3 Ways Coaches Can Create Good Content (with Examples)

If you clicked on this headline, it more than likely means that you’re a coach. And if you are a coach, you must be very knowledgeable about something. Maybe you have experience winning clients or growing B2B businesses.

Either way, you have expertise. 

But there’s a big problem and you may not realize you have it. 

You are not scalable. 

As a coach, you are limited to who you help. You might advise one client at a time or a team of 10 sales reps. The latter is a good number of people. Either way, having client sessions alone isn’t good enough. 

You know what is?

Making content. 

When you make content that is digestible, informative and entertaining, people will consume it. It’s like eating pizza. If the pizza is hard and dry, no one will touch it. But if the sauce is just spicy enough and the toppings complement the cheese just enough, everyone in town will dig in. 

Content’s even better than pizza, however.

Blasphemous!

I know — how can anything be better than pizza?

Well, in one pie of pizza you have eight slices at max. And if you’re hungry like me, it’s really hard to share. 

Yet with content you have eight billion people that can consume it. 

The entire planet can take your expertise for nothing more than an internet connection. Imagine that!

Why Do Coaches Need to Create Content?

You may think that you don’t need to make content if you already have a healthy coaching business. 

But the truth is that coaches always need to get clients. All businesses do. 

If you are a good coach, your customer lifetime value (CLV) may not be that long because you are that adept at solving your clients’ problems. 

Let’s say your average customer sticks around with you for six months at a time and you make $1,000 in revenue per month per customer. If you have ten clients, you are making $10,000 a month, or $120,000 in annual revenue if each one sticks around for a year. But that doesn’t consider your average customer lifetime value (LTV) which is six months and $6k in total. If you wanted to reach $120k in annual revenue, that means you would need to have a total of 20 clients per year. 

You can get 20 new customers per year. If you are only relying on referrals and word of mouth, however, then you may find that your coaching business won’t last for so many years. In fact, the average lifespan of businesses is shrinking.

There’s nothing wrong with having most of your customers come from word of mouth and referral. In fact, these are some of the best ways to get new customers. 

If you're only relying on referrals and word of mouth, you may find that your coaching business won’t last long. In fact, the average lifespan of businesses is shrinking.

With content, you can increase the number of clients you generate through word of mouth and referral. 

If your content is awesome, then people will share it. It’s not rocket science. More on that in the next section. 

I know what it’s like to have a coach who’s so good at their job that I don’t need them anymore.

‍I started going to therapy on a weekly basis for more or less half-a-year-long. I improved so much through mindfulness techniques my therapist exposed me to that now I don’t need her nearly as much as I did before. Of course, I still meet with her — just not on a regular basis. Maybe now it’s once a month or so. It’s hard to calculate my LTV for her since I have sessions on an irregular basis. But if we count the weekly sessions exclusively, that’s about six months with €280 per month, so €1,680 ($1,706) as an LTV for me as a customer. 

How did I find my therapist?

Through content. 

For confidentiality, I won’t mention the full keyword I searched for. I searched for “therapists in XYZ City” and her firm ranked number one on Google Search and Google Maps. Then I read all the pages on her firm’s website, filled out their form and had my first session. Whenever someone asks me who to go to for therapy, I always recommend the firm that she works for. 

Content isn’t word of mouth, but it’s the fuel for it. 

If I hadn’t discovered her firm via content, I would’ve not been a customer or recommended other people to be a customer. 

You need to make content to accelerate your revenue growth. 

Add fuel to your fire with some blog posts and videos. 

How to Create Good Content As a Coach

It’s easy to continue this article with the following advice…

Make a course and share it with your clients! Write and publish on LinkedIn every day using the following steps! Create a YouTube channel sharing the best tips you coach to clients!

Or something along those lines.

This isn’t a bad idea. 

1. But before you create, consider how you’ll distribute your content

The first thing you should think about before making the content you want is where and how you will distribute it. Distribution is just as important as the content itself.

If you are making content for a platform where your buyers don’t exist, then what are the chances that you will get new business from that effort?

In truth, you can also argue that creating content on platforms where your buyers don’t exist is also a good strategy. It just depends on your priorities: are you more interested in capturing demand that exists on a specific platform, or are you more interested in creating demand where that platform doesn’t have it yet? There isn’t a right answer to this question.

So instead, I challenge you to think about what’s the easiest way for your current customers to 

1. consume and 
2. share your content 

as your paradigm for distribution. 

It’s the most basic way you can think of distribution. With this as a mentality, the world is truly your oyster. You don’t feel exclusive to or from a specific platform. Many articles on content creation talk about creating content for a specific platform, but the problem is that it’s easy to not be innovative when everyone on one platform is following the same advice and is thus doing the same thing.

The first thing to think about before making the content you want is where and how you'll distribute it. Distribution is just as important as the content itself.

Because of all that, the content that you create under such a paradigm can, quite frankly, suck. And you will know this when you read, watch, or listen to it.

Thinking of distribution like this neither requires following the trend nor reinventing the wheel. 

If you are a coach who has the emails of 50 passionate customers, for example, why not make a newsletter where you send them a free educational video on something you know they will find interesting and useful but haven’t learned of yet? With that, you hit two birds with one stone: emails are easy to consume and even easier to share.

When it comes to creating the content itself, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. But what I can share with you is some of the things that I have learned from people consuming and liking my content.

2. Write authentic content for your coaching business

First thing’s first, there’s authenticity as a factor. Authenticity doesn’t mean writing in a certain way or tone, it literally means being yourself. You are your greatest asset - remember that! If your current clients watch a YouTube video you made and see that you are a completely different person on and off the camera, they might have an icky feeling of you for not being yourself. Incorporating genuine content into your coaching business strategy can significantly enhance your connection with your audience. Additionally, using tools like YouTube Video Maker can elevate the quality of your videos, further enhancing your authenticity and engagement.

In this article, I am writing as if I’m talking to you over a cup of coffee (I’m drinking a double espresso as I frantically write this). Not everyone is going to like my style. But that’s okay because it’s different and distinguishes me from other creators.

3. Provide your unique value in your content

Authenticity is a good point to start with as it transitions to my next: unique value. Not value by itself, but unique value. 

If I become your client today, what am I going to learn and acquire that I won’t be able to from elsewhere?

A good example of this is a language trainer I recently started working with from a language learning platform. I am learning Serbo–Croatian for fun. The most recent language I started learning was Romanian. I know a good amount of Romanian vocabulary, but admittedly, I am having a hard time with the more advanced grammar of their case system. So when I speak Romanian I talk quite incorrectly, which makes it hard for others to understand me.

With this instructor, he sold me on the idea that we are taking a grammar-first approach. Learning the rules of the game before, and while, you play it. It’s the exact opposite approach I took with Romanian. And it’s proving to work. Remembering vocabulary has always been easy for me. Now that I’m gradually learning how to apply it correctly in the Serbo-Croatian case system, it’ll be easier for me in the long run to speak the language fluently.

If I become your client today, what am I going to learn that I won’t be able to from anywhere else? Does this unique value strategy only work for customers who are already educated?

It’s easy to see that there’s value behind my language trainer’s approach. As an experienced language learner, I can also see how his approach is also unique. Your less experienced potential clients may not understand the importance of unique value since they can’t distinguish why the methods in your space are unique. Their circumstances are different, they are less exposed than those who worked with other experts in the past.

You may wonder, then, does the unique value strategy only work for customers who are already educated?

Yes, and that’s why you can also create content that educates and brings awareness to future customers who previously did not know.

If my language trainer were to have a YouTube channel, he should make a video called Why Language Learners Should Review Grammar Before Vocabulary or something along those lines. At the end of the video he could mention his tutoring services and his contact. If his price point matches my budget, I would buy.

Final Thoughts From a Founder...

In the end, coaches on all fronts can leverage content to get more clients and grow their businesses.

You need to make content that communicates your authentic point of view, offers unique value and then distribute it in a way where people can easily consume and share it.

If you don’t have unique value to share via your content, then that means you should add more of it to your services. And that’s great. If you can figure out how to create unique value for your services, then you can translate that unique value into your content.

Content creates more business longevity and more of an urge to innovate what you’re currently doing. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

And isn’t that what we all want?