The financial coaching industry is growing quickly as more people realize they need help with everyday habits like budgeting, saving money, and planning for financial goals. Knowing how to get clients as a financial coach is essential to growing your coaching business and reaching your own financial goals.
The key is to find ways to stand apart from other financial coaches, showing your audience that you can help them improve their personal finance situation with your knowledge and support. Financial coaching will continue to be in high demand, so you must show your expertise and give your audience reasons to choose your coaching business over others.
How to Get Clients as a Financial Coach
There are many ways to get the right coaching clients as a financial coach, starting with narrowing your audience and understanding your target market. Next, you’ll build your brand, show your authority compared to other industry professionals, and narrow your content strategy to find the ideal clients.
Use the following ten steps to learn how to get clients as a financial coach.
Define Your Target Market
To have a successful financial coaching business, you must not waste time marketing to just any coaching clients. Instead, you must narrow your target market and focus your marketing efforts on the audience that could help you get more dream clients.
The key is to know where your clients spend time, what types of advertisem*nts they respond to, and how they prefer to communicate to grow your coaching business.
For example, if you primarily work with young families trying to build a solid financial base and reach long-term goals, you must focus your advertisem*nts on where people in this demographic spend time. But you’ll have completely different advertising strategies if you work mostly with wealthy individuals looking for support building their net worth, as they have a completely different financial situation.
When you have your own financial coaching business, you must narrow your audience as much as possible to meet your audience where they spend the most time.
Build Your Brand and Presence
Your potential customers want to get to know you before they talk to you, so it’s your job to show you are a confident and trustworthy character by providing relatable content online to get more financial coaching business.
Most people will look online before deciding which financial coaches to call to see if they are a good fit and to ensure they are trusted professionals. To reach your niche client, you must use digital marketing, building a brand identity that viewers can identify with and remember when they need financial coaching.
To start a financial coaching business, build your brand, and get more financial coaching leads, you should:
- Have a professional financial coaching website
- Be present and active on the social media platforms your audience uses
- Use proper SEO tactics to get your website and social media sites found at the top of the search results
Any marketing materials you create should have the same brand presence. This allows your audience to get familiar with you and to be able to recognize you whether they find your website, social media accounts, or a flyer in the mail.
Develop a Content Strategy
A content marketing strategy is the key to getting new financial coaching clients and sets you apart from other coaches. As we said earlier, most people use the internet to research before contacting a new financial coach. If they can’t find you online, it’s as if you don’t exist, whether you are an existing or new financial coaching business, and it will be hard to get new customers.
However, this doesn’t mean slapping together a website or making sporadic social media posts, as it won’t help you find more clients.
You need a strategy or a method to your madness. Your content marketing should have a strategy with relevant topics so you become the thought leader in the industry. A few ideas to include it in are:
- Create a financial coaching blog – An up-to-date blog with current information helps potential clients find you. If your blog post contains relevant and helpful content, utilizes a keyword strategy, and helps current and future clients learn something, you may show up on the first page of the search engines, increasing awareness of your financial coaching business. Your blog posts could be on anything from basic financial literacy tips to complex topics that show you as a leader in the industry.
- Consider videos or podcasts – Consider implementing videos or podcasts into your content marketing strategy about topics like money management and saving for the financial future. Some people respond better to these materials than written blog posts, mainly to save time, giving you another avenue to get financial coaching clients.
- Network – Networking for financial coaches means talking to anyone who comes into contact with individuals or business owners who could use your services. Connect with other professionals online on LinkedIn or Facebook and individuals on Instagram. Also, attend networking events to find potential clients who need help with financial planning or are in financial crisis and build your authority.
Engage With Your Target Audience
Many financial coaches set up a social media page but don’t give it the attention it needs. They don’t engage with their followers to get financial coaching clients. To be a successful financial coach, you want to show that you are the expert your audience needs, whether they are trying to achieve financial freedom, need better money habits, or don’t know how to manage their personal finances.
One of the best client engagement tips to get more clients is to give your social media pages a personal touch by showing behind-the-scenes footage or pictures of you getting involved with the community. Show your audience you are a real person who cares about your financial coaching clients and the community, too.
The best way to do this is to interact with your audience. Most platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram make responding to comments or direct messages easy. This is another way to get personal with your audience and let them know you are responsive in and out of your coaching sessions.
This is important for most people when choosing a financial coach because they want someone they know they can communicate with easily and who will be easy to work with during a coaching session.
Leverage Referrals
Referrals are one of the best ways to find future clients. You can get a successful referral from satisfied existing clients, other business owners, friends, family, word-of-mouth, and even social media. Never be afraid to ask for referrals.
- From existing clients – If you have happy customers, they are likely to refer you to other business owners or individuals. Create incentives for your current clients to provide referrals to their friends and family for your services and watch your client referrals increase.
- Business owners – Let business owners in the community know of your services. Even if they don’t use your services, other professionals may need financial coaching services, and they can refer you, or you can trade referrals to increase your client list.
- Friends and family members – Make sure everyone you know knows what you do and offer. You never know when they’ll come across someone who is a good fit for you and can refer them your way so you get a new client.
- Social media – Anyone can share social media posts, which will spread the word about your services without you trying. Create meaningful posts that people want to share, whether an existing client or someone who follows you, and you’ll get in front of a much larger audience without much effort and help you find new clients.
Network and Establish Relationships
The key to growing your client base is constantly networking. You can network online and in person if you attend networking events. In both areas, you want to create and maintain relationships. The key is to know your financial coaching clients’ contact expectations and use that to your advantage.
Here are a few ways to reach more prospective clients:
- Cold calling – Even today, cold calling is a popular way to build a new financial coaching business. If picking up the phone and making a cold call isn’t something you enjoy, focus your efforts on search engine optimization so your blog posts and other content marketing pieces reach the right business owners.
- Email marketing – Emails are the equivalent of cold outreach, but electronically. But just like you need a well-thought-out script for phone calls, your email marketing strategies must be strong to ensure your audience opens and engages with your emails. Just sending emails isn’t enough; without a strategy, they’ll likely end up in spam.
- Follow-up – Relationships aren’t built on one phone call or email. After the first contact with a potential client, you must keep up the relationship by following up. This doesn’t mean following up and asking for the sale. Instead, continue providing value to the prospective clients, so you become a natural choice, and they possibly hire you for the job.
Utilize Targeted Advertising
The internet and social media make it easy to target your advertisem*nts. It’s different from the old days, when you would create an ad to throw on the radio or TV and hope it eventually reached the ideal client. With online advertising, such as Facebook or Google ads, you can target the right demographics so only the people most interested in your services will see the advertisem*nts.
You can also watch the analytics to see how your advertisem*nts do, making changes to ensure the right audience sees your message.
Collaborate With Strategic Partners
Become the leader in a community, company, or anywhere else so you become the ‘go-to’ financial coach who provides a professional presence. For example, create partnerships with other local businesses you can collaborate with and help each other market.
The key is to build authority to show your audience you are the financial coaching business in the industry that will provide them with what they need.
Speak at Business-Focused Seminars and Industry Conferences
Take advantage of opportunities to speak at events and speaking opportunities to get in front of people within your demographic. Use the opportunity to show the value of what you offer without selling. Provide sneak peeks of your services while providing valuable personal finance tips to your audience. You can also use this strategy online and offer a webinar to reach a larger audience.
Be Active in the Community
Community involvement is one of the best ways to show that you care about the people around you and that you aren’t just in business to make money. Attend as many local events as possible, offering free services, providing advice, getting your hands dirty, helping the community with a common problem or concern, and showing that you have common interests.
You can use the opportunities to volunteer your time or even offer free consultations to build relationships within the community. This works best when you join groups and get active in your community.
FAQS
How Do Financial Coaches Prospect New Clients?
Financial coaches have many ways to find potential clients, including email or content marketing, social media campaigns, and asking for referrals. The key to finding new clients is understanding your audience and who fits your target market best.
How Many Clients Should a Financial Coach Have?
Successful financial coaches have 15 – 20 accounting clients monthly, but you can have more or less, depending on what you can handle and the type of clients you serve. The right number of financial coaching clients for you may differ from that of another coach.
What Type of Feedback Should Financial Coaches Seek From Clients?
The best information financial coaches can get from current and past clients is constructive criticism. Find out what they love and what they wish could improve to help you provide the best financial coaching services your audience wants.
What Are the Most Effective Ways to Market a Financial Coach’s Services?
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all way to market a financial coach’s services. The proper method depends on the target audience. However, most coaches benefit from online marketing, including a solid content strategy and email and social media marketing.
What Platforms Should Financial Coaches Use to Reach Potential Clients?
Most professionals find financial coaching clients on LinkedIn and in Facebook groups, but you can also find them on Instagram occasionally. It’s also important to focus on platforms like Google Ads to get the word out to the right audience. The key is to narrow your niche and figure out where your target audience spends their time.
Final Thoughts
Knowing how to get clients as a financial coach is important as the industry grows. The stronger your marketing tactics become, the easier it is to be the authoritative figure in the industry. The key is setting yourself apart from the others and showing value to your new financial coaching clients to help them choose your financial coaching business over the competition.
