How To Build A Brand As A Life Coach?
A beginner's guide to brand strategy to help grow your coaching business and use the power of storytelling to elevate your branding and make you stand out.
Storytelling plays a big part when it comes to the overall branding of the message that you want your audience and prospective clients to see, feel, and actually understand. In order to create personal branding in the coaching business, a big part is tied closely to the story you tell that expresses who you are and what you do in your business.
When I got really passionate about branding and storytelling three years ago, one of the things that I did was create a good, lasting first impression for my audience so that they would remember it years down the road.
In our everyday world, having a good first impression is important to build trust and authority, and it provides your audience with a sense of how you show up. After all, in the virtual world, the first impression is important when you want someone to stay and learn more about what you have to offer.
What Is Branding?
Branding is the foundation of a business that includes the brand colors, logo, trademarks, copyright, and more. It is also a symbol or overall representation of your business. These create a visual identity that serves to differentiate and identify a brand. More specifically, it refers to any visible components, such as a logo or brand colors. These are important because, in the absence of being able to see you in front of the audience, the audience will still remember your brand, including what you have to offer and how you will be able to help to guide this process of transformation.
The first step to attracting your dream clients is to have a beautiful or strong brand message so that you can leave that first impression on your prospects.
Don’t Let The Untold Stories Die Inside Of You.
-Michelle Kuei, Visibility Coach & Storytelling Master
What Is A Brand Message?
A successful and sustainable business starts with the brand message. It guides a company to deliver its value proposition (a promise) and communicate the business value. Your message can inspire and motivate your target dream clients and make them want to sign up for your coaching program. It is also how your dream clients can have a relationship with your brand.
It is the culmination of languages, designs, events, and philanthropic effects that tells the story of what your brand is and who you are. SNAG A FREE GUIDE ON 5 STEPS TO CREATE YOUR POWERFUL CORE MESSAGE THAT ATTRACTS AND SELLS!
Coaches fail at providing the promised outcome, while others fail at conveying their value proposition and expressing how they’re different or better than their competitors in the industry. A brand message is something that can help you in both of these situations. It ties together your services and your communication message, aligning everything with your value proposition.
Pro tip: When a dream client looks at your website, they want to know this: Is this website/business/program for me?
Questions your business can answer:
- Is it easy to navigate?
- Does it have a very clear message?
- Are these pictures organized and relevant?
- Does it look very distorted and all over the place?
- Are the services clear?
All of these are elements that will affect whether your dream clients will bounce from your website or stay to explore your offers. Your dream clients often base their buying decisions on whether they feel like they can trust you…or not; if they can't trust you, then they won't buy from you.
What Is A Story Brand?
StoryBrand, developed by author Donald Miller, is a popular messaging framework that helps your brand tell a clear and compelling story. Having a compelling, engaging story allows you to capture your audience and guide them through a process or a framework to resolve the problem they came to you to solve. Every story that uses the story brand framework has a hero who encounters a problem and overcomes a conflict to win.
These are the 5 elements to create a successful Story brand:
Believable and relatable main character
Relevant setting of the story
Plot (establishing the pain and cost of staying the same)
Conflict in this plot
Resolution to the problem
A successful brand is always well-defined and relevant to the market. You might assume that if you have a tagline, logo, and business card, your branding is complete. Not true. A visual with a relevant and relatable story to back up it up is much more likely to add to your coaching business credibility, which therefore raises your overall business visibility.
How To Use Storytelling To Raise Your Business Visibility
Business visibility is how you position yourself and the type of associations you want to connect yourself and your personal brand with. This is where you start delivering and aligning every piece of content you share with the value that you have identified in your coaching business. Using storytelling methods will help you convey and attract your dream clients.
These are four key questions that are important to keep in mind as you create the story:
Why is this important for them to know?
What is the purpose of this story?
How is this relevant to my audience?
Where can my audience find more information if they want to learn more?
A great storyteller always leaves an audience seeing things from a different perspective. Not only do you engage with your audience, you also provide value too.
An effective brand story will use all of these elements mentioned above to elicit an emotional connection with your Dream clients.
- Michelle Kuei, 5 reasons why brand story failed in your coaching business.
How To Use The Storytelling Method In Your Coaching Business
If you are new to the storytelling method, a good place to begin is what people call the Pain, Agitation, and Solution (PAS) model.
This method involves the following:
What are some of the pain points you experienced when your integrity was being tested?
What was I feeling?
What did it cost me to stay or remain unchanged?
What was the solution for me?
As a coach, you have great tools and resources that you can bring into your storytelling to support and guide your dream clients to a place of solution. The goal is to create a story that is interesting and memorable and that helps the listener or reader understand the concept or idea in a way that is more meaningful and impactful than if it was simply presented in a dry, factual manner (as one would in this coaching industry).
Want to learn more about how storytelling can change the way you market your coaching business and attract more clients? Join me in a 3-Day Live Masterclass to learn 3 simple steps to attract and inspire your dream clients to say 'Yes.' CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE WAITLIST TODAY and GET YOUR COACH'S CLIENT SUCCESS KIT SIGN-UP BONUS!
The Art Of Influential Communication Tools For A Woman Coach
If you want to make a big impression with your coaching business and personal brand, then don't underestimate the power of storytelling. A well-crafted story can help you connect with your ideal clients on a deeper level, and it will also make you memorable long after they've heard you speak or read your blog post.
So if you're ready to take your branding to the next level, start thinking about how you can incorporate storytelling into what you do. And if you need some help getting started, I'm always here for my fellow coaches. Just leave me a comment below, and we'll chat about how I can help you elevate your coaching brand using the power of stories.
Related Articles:
WHY STORYTELLING IN THE COACHING BUSINESS?
5 REASONS WHY BRAND STORY FAILED IN YOUR COACHING BUSINESS
WHAT ARE BRAND ARCHETYPES, AND WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR A COACHING BUSINESS?
HOW STORYTELLING MARKETING HELP YOUR COACHING BUSINESS TO GET MORE COACHING CLIENTS?
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