Influencer Marketing for Coaches 101

Categorized as Marketing for Coaches
Influencer Marketing for Coaches 101

Do you want to learn how to use influencer marketing for coaches? If so, this blog is for you! We’ll give you the tools and strategies that will help your coaching business grow by leveraging the power of social media.

By the way, we’re Cass and Tee! We’re the duo behind the blog you are reading right now! As web designers to some of the biggest coaches in the industry, we’ve seen every type of marketing strategy you can think of, including influencer marketing. 

That got us thinking that if eCommerce stores can increase their sales with influencer marketing… why not coaches? So we started digging deeper and realized we were on to something big! After some testing, we came up with this quick start guide to help you get started. 

You’ll discover how to find influencers in your coaching niche, build relationships with them, and get them on board with promoting your coaching program. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out or have been coaching for years – influencer marketing can work for you.

Let’s get started! 

Why Influencer Marketing Works

In 2020, influencer marketing was worth more than nine billion dollars. It is now expected to grow beyond thirteen billion dollars by 2032! This means that this form of online advertising will only continue growing stronger and become a major part of digital commerce as we know it today.

There are many ways for coaches to use social media influencers. They can be used as a marketing tool for increasing sales, traffic, or engagement on your coaching program with the goal that they influence their audience members to join. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are currently the top three social media platforms used by many influencers and coaches worldwide to market their coaching products, services, or ideas. 

Influencer marketing works so well for your coaching business because of these reasons:

the impact list

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1. Credibility And Trust

Influencers can be great for not only helping you find your target audience but also helping you engage with them. Your potential coaching clients appreciate the opinion of influencers because they have similar interests and they want to know what they think. 

Influencers are already trusted and credible. This trust and credibility often transfer to the coach they partner with. Clients want to be able to trust the coach they decide to work with. 

2. Long-Lasting Relationships And Engagement

Engagement goes hand in hand with trust. Most coaches want more likes, comments, shares, and clicks on their content and websites to get more clients. Influencers can increase your engagement rate and help you form deeper and stronger relationships, further increasing trust and loyalty to your brand. 

3. Larger and More Loyal Audiences

The more influencers you develop relationships with, the more likely you are to get in front of your potential coaching clients. Compared to traditional ads, which can sometimes be hit or miss, the return on your investment is greater when working with someone who already has a similar audience. This humanizes your brand and shows social proof that your coaching methodologies work. 

We’ve learned how important it is to add influencer marketing to our marketing strategies, but how do you get started? And how do you find influencers that would be a good fit for your coaching business? 

Six Steps to the Influencer Outreach Process for Coaches

In order to find the perfect influencers for your coaching campaigns, it’s important to go through an outreach process that ensures you find just the right people.

Here’s a fail-proof outreach strategy that you can start implementing right now:

Step #1: Create an Influencer List

Form a list of the influencers you would like to work with the most. The bigger the list at this point, the better. Shoot for locating at least 20 to 30 potential influencers per social media platform. Focus on one platform at a time to streamline this process. 

Step #2: Review Their Profiles

Find the information required to make decisions before reaching out to the influencer. Find their social media handles and business credentials. Many influencers include links and special e-mails for business inquiries. Avoid using their personal e-mail or profile when contacting them. Instead, follow their accounts and actually view their profiles and content for a period of time before reaching out. 

Step #3: Develop a Brief Project Goal

Determine why you want to work with an influencer at all. What is your goal? Do you want to boost traffic to your coaching website? If so, how is working with them going to do that? Do you want to make more sales? To what? Your coaching program? Your coaching products? Your upcoming coaching retreat? How will this influencer help you make more sales? Figure out the mechanism to reach the goal you’ve set by setting SMART goals to ensure that you have a plan going forward. 

Step #4: Pick Your Medium

You may need to be flexible and communicate with each influencer in the way that they desire to. For example, they may choose to use e-mail, direct message, management contact, video chat, phone call, mail merge apps, sponsored product packages, or something else. Typically, the influencer will have guidelines on their business page about what they need from you. If not, choose what you want to present to them and how. 

Step #5: Create and Personalize Your Message

Be specific, clear, and direct about your goals, what your coaching services are and how you’re going to work with them on this project if they choose to work with you. Always make sure that you include follow-up information and times that will work for you to get the collaboration started faster. Be flexible but only within the guidelines you’ve already set for yourself and your campaign’s time limit and deadlines. 

Step #6: Edit and Review

Always edit and review everything before sending it on to a potential influencer. The clearer you are, the easier it’s going to be to work together. You want to be professional as possible when you reach out to them. The higher quality your reach out is, the higher quality they’re going to expect from themselves as they create your campaign. 

Once you reach out, make sure you record how and when you reached out to them so that you can follow up quickly when needed. The more records you keep, the easier it’s going to be each time you set up a campaign.

Okay, so we’ve covered the basics, now let’s chat about what NOT to do. 

The Do’s and Don’ts to Influencer Marketing for Coaches

Influencer marketing is pretty straightforward. First, you want to find the right influencers who already impact an audience that will want and need your products, services, and offers. Even if you have zero sales yet, and no audience of your own yet, using influencers who already promote to an audience who wants what you have will substantially shorten your journey to success as a coach. 

Included below are the top five do’s and don’ts to follow so that you can run a successful influencer marketing campaign and repeat the success over and over again. 

#1 Don’t: Focus on Follower or Audience Count Only

Remember, just because a YouTube star has a million subscribers does not mean they are ready to buy. Not all audiences are equal. Plus, often, a smaller influencer can have more sway over their audience than one that has grown really large. So you may get more results from a niched down small channel than a huge channel with wide appeal. 

#2 Do: Consider Influencers of all Levels

When you try to find the right people to work with to promote your products, offers, and services, don’t just pick the big movers and shakers. Instead, look at smaller influencers that are more intimate with their audience. You may even end up making more sales due to the higher level of engagement many smaller audience influencers have. 

#3 Don’t: Micromanage Your Influencer

When you finally weed through and pick the influencers you want to work with, avoid trying to treat them as employees. Your influencer likely already has a particular way of doing things, and you want them to stay true to themselves and their audience, giving them plenty of freedom. Avoid micromanaging them by giving too many guidelines and rules. 

#4 Do: Allow for Creative Freedom

Creative people like to create. If you stand in their way, they won’t want to work with you, and even if they do, it might not work out and allow them total creative freedom. Of course, you can always include an option for approval to ensure nothing goes wrong, but if you do the research and choose the right people, letting them be themselves will work out best for you. Plus, it’s less work for you!  

#5 Don’t: Expect Non-Monetary Work

There are plenty of self-named gurus out there who will tell you to try to work with everyone for free, but the truth is, you really do get what you pay for. So instead, reward the influencers you work with according to what’s right and fair. Do not expect them to work for you for free because if you both get value from the partnership, you’ll want to repeat it. 

#6 Do: Compensate Fairly

When you do work out a payment plan for your influencers, make sure you compensate them fairly. As mentioned above, you don’t want to expect them to work for free, but you also want to build a reputation as a great company to work with. So believe it when I tell you that word gets around. Ask them for their fee schedule instead of telling them what you’ll pay. Influencers will be happy with what they ask for, even if it is less than they thought it would be.

#7 Don’t: Only Use Instagram

It’s tempting to go to the number one social media platform and start using only that for your influencer campaigns, but the truth is, this is a mistake. You don’t even know until you do your research if your audience is on the platform, and if your audience is not there, neither is your influencer. 

#8 Do: Consider Multiple Platforms

Find out what social platforms your ideal audience uses. Find out how many are on those platforms. Then look for the influencers you want to help you promote. Try doing a multi-platform campaign as long as your audience is there, and you’ll get amazing results because the more often you show up in front of your ideal audience, the better. 

#9 Don’t: Create Deceiving and Generic Content

It can feel overwhelming to create all the content you need for your business, but you want to refrain from deceiving and generic content for your influencer campaigns. Remember, you have an influencer who is a creator who can give you amazing ideas on how to promote your coaching services. If they love it, they’re going to be the best person to help you. Each time you promote something, you want the content to be unique and specific for the audience you want to influence. 

#10: Do: Follow all FTC Guidelines and Plan Content with Your Influencer

Remember, when using the internet to communicate, you must follow the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines (and any guidelines in any country where you do business) to have no problems. Also, please work with your influencer to plan the content they will create for you but remember to give them creative freedom. 

As a coach, it’s important to stay aware of the dos and don’ts of using influencer marketing. The great thing is when you do engage in influencer marketing, you’re not alone. You have someone who is already an expert at creating content for their audience.

Supply an amazing coaching product, service, or offer and let them do the rest within the guidelines.
To learn more about the FTC guidelines for social media, you can visit the government website here.

About The Author

Hey! I’m Cass, a Certified Brand Coach and a Co-Founder at Lovely Impact. I help coaches elevate their businesses with beautiful branding and websites. Here on our blog, my content focuses on branding, web design, and storytelling.

Hey! I’m Tee, a Certified Business Coach and a Co-Founder at Lovely Impact. I help coaches grow and scale their coaching businesses. Here on our blog, my content focuses on web design, marketing, business, and social media strategy.

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