5 Ways to Make Your Services Stand Out as a Health Coach

You already know how competitive the health and wellness industry is as a health coach and in the current economic climate, it’s getting more competitive every day. 

Even when you find a specific niche and demographic to cater to, you’re unlikely to be alone! So, how do you make your health coach services stand out? 

If you’re already working as hard as you can, it’s time to work smarter. Here’s some of my favourite tips you can use to level up your services and become the go-to in your field. 

Providing an exceptional service as a health coach 

Health coaching is a very personalised service. To some extent, this makes it challenging to create a “one size fits all” solution that you can promote and shout about online. It can also be hard logistically to realise the cost benefits of scale. 

However, leaving clients with the feeling that they’ve had individual attention and programs tailored to them will be what keeps them coming back to you. And it doesn’t have to be that hard – adding a few critical elements to your practice can set you and your clients up for success. Making your health coach services stand out is all about giving them an exceptional service, and in turn using this for your digital presence. 

#1 Listen to your clients 

Don’t be one of those coaches who impose their view of health onto their clients or the ones that aren’t willing to change in the face of feedback. Instead, facilitate a two-way communication process to help your clients achieve their goals. Together, the two of you will establish more achievable goals, for which your client will feel greater accountability. And successful clients are happy clients that will rant and rave to their friends about you (hello free and powerful marketing!)

Active listening is a combination of empathy and inquiry. Knowing what questions to ask is as important as listening attentively to the answers, and you want to make sure you ask questions that will also help you grow your services as a coach. Forbes published a list of sixteen powerful questions for coaches to ask their clients to establish their goals. The whole article is worth a read, but I found these questions particularly interesting;

1. What will happen if you don’t take this step?

This is a compelling question because it makes the goal real for clients. For those struggling with motivation to achieve, it can highlight the issues they are trying to get rid of and why they started this journey in the first place. 

How can this help your health coach services stand out? 

When you have an intimate understanding of the issues your clients face, you’ll understand exactly what services you need to provide, and how you can present them on your website or social media. Of course you should keep client details private, but learning exactly what your clients are trying to overcome gives you valuable insight for your marketing too. 

2. What does success look like?

Focusing on outcomes will help release clients from things like “diet mentality” and other unhealthy obsessions that set them up for failure. It’s often easier to measure achievements quantitatively, but qualitative, or subjective, measures can have much more impact on health. Being able to reach down to tie your shoelaces easily is more useful than necessarily doing a hundred sit-ups EVERY day.

For some clients, success might be fitting into a dress they haven’t worn in two years; for others, it could be running an ultra-marathon. To the individual, they are both valid reasons to improve their health.

How can this help your health coach services stand out? 

Create a challenge with real-world impact e.g. run X miles in 30 days, touch your toes in 20 days etc. Understand what your clients actually want to achieve, particularly those in your niche and you can attract a lot of potential clients with these challenges. 

3. What are you doing to not achieve your goal?

Overcoming barriers to success is one of the key roles of a coach. Understanding why a client is failing to achieve their goals will help you assist them in overcoming their obstacles. 

How can this help your health coach services stand out? 

Again this is the challenges and hurdles your clients are facing and exactly the barriers you’re able to help them overcome. If you know exactly what causes them the most trouble you can create a package template that will save you time and energy, that you slightly tailor to each client.

For example, services that ‘reduce injury for runners’, or ‘reduce sugar cravings whilst losing weight’ are going to attract more people than simply saying ‘running health coach services’ or ‘nutritional health coach.’

#2 Make the most of technology 

These days, technology provides an easy way to individually and accurately track your clients’ progress. Encourage your clients to invest in “wearables” – smartwatches and phones that will record their vital stats, distances covered, etc. Not only can they share their achievements with you, but it will help them take accountability and ownership of their progress.

There are also several great apps designed specifically for health coaches, and most of them allow for clients to access them too. You can create bespoke programmes and goals for each client and even share recipes with them. Most apps have chat and message facilities that will allow you to keep a record of communications with clients. Some even have built-in video conferencing that allows you to hold remote coaching sessions. Take a look at practice management apps like Healthie and Shore, and planner apps like MBODY360 and MealGarden.

How does this make your health coach services stand out? 

The more information you have from your clients, the more specific you can get with your services and tailoring to them individually. Which gives an all-round better service! Plus, the ease of use of technology allows you to be more hands-on and communicative with clients without putting much more effort in which makes you more efficient. 

Top Tip: Most health coach apps also handle invoicing and payments, and scheduling of appointments. Make use of this functionality to create a professional impression on clients and free you from the admin backlog.

#3 Maintain personal contact

No I don’t mean physically (especially not right now!) but like with any relationships, your client relationships will thrive on attention. If you’ve followed points 1 and 2, you have an excellent base for personalised communication with clients which is key to making your services stand out.  

Make a note of any special events your clients mention, names of spouses, children and pets, their occupations and hobbies, connect with them on social media. A quick WhatsApp or Facebook private message to ask how a family wedding went or whether a sick pet is on the mend, means the world to people and these personal connections and relationships will only help you grow your services. 

I do want to add a caveat to this though, because you need to always be authentic. If the “touchy-feely” stuff isn’t you then don’t force it, you want to form genuine connections, and people can tell if you’re fake. So what’s your alternative? Why not occasionally forward a link you know might interest a particular client, or a meme that you know they’ll find funny. DON’T overdo this because it could have the opposite effect, so you need to find a happy medium. 

Lastly, don’t forget about past clients. Make sure you’re top of mind when people are financially, or otherwise, ready to come back to coaching. Genuinely remaining interested in clients’ wellbeing after they’ve stopped paying you will be something they remember, and will make them come back. 

Top Tip: Social media should focus on engagement, not only volume and quality. If clients engage with your posts, respond as soon as possible to keep the conversation going.

#4 Do ‘good’ 

I’m not talking about exceptional service here, but rather “giving back.” Charitable works can foster a sense of community and belonging. People feel more comfortable supporting businesses that visibly contribute to a community they belong to, and it can help your business (as well as you personally) in countless ways. 

But doing good doesn’t necessarily need to cost you money. Support fellow local businesses, organise a neighbourhood clean-up, or volunteer your services at a community service organisation to help the elderly or disadvantaged youth. Opportunities to lend a hand are growing daily, so be part of the solution!

Top Tip: Make use of your social media channels to gather support for whatever initiative you’re engaged in and you may well find you organically network much faster (good Karma!) 

#5 Ask for reviews 

There is no marketing in the world that beats a personal referral from friends and family (because as human beings we go with what we trust, rather than what we don’t!) Clients will naturally tell their friends and acquaintances about your service if they’re happy. (And hopefully, the results will be so apparent people will ask!) But it may not occur to everyone to review you online. More and more, people are looking online for services, including personal services like coaching. They will be looking at business review sites local to your area, or international sites like Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp.

Reviews can let you know what you should work on improving. But ideally, ask clients to review you when they’re happy; for example, when they’ve achieved their first goal. Reviews are also best if they are specific. So, ask them to be clear about the benefits they’d realised from working with you (while respecting their privacy, of course). Remember, search engine algorithms index reviews, so specificity will help them capture keywords, which will help you appear on searches in your niche. 

There’s no silver bullet to winning coaching clients and making a success of your business. But steadily doing the right things will make a difference in the long run. Maintain authenticity and clients will find their way to you.

If you need a way to make your website and branding shine so you can keep standing out from the crowd, drop me a message to see how I can help you!