If you’re new to starting a coaching business, perhaps you’re wondering where on earth to begin when it comes to building an audience for your business.

You’ve probably heard business coaches like me talk about why an audience is important, but perhaps you’re feeling overwhelmed and aren’t sure where to start.

In this post I’m going to share all my best tips for getting started with growing an audience as a new coach.

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WHAT IS AN AUDIENCE?

An audience is basically some kind of following of people who, ideally, would be interested in / would benefit from the things you’re selling.

Your audience can be your Instagram followers, members of your Facebook group or listeners to your podcast, but where the magic really starts to happen is when you build an audience in the form of an email list.

This is because an audience you build on a social media platform isn’t under your control. When all of your audience is based on social media what would happen if your account gets suspended or the algorithm changes?

When you focus on building an email list audience that you own, you’re creating a valuable business asset. Email marketing is still shown time and time again to be more effective when it comes to sales than selling on social media.

That’s not to say that social media doesn’t have an important role, it absolutely does, but you always want to be thinking:

How can I move my followers / the people I come into contact with, on to my email list?

A quick note on the word ‘audience’ – I’m using the term audience in this post as that’s what most people will think of when communicating these concepts. However, I feel like ‘audience’ is quite one sided – that one element is being proactive and the other element being passive. I actually prefer thinking of my ‘audience’ as a ‘community’. That feels much more aligned with how I’d like to do business and interact with the people in my world, i.e that it’s more of a conversation than me simply talking at people!

1: CHOOSE A CORE FORM OF CONTENT AND A MAIN PLATFORM

To start with, feel out which platform and which core form of content feels like a good fit for you.

A few things you might want to consider:

Is this where your ideal clients are hanging out?
Is this a place where you’d enjoy hanging out?
Does your ideal way of creating content work for this platform?
Does this platform work well for helping me build my email list?

Once you’ve considered these questions, decide on your main platform and your main form of content.

If your core form of content is audio recordings and your podcast is going to be your main platform that’s great, maybe Instagram is your main platform and your core form of content is Reel videos.

If you think blogging could be a good platform for you, do check out my free Blog Post Checklist to help you write and publish blog content that helps you get found:

Whatever you choose, the idea here is that you focus on these things.

When you’re starting out it’s easy to feel like you need to have a presence everywhere, but when you spread yourself too thinly it’s hard to really get traction – I’d much rather you focus on doing one thing well and actually seeing a good level of audience growth!

Once you’ve got the hang of one platform, then add in another if it feels good. You should be able to repurpose some of your core content to help you create new content for additional platforms.

I do things slightly differently in my business using my Multi Platform Content Show Method so my core content and platform include several things at once – but it works in the same way.

2 – LEARN WHAT YOU CAN ABOUT YOUR MAIN PLATFORM WHEN IT COMES TO AUDIENCE GROWTH AND IMPLEMENT IT CONSISTENTLY

Once you’ve decided on your main platform go and learn everything you can about how to use the platform to grow your audience on it. Then implement what you learn consistently.

You can often find paid programs and free content in lots of different places – if you get overwhelmed, what I find helps me is to focus on implementing one person’s particular strategy. Or you can simply make sure you’re being clear for yourself what it is you’re doing and giving the strategy at least 12 weeks to assess how well it’s working.

This is the best way to start growing your audience when you’re starting out, like I said above, having that focus on one thing can really help!

However, don’t be afraid to start posting on your platform or sharing content there until you feel like you have a perfect understanding of it, just get started as soon as you can! I know it can feel uncomfortable when you first start sharing your stuff, but honestly it does get easier the more you do it and that’s why the sooner you start the better.

3 – INVITE YOUR AUDIENCE INTO YOUR EMAIL LIST

Whichever form of content and platform you’re focusing on, in addition to growing your audience there, think about how you can invite people on to your email list.

Usually you’d have some kind of freebie like a guide, checklist, audio recording – it could be anything that your ideal clients would find helpful basically! You use this as a way to encourage people to join your list in exchange for that freebie – it also helps you grow your list with the right kind of people.

Check out this post on how to create an awesome freebie if you want to go deeper on this topic.

Depending on your core content / main platform, consider how you can get that freebie in front of the audience you’re growing there.

For example:

Recording podcasts? you could mention your freebie at the start and end of podcasts or run it like a little ad break.
On Instagram? You could share your freebie in your Stories and have a link to it in your bio.
Using Pinterest? You could have a link to the freebie within your blog posts, you create a pin that leads back to an opt in page or use a pop up.
Sharing videos on YouTube? You could include a link to your freebie in the description.

For this reason, it can be super useful to have a stand alone ‘opt in page’ for your freebie that you can link to. Just like this one I have here for my free Aligned Client Attraction and Marketing Workshop!

4 – OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER

I’ve mostly focused the information in this post so far around organic forms of marketing, but there’s a couple of other ways you can grow your audience when you’re starting out:

Paid ads – you can use Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest / Google etc to help grow your audience. What I find works best is running ads to your freebie so you’re directly growing your list. There are some downsides with paid advertising but it can be a very quick way to grow your audience if you have the budget.

Getting in front of other people’s audiences – think being interviewed on people’s podcasts, writing guest posts, doing joint Instagram lives, being featured in magazines and so on. Again, a good way to approach these kinds of opportunities is to promote your freebie to those audiences to encourage them to come over and join your email list!

Ultimately I feel like the most important thing when it comes to growing an audience is being consistent and giving things time. Most strategies around growth need at least 12 weeks of consistency to measure whether or not it’s working – so bear that in mind before you decide to try something new.

I hope this post has been helpful in giving you some ideas for getting started! Let me know in the comments what your core platform is going to be.

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