How to Market Yourself So You Can Become a Successful Health Coach
When I was looking to buy a home, my realtor told me there were only 3 things I needed to consider:
Location! Location! Location!
Of course, that’s not really true. But I got the point. Location is the most important thing when you’re buying a house because you can change just about anything else about the house itself (as long as you’re willing to pay the cost).
Well, when it comes to building a successful health coaching business, there’s something that’s just as important as location is to buying a home:
Positioning! Positioning! Positioning!
Until you’re clear on your unique positioning, everything else about building your business will be harder to figure out … and harder to do. It will be harder to build a website … harder to market yourself … harder to get clients …
And it will be impossible to scale.
So here I’m going to tell you about 2 of the most frequent positioning mistakes I see health and wellness coaches make. That way you can avoid them and get your business started (or back) on the right track.
Here’s Positioning Mistake #1:
Most Health Coaches Aren’t Clear About The Problem They Help People Solve
You need to be clear about the problem you help people solve. But as I’ve seen, what one person thinks is “clear” may actually be cloudy when it comes to marketing. Let me give you an example.
I met with a health coach recently who wants to build a scalable business. He said he was very clear about who he wanted to help: hypertensive people who want to lose weight and avoid kidney disease.
That, my friend, is anything BUT clear.
That coach wanted to focus on 3 different problems. And it’s hard to see how they can all be linked together like the way brain fog and fatigue can be. For instance, I doubt people think to themselves “I have to lose weight because I have hypertension and want to avoid kidney disease.”
So that’s the first problem this coach had. But there’s another one.
One of the “problems” isn’t really a problem at all. Can you guess which one?
If you guessed “avoid kidney disease,” you’re correct!
The fact is, prevention isn’t a problem. And the vast majority of people don’t even think about prevention. That’s why they say, “People won’t spend a dime on prevention, but they’ll empty their bank account for a cure.”
Now if you’re naturally prevention-focused, like I am, that’s awesome! Many successful health coaches are. But that pretty much makes us unicorns.
When I became a health & wellness marketer, I quickly learned that most people don’t think about things until they become a problem. And that problem usually needs to be big enough to disrupt their quality of life before they’ll hire a health coach to help them change it.
Back to our example, if we take “avoid kidney disease” out of the equation, that leaves us with lower blood pressure and lose weight. It’s true that one person could want to do both. But again, from a marketing perspective, trying to build messaging for both isn’t the best approach. You’d have a stronger message if you focused on just one of them. And chances are, there’s one that really bothers the person more.
So to help the coach get clearer, we talked through a few things. I asked him which problem he has more experience with … who can he get better or faster results for … and whether he prefers helping people with one of those problems over the other.
These are some of the things that he needed to know so he could create an Irresistible Breakthrough Offer™. Remember, this coach wanted to build a scalable business. And an Irresistible Breakthrough Offer is one of the fastest ways to do that.
If you’d like to find out more about how to create an Irresistible Breakthrough Offer, you can access a free resource called The Irresistible Breakthrough Offer Formula™. T Here’s a link to it.
Now let’s move on to Positioning Mistake #2. And that’s not having a Signature System as part of your marketing message. In fact, your Signature System is one of the most important parts of your marketing message … and your positioning.
The Most Important Part of a Successful Health Coach’s Positioning
As a health coach, you “sell” transformation. And the best way to get clients is by focusing your marketing on that transformation. That’s where your Signature System comes in.
Chances are, the people you’re going to attract have already made a few unsuccessful attempts at the transformation they seek. In fact, they may have already bought coaching programs or other “solutions” that promised them results that they didn’t get, for one reason or another. So they’ll naturally be somewhat skeptical that you can deliver what you say you can (or that they can stick to it and get the results).
Your Signature System can help because people feel a little more confident if they see you have a plan that makes sense to them.
Now a lot of health coaches make the mistake of thinking their Signature System is the same thing as their program. It’s not.
Your program covers the detailed steps your clients will go through. But your Signature Systemis really part of your marketing message. When it’s done right, it helps people see why they had trouble getting results in the past … and why this time things will be different.
If you’d like some help with this, here’s an article that will give you some ideas about how to create a strong Signature System for your health coaching. There are a few other things that go into strong positioning, but those two are the most important. If you get those dialed-in, you’ll have a scalable business that sets you apart.
Interested in an analysis of your health coaching business? Find out how to work with me on your marketing here.
