As health coaches, it’s common to spend all your time focusing on your clients (particularly when you start out). And completely forget to make time for your own health coach branding.
You might know what you want – you have your vision, want to be successful, you want to help people – but how do you start working on your brand in the first place?
Aren’t you lucky you have me? Because here’s the essentials of what you need to get started!
1. Be you!
What’s the one thing you associate with the brands or coaches that you like? No other brand (even if they offer the same products or services) makes you feel quite so good as they do.
And successful health coach branding is all about that! You are unique, and how you make someone else feel is based solely on you.
How do you do this in practice?
Be clear about what your brand represents. It’s not just about the colour scheme or the logo. It’s about how you treat your clients, the level of service they get from you, and the connection you build with them. It’s about how you make people feel!
And that right there is your mission when creating your branding. You must decide how you want people to see you:
- What characteristics do you want them to associate with your brand?
- How about emotions – how do you want to make them feel?
These things are otherwise known as a brand identity. They will form the characteristics of your brand, just like when you think about the personality of someone you know. Now, to really nail that part you have to be genuine and original.
You must be you! So ask yourself the following:
- What are the core values that you want to follow?
- What is your brand’s mission? Why did you decide to start helping people?
- What is your story and how did you get here?
- How will people know about all of these and why does it matter to them?
Answer these honestly and you’re going to have done a lot of the hard work in branding already!
2. Inspiration not imitation
It’s great to be inspired by others, but oftentimes, people will blatantly copy instead of doing their own thing.
I just need to say it for the people in the back. It will hurt your brand and you’ll have a hard time getting back on your feet if you decide to go down this route!
People will see you as a phoney, like someone who’s trying to portray themselves as somebody else. You could be opening yourself up to all kinds of legal issues like getting sued by the brand you’re trying to copy! Are you willing to face court charges, lawyer costs, and fines?
It’s better to invest a bit of time and money into figuring out a unique identity and approach from the get-go. Instead of losing lots of money when you “borrow” somebody else’s.
You are the master of your art. Your health coaching methods and techniques are yours even if you were inspired by the teachings of others. Your own mastery and how you put things into practice is what should guide you when you build your health coaching brand.
Do not hesitate to mention who your heroes are and who you draw inspiration from.
Not only will that make you appear more genuine, it also opens a possibility that they will take notice. And you never know, it could connect you to collaborate with your idols too!
3. Test and ask your audience
Who better to ask and decide what they like? Every single member of your audience has their opinion about you, so ask away!
Add a link to your poll on social media and ask them what comes to mind!
- How does your brand make them feel?
- What three words would best describe your brand?
- How do your services benefit them?
- What message do they associate with your brand?
- What emotions do they feel when they see your brand?
- How likely are they to recommend you? Why would/wouldn’t they?
- What comes to mind when they see your logo or colours?
- How do they feel about your activities on social media?
You can even include rating scales (1 to 5) about attributes like:
- Trustworthiness
- Reliability
- Respect
- Care
- Pricing
- Aftercare
How to make sure people fill out your poll:
- To reach as many people as possible. Post the poll during peak hours to get good engagement figures. Time the poll during times people are browsing – during lunch breaks, or when commuting home from work, for example!
- Offer a freebie or incentive in return for them to fill out the poll if you can, especially if the poll is a bit long.
- You can break these questions up over several weeks and ask them individually so you don’t overwhelm your audience.
- Explain what you need it for. Be honest about it and tell them it’s so they can get exactly what they want from you! You’re more likely to get responses if people feel it’s going to be heard and makes a difference.
- Do a follow-up post where you can highlight your findings, and thank them for helping you find something interesting you didn’t realize until now!
Note: It’s always important to recognize how helpful your audience was in giving you answers. It’s a good sign the more answers you get, it shows you have an engaged audience already!
4. Take hints from competitors
Lots of health coaches are successful, so naturally, you should be curious about what got them there. Keeping an eye on the competition can help you make sense of what works and what doesn’t. Other benefits of taking a peek at them are:
- Finding your unique value proposition – what makes you different from them?
- Capitalizing on their weaknesses – offering a (better) solution to the same customer!
- Measuring your success – how are you holding up against them?
- Finding niches that they don’t serve well or at all – the underserved customer segments that you can target.
You can go as simple or complex as you want! You can do it on your own by studying each competitor’s site and find out the following:
- Who are they targeting?
- What marketing tactics are they using?
- What do the reviews say?
- Are they active on social?
- Do they offer trials or freebies?
- Are they blogging? Do they have a podcast or vlog?
- Are they hosting events?
Or you can use competitor analysis tools that will help you make sense of lots of data points you might have missed otherwise!
5. Hire professionals
If you truly want to build your brand, you must be willing to get out of your comfort zone and learn new things! Branding and marketing concepts can get complicated and with quite a lot to do, it can be overwhelming if you don’t organise yourself.
You can read for days trying to figure everything out which is why I always recommend getting a branding specialist. Of course, I’m biased since I am one. But that doesn’t make me any less right.
If you don’t have the budget to do that right now, I recommend reading up on the following topics to start with:
- Building a website and optimising it
- Setting up social media accounts to get the most growth
- Learning all about how to post and when
- Setting up a blog
- Making videos and other types of content
- Keeping on top of new marketing trends and where to test what works
If you get stuck, why don’t you try finding marketing professionals in your network, reach out and ask for help? People will be more than happy to give you pointers if you’re willing to do the work and pull your weight!
5 Things You Can Do to Work on Your Branding Right Now
Branding takes time, and you’ll need to figure out the answers to everything I’ve mentioned above. But there are a few things to up your branding right now!
1. See if your branding is the same across social media
You can’t build brand awareness and recognition if you constantly change your colours and style! Stick to having similar banners, descriptions, and background colours across all social media channels that you use. Even if you haven’t figured everything out yet, make sure what you do have is consistent.
2. Make sure everything is linked!
Successful lead generation and getting new clients isn’t just about having an awesome, inspiring, and unique branding. You need to do the technical stuff too!
Your website must link to your social media, and your social media accounts must link back to your website.
Your web pages with informational posts such as your blog should include social share buttons, so readers can share them easily – it will help you reach a wider audience and build brand awareness.
3. How’s your logo?
Do you have one? Your logo is the most recognisable element of your brand. Make sure it makes sense for your industry, and for you too. It should embody your audience and services.
It should be high quality and easy to read, and have a few variants – simpler and more complex, with colors that work for different backgrounds.
Note: There is one caveat to this. If you haven’t done any branding work first, don’t create your logo. It will need to embody everything you have learnt and you don’t want to waste money creating a logo that won’t fit later on!
4. Can people contact you easily?
You want to make it easy for people to contact you. Because then they will be more likely to! Make sure your contact information should be easily accessible on your website and all the social pages that you have. People shouldn’t have to be forced to click on multiple links and navigate through several pages just to get a hold of you!
5. Create a style guide!
You should not only just look the same, you should also “feel” the same across all your channels – website, social media, videos – so your tone and voice, how you interact with clients, followers, and fans, should be the same too! A simple checklist of the fonts, colours, typography and types of images you will be using is a good start here.
Don’t forget to add in the answers to all of your branding questions to the sheet too. Particularly when you start to hire other professionals to help run your business. It will keep everyone on the same page.
Branding Must Be Done Right
In an industry that’s growing lightning fast, ignoring your branding robs you of countless opportunities to get new clients and grow your business.
You are a health coach, first and foremost! Building your health coach branding might not be up your alley but this post should help you get there.
Just as you help your clients find their way, others can help you! Contact me today and I’ll help you set up your branding and website so your perfect clients can find you easily!
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