on social media to gain more coaching clients, think about these fun facts from Kepios Global Digital Report:
9 out of 10 internet users use social media
- As of Q4 2021, 409 million people have joined a new social media platform
- An average person is active on 6.7 social media platforms
- On average, a person spends 2.5 hours on social media every day
Pretty interesting, right?
People are looking to connect with other people online, and you could be missing out on connecting with potential clients by not being active on social media.
So, how do you start building a presence on social media?
You start by focusing your time on the social media platform ideal customers spend their time finding answers, getting advice, and being entertained. Not where you spend your time but where your potential audience lives.
Here are a few more fun facts from Hubspot on the top social media platforms where your potential clients are visiting:
- Facebook has 1.9 billion active users a day, and in the U.S., 76% of FB users have visited in the last month.
- Instagram users follow at least one business, and 83% discover new services and products from the platform.
- LinkedIn has 800 million active users, and 46% of all social media traffic to a company website comes from LinkedIn.
- Twitter has 211 million active users on its platform every day, and 93% of the users are open to having a conversation with a company or brand to help or show support.
- TikTok has 689 million users as of January 2021, and 41% of the TikTok users are 16-24 years of age.
Not Paying Attention to your Personal Brand
OK, so let’s say you are on social media, but your posts aren’t hitting the mark. You aren’t landing any new coaching clients or building an audience. Perhaps your posts have only focused on pitching to people rather than building your personal brand.
What is a personal brand?
It’s the general perception or impression of what people know about you professionally. What you are known for and recognized in doing. Personal branding is the intention and effort you put to show your value to others that build your credibility and authority online.
So, going back to your social media posts that are not landing on people, you should stop to think about what you are communicating and question if it’s valuable and helpful for your audience? Or is it only benefiting you?
86% of people surveyed by Stackla Content report say authenticity is important when deciding to support or like a brand. And with that in mind, think about being more intentional with your post by connecting with your audience from different points that make up your personal brand.
Try posting:
- Story overcoming a personal or professional challenge
- Share childhood or coming of age stories
- Helpful tips that solve a general pain point of the audience
- Show a different side of you, outside of work (still keeping it professional, of course)
To build an audience online, you need to focus on building your likability, trust, and knowledge with your audience. That’s how you pay attention to your personal brand, being intentional with your posts.
Need any ideas on how to build your personal brand on LinkedIn? I wrote an article sharing the three ways to stand out from the crowd.
Scared to Niche Down
I hear this statement all the time, “I’m afraid to miss out on business if I niche down.”
You can’t lose out on business with people who don’t need or looking for your type of coaching services. If you continue to only market towards a general audience, you will only attract people who will never fully understand the value of your services.
As a coach, your success depends on your client delivering the results that you coached them through. You will never yield effective results with clients who don’t quite know what they really need help with or are willing to do the work.
Niching down to attract a specific subset of people will help you land qualified clients willing to do the work with you and ultimately become a success story.
Here are a few questions to help you come up with your niche:
- Who are you specifically helping?
- What are you passionate about?
- What valuable skill or talent do you bring to the table?
- How do you solve specific problems?
Answering these questions will help you deliver a clear and concise message that attracts a specific group of people who are willing to hear what you have to say and are motivated to take action.
Niche down means focusing clearly on who your ideal customer is and aligning your marketing accordingly.
“If you’re trying to serve everyone, you end up serving no one.”
Not Engaging with the Community
Are you a bystander standing on the sidelines? Or are you putting yourself out there inside the community helping others? If you are standing on the sidelines and waiting for people to come to you for help, this is another missed opportunity to land new coaching clients.
The way to establish yourself as a coach is by getting involved with the community of people who would benefit from your contribution and thought leadership.
You have value to share, so why not share it with people in a highly specific Facebook or LinkedIn group?
It’s easy to find groups online these days. Just use the search bar on the relevant social media platform where your community mainly gathers and types in a few keywords or phrases. Don’t let private groups stop you from submitting a request to join; this just makes the group more engaged and effective.
Can’t find a group you are interested in joining or don’t possess the same values or mission?
Create your own online community. Both LinkedIn and Facebook make it possible to create a private group on their platforms. You will need to answer a series of questions to set up the group, but don’t forget to use keywords for searchers to find your group.
You haven’t Collaborated with Other Coaches
So, we already established that you can’t serve everyone, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t help a person find another coach that can help them out and vice versa.
Collaborating with other coaches also means exposure to their audience, which may have people looking for your specific services. The key to optimizing a collaboration is partnering with coaches that supplement your services, not compete or overshadow.
What does collaboration with other coaches look like?
- Launch a webinar together
- Stream live on a social media platform, such as LinkedIn or Instagram
- Write a guest blog on each other’s website
Don’t be afraid to get creative and work with others in an adjacent space.
Strength in numbers, right?
The Final Takeaway – Why You Aren’t Landing Any Coaching Clients
The reasons why you aren’t landing any coaching clients are pretty simple. You aren’t putting yourself out there with the intention to establish your personal brand that attracts the right people.
People only want to work with someone they know, like, and trust.
To get to know you is by finding you online. To like you is to learn more about you from reading and seeing your posts online. And to trust you means creating credible content that helps you build authority in your community.
Building an audience or community won’t happen overnight (trust me, I know!). But at least you have some clues as to why you aren’t capturing new clients. Plus, you now have some actionable takeaways to work on so you can start landing new clients for your online coaching business.
Need help with your online presence and personal branding on LinkedIn? Book a 30-minute discovery call to learn how you can stand out as a coach online to attract more traffic to your funnel that transforms prospects into clients.
Not ready for a 1:1 call yet? Want to see me teach in action? Join my FREE LIVE MasterClass: How I Convert My LinkedIn Connections into Sales
