How to Get Coaching Clients from Social Media

The honest answer — and why reframing what social media is actually for will change how you use it

If you're a health or wellness coach trying to build a practice, there's a good chance social media is somewhere on your list of things you're supposed to be doing — and a good chance it feels like it's not working.

You're posting. Maybe consistently, maybe not. You're getting some likes, some comments, maybe even some followers, but the clients aren't coming. And at some point you start to wonder: am I doing this wrong? Is social media even worth it?

Here's the answer: You're probably not doing it wrong, you're just measuring the wrong thing.

Social media is not a client acquisition strategy. It's a trust-building tool and a funnel-widener. And when you use it as what it actually is, it starts to make a lot more sense.

Social media as a funnel-widener

Let's chat about the sales funnel for a second.

The sales funnel has four stages: awareness, interest, consideration, and decision. Social media lives almost entirely at the top, in the awareness and early interest stages.

Here's what that means practically: social media can be amazingly helpful at putting you in front of people who don't know you exist yet. A well-timed post, a share from someone with a big following, or a piece of content that happens to show up on the right person's explore page are all ways that potential new clients may discover you.

What social media is not particularly good at is converting those people into paying clients. The journey from "I saw an Instagram post" to "I signed a coaching agreement" is almost never a straight line. It goes through multiple touch points (think: multiple pieces of content, a newsletter subscription, a free resource, a low-low ticket product) before it maybe eventually arrives at a discovery call. Social media can start the relationship, but it rarely closes a sale.

When coaches treat social media as a client acquisition tool — expecting that posting online regularly should be producing clients — they end up frustrated. When they treat it as what it actually is — a way to widen the top of the funnel and begin building trust with people who might eventually become clients — it starts to feel much more manageable.

Social media as a trust builder

The other function social media serves — and IMO, its most important function — is trust building.

Consider what happens when you're thinking about working with a coach, a personal trainer, a hair stylist, etc. You find out about them, you check out their website, and you click on the Instagram icon to check out their page. You want to know that they're a real person and you want to check out their vibe, right?

This is exactly what your potential clients will be doing with you. The first thing most people do when they discover a coach they're interested in is go to their Instagram or LinkedIn. Not to buy anything, but to evaluate. They want to know: Is this person who I think they are? Do they show up consistently? Does their content reflect someone who actually knows what they're talking about? Does the way they communicate feel right for me? Do I like them?

Your social media presence is doing a job in that moment whether you intended it to or not. A consistent, thoughtful, useful social media presence says: this person shows up, they know their stuff, and they seem like someone I could trust.

The client isn't acquired on social media, but the trust that makes the acquisition possible is built there, and that's what matters.

The bottom line

Social media can absolutely contribute to building a coaching practice. Coaches who have large, engaged audiences on social media do convert followers into clients, but it's usually after months or years of consistent trust-building, and usually after a prospective client has moved through multiple other touch points first.

The coaches who get the most out of social media are the ones who use it to widen the top of their funnel, to build trust with the people who discover them there, and to guide those people into a deeper relationship with their work.

You don't need a big following to make this happen, you don't need to post every day, and you don't need to do viral dances to get clients. You just need to show people who you are, what you're about, and how you can help.

Probably not the reframe you were hoping to hear, but it's an honest, real, and genuine one. Hopefully it'll help cut through the noise of the funnel bros sliding into your DMs selling you a "6 figures in 6 months from a social media lead gen strategy" package and help you build a social media strategy that actually works for your business.

What's next

Want to build a complete client acquisition strategy for your coaching practice? The Business Edit is my 1:1 coaching program for health and wellness coaches who are ready to build a strategic, systematized, structured business. The Business Edit Course is where I teach you everything I know about how to run a coaching business so you can DIY it.

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