13 Tips to Build Your Personal Brand as a Health Coach

Marketing Oct 12, 2020

The escalation in our existence online and our addiction to social media means that we all have our own personal brand on the internet, whether we want one or not.

A 'personal brand' is how you are presented in the world.
This includes individual personality traits, skills and experiences which make up who you are.
When we update LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or any other social media, we are creating a personal brand with our data.

We do, however, have the choice to embrace this and take control of what our personal branding looks like.

As a health coach, taking ownership of your personal brand is imperative for growing your business and revenue.

Without a personal brand, you will not stand out amongst your competition within the fitness industry.

You want to take control of your personal brand so that you become a trusted and needed health coach
If you aren't effectively managing your online reputation, your business revenue will be at risk.
You need to differentiate yourself from the competition with effective personal branding.
This will enable you to build trust with your ideal clients and work with others.

So, where do you begin with cultivating your individual identity as a health coach? We have 13 tips for health coaches on how to build your personal brand:

Show Who You Are With Your Niche for 100% Originality Value

There are a lot of health coaches out there, but there isn't another health coach who offers what you do.

But what makes potential clients choose you over any other health coach?

You need to build your personal brand to show that you have something special to offer customers over your competition.

So how do you communicate this to your desired audience?

It is better to be original than try to shout over your competitors. You need to define yourself to stand out.
Go deeper than your job title. There are so many other health coaches out there, you need to create a niche for yourself.
Consider what your unique selling point (USP) is. Find a niche that you can master and brand yourself as.
This could be 'The Gut Health' fitness trainer, or the 'Recovery Health Coach for Spinal Injuries'.
Make sure you define who you are and what you want to be known as (and don't forget your 'why'!)

For example:

You can identify your target audience as individuals who want to improve their gut health because they have certain digestive issues (such as Crohn’s Disease or Coeliac Disease). You can demonstrate how your skills can help them improve and manage their gut conditions whilst differentiating yourself as a Gut Health Wellness Coach.

Take your time in deciding on what your USP is. Be 100% your authentic self. That way you can't be copied and it will set you up for success from the beginning.

Find Your 'Why'

As motivational speaker and author Simon Sinek says, "People don't buy what you do; people buy why you do it".

Before you do anything else, you need to sit down and get very clear on why you do what you do and what your values are.
If you don't know why you are a health coach - why you want to help others - then clients won't trust you.
Finding your 'why' will also benefit your decision making process: every time you think about what to do, ask yourself first: "does this support my 'why'? Does it support my purpose?"

Finding your 'why' is the foundation of building your personal brand as a health coach.

Become Someone's Favourite Health Coach

The idea of becoming someone's favourite as part of your personal brand journey is to gain loyal followers via your social media. These fans will become your clients.

You want to pay attention to the audience who needs you. These are the ones who are asking questions and looking at you as a trusted source for answers.

To become someone's favourite health coach and to gain their trust, you need to:

Show up consistently and provide free, valuable content to your followers, such as informative articles or videos.
Show that you listen. Read comments and answer audience questions and give solutions to problems.
Share your story on whichever platform you resonate with most (Youtube, podcasts, blog writing).

Once you have consistent, helpful content, sales will happen organically. Fans will want to thank you or buy more of your product or service. Then you can put a price tag on selected products or solutions.

For example:

Dr Dina Kulik has built her personal brand around being the go-to kid’s health doctor and creates regular, information-packed blogs for visitors to her web page to demonstrate her expertise in her chosen field for free.

Don't worry about being perfect. Just work on your personal brand and your confidence will grow with practise.

Host Health Coaching Workshops or Webinars

Delivering health coaching workshops will help build your personal brand by increasing awareness of who you are and what you have to offer.

Workshops can leave attendees with good impressions, so you should try to deliver a workshop (or webinar - the online version of a workshop) that demonstrates all your skills and services as a health coach.

For example:

You could contact your local leisure centre and host a health coaching workshop on gut health (or whatever your chosen niche is). You can promote the event via your social media and email newsletters, and charge a fee to show that what you have to share is valuable and worth paying for.

Create a Referral Program to Increase Awareness of your Personal Brand Value

You can really support your personal brand image by creating a valuable referral program - that is - offer benefits to clients who refer you to others.

Referral marketing is a powerful promotional tool as a positive word of mouth from friends and family tends to be trustworthy and therefore very valuable to you as a health coach.

Offer benefits such as discounted or trial sessions for friends and family who refer people they know to your health coaching services.

New and existing clients will be able to say how valuable your services are and recommend your personal brand to others with a good referral program.

Take a Self-Assessment

Once you have your 'why' and your unique selling point, take a self-assessment. This will help you determine how you are going to work and grow your personal brand.

How to conduct a self-assessment:

Draw up a list of things that you are good at and that you enjoy doing in your job.
Then, draw up a list of struggles, or things you don't like doing, but are necessary for your business to thrive.
From these lists, you can determine what you like spending your time on as a health coach, and what you waste your time on trying to accomplish.

Admitting your weaknesses works to your advantage, because once you've identified them, you can employ someone else to take on the dirty work you don't want to do, leaving you to focus on what you're best at.

This could be anything from finances to social media management.

Offer a Free Consultation or Health Coaching Session

Once you’ve outsourced the less desirable aspects of your health coaching job, you can focus on your favourite parts. One of these may be the face-to-face interactions you have with clients.

A great way to boost your personal brand is to offer a free consultation. A free session will gain customer trust and increase positive word-of-mouth recommendations to your services.

Increase awareness of your personal brand through email newsletters.

Building an email list is a great way of communicating with potential and existing clients to promote yourself and your health coaching services.

You can build an email newsletter list by:

Creating sign-up forms on your website to attract clients and keep them up to date with what you offer as a health coach.
Packing newsletters full of valuable content to demonstrate your expertise and to build trust with your readers.
Creating an email schedule so that you keep in regular touch with subscribers (such as weekly newsletters)

Using emails has been shown to be 40 times more effective than social media as a marketing strategy, so try to keep your email list updated.

Personality is important. As international business mentor Chris Ducker says: "People want to do business with other people, not other brands".

To differentiate your personal brand from all the other health coaches, you should:

Show your own personality and tell your own story.
Your personality will attract the right clients for your brand
A small dedicated fanbase is more valuable that a vast following of fans which don't engage with your business or bring you revenue.

Consider Joe Wicks - better known as 'The Body Coach'. Wicks boosted his personal training career by creating his personal brand as The Body Coach. He defined himself with his now famous title, and makes over £1 million thanks to this identity but whilst still showing his authentic personality.

Reputation Reminder: It's About You, Not Dependent on You

Your business is based on you as a health coach, but do not fall into the trap of thinking it is dependent on you.

Reputation of your brand is important, so you want to work efficiently to produce the most admirable results.

If you micromanage every last task, you will be holding your business growth back because you won't have the time to give every task the attention and time it deserves.
Get out of your own way and delegate tasks to other employees or agencies.
Use advice number 4 to determine which tasks to delegate.

By realising that you can maintain your personal brand whilst entrusting areas of your business to other employees or agencies, you will free up your own time to concentrate the most important aspects of being a health coach for your clients.

Outsource Your Weaknesses

As a successful health coach, you want your personal brand to be valuable to your potential clients, but you don't have to micromanage everything. Delegate what you are bad at or what you dislike to another employee.

For example:

If you hate social media, employ a social media manager who can create this content for you.
If you're terrible at keeping records, hire an accountant.
If you want to free yourself from transactions, hire a sales assistant.

Don't waste your time at work doing something you don't like or that you struggle with. Outsource these areas of work and keep enjoying your role as a health coach.

Address The Imposter Syndrome

You may be familiar with Imposter Syndrome, that feeling that you do not deserve widespread recognition for your work as a health coach. Or that you feel like you shouldn't be paid for your efforts.

Reasons to kick the Imposter Syndrome to the curb:

Remember number 6: if you're providing consistently amazing products or services, then you will become someone's favourite.
These fans will then look to you for answers and solutions. They will want to pay you for your help.
Have the confidence to serve your audience on a consistent basis.
Your personal brand will identify you as a trustworthy and knowledgeable health coach.

Remind yourself that you are providing a valuable service as a health coach to your audience and that it is worth monetising.

As there are over 3 billion people using social media on their mobile phones, you could potentially be missing out on billions of health coaching clients without effective social media engagement.

You need to make sure you’re active where your clients are hanging out online to boost your personal brand awareness.

There are many platforms to choose from, but the top ones to check out are:

Instagram. This image-based platform has over 1-billion active users yearly.
Facebook. 87.1 % of marketers use Facebook to effectively reach their clients.
Quora. This is a great platform to find clients who will be asking questions related to your health coaching profession.