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02. Human Design Principles in Marketing
05. Principles to transform how you market your spiritual business.
09. Wrap-Up: Marketing for Coaches'
10. Our Top Podcast Episodes on marketing for life coaches
Writing a good bio is often difficult for new coaches. You want to sell yourself, but often it can feel weird trying to talk about yourself. A lot of coaches try to put in too much detail or focus on the wrong things. Here’s a guide to creating a life coaching bio to attract your dream clients.
02. Human Design Principles in Marketing
05. Principles to transform how you market your spiritual business.
09. Wrap-Up: Marketing for Coaches'
10. Our Top Podcast Episodes on marketing for life coaches
One bio to rule them all
First, it’s essential to understand that, as a life coach, you will likely have many different bios. That’s because you’ll have different reasons you’re sharing your bio. The bio you share must fulfill the purpose of sharing it.
An example might help. Your primary bio will be shared in life coach listings or on your website. It’s the one potential clients will be reading. It needs to be tailor-made to allow potential clients to understand how you can help them. If you use social media in your marketing, you’ll need a different bio for your social profile. Often social profiles provide a minimal number of characters for you to get your message across. Instagram, for example, only allows 150 characters. Your social media bio will need to be lean and to the point. When dealing with the press or booking speaking opportunities, you’ll need a more professional bio that focuses on your years of experience, training, certifications, and other professional qualifications.
For our purposes, we will focus on your primary bio, designed for booking your dream clients.
Don’t use a template
During this process, someone might suggest using a bio template. Before you do, consider if plugging your information into a bio template can capture the essence of your unique approach to helping your clients. Another problem with using a bio template is that sometimes the most popular ones become cliches.
One typical example on LinkedIn is the format of I help (fill in the blank) do (fill in the blank). This format has been used so frequently that hundreds of life coaches use it. Almost every day, I receive an unsolicited pitch from a business coach whose bio follows that format. You’ve done a lot of hard work to start your coaching business, so you deserve a great coaching bio. Don’t take a shortcut with it.
Focus on your ideal clients
The first step to creating a great coaching bio is clarifying your ideal clients. You want to craft your life coaching bio to get the reader's attention. If you’ve done your work, the readers are your ideal clients.
If you selected your coaching niche by looking at your journey, figuring out who your ideal clients are will be much easier. You can think about your life story and who you were when you were struggling with the problems you now solve for your clients. Consider what they might have in common if you have many types of clients. How can you target the common themes your prospective clients will resonate with?
Consider what your clients need to know most to feel that you can help them solve their most pressing problem. Focus on the key points relating to how you help them.
Create your first draft
Keeping the needs of your ideal clients in mind, it’s time to write your first draft. You’ll want to include a brief introduction of who you are. This doesn’t need to be long or include many of your professional experiences. Clients are often more interested in understanding if you can help them than where you went to school or how many certifications you hold. Try to condense your introduction to a single sentence or two. If you can, mention your specific coaching niche in this brief introduction.
Next, you’ll want to talk a little bit about your unique approach to their problem. You don’t want to tell everything here. Just stick to the most important details. This should only take a couple of sentences.
You’ll want to feature your big why in your coaching bio too. Let your target audience know why you started your coaching practice. What makes helping them meaningful work for you? Don’t go into too much detail. A single sentence should do here.
Finally, make sure your bio includes a clear call to action. Let your ideal clients know what they should do next. And make sure you include some contact information, ideally a phone number and email address.
Throughout, you’ll want to use a friendly, conversational tone. After all, you’re trying to connect to your ideal clients and allow them to see that you are the right person to help them.
Next, create a second version of your life coaching bio
Now you have a decent life coaching bio. Congratulations. But you ultimately want to create the most effective bio. The best way to do that is to write it again. Follow all the steps above to write a second life coaching bio.
With two bios, you can now fine-tune your life coaching bio. Reread them both and see how they sound and make you feel. Read them aloud. Does any part of it sound awkward or hard to understand?
Find 3-5 friends that might fit your target market. Have them read both bios and give you feedback. Which one was most convincing to them? Were there words or phrases that really grabbed their attention? Which one felt like the best version to them?
With that feedback in hand, go back to your bios. This time, you will start with the one that felt the strongest to yourself and your target audience. Rewrite any parts of it that felt stilted or didn’t resonate. If words or phrases in the other bio really grabbed your test readers, incorporate them into this new bio. You now have an effective coaching bio. But you’re not quite done yet.
Proofread your life coach bio
This step should be obvious, but you’ll want to proofread your bio for spelling or grammatical mistakes carefully. You want a well-written bio that shows you are a professional coach. You may want to use a grammar checker such as Grammarly.
Include a great photo
You will want to use a photo with your bio. Prospective clients like to see who you are. Choose a professional-looking headshot. You may or may not need a professional photographer but you do want a photo with a neutral background, good lighting, and taken with a good camera. The best photos are ones in which you are looking straight forward. Prospective clients want to feel that you are looking at them. Make sure to smile. You want to project a professional and friendly demeanor.
Think about search engines
If you want to take your coaching bio to the next level, take a moment to think about search engines. What words or phrases would your dream clients likely use to find the right person to help solve their problem? You’ll want to use some of those words and phrases in your coaching bio to increase your chances of being at the top of the search results when prospective clients come looking. A life coaching bio optimized for search engines can boost your online presence.
New life coaches often struggle with writing a bio that helps them connect with their ideal clients. Your bio is essential. It is often the first thing people look at when visiting your website. Following this process, you will write a great life coach bio that connects you with your target audience.