You’re ready to scale your coaching business by using paid advertising. Good for you.

But if you’re feeling less than confident about tackling paid ads, you’re not alone. Digital advertising can feel daunting for anyone who hasn’t tried it yet.

When looking for advertising tips online, you’ll find plenty of tips that can be helpful for other businesses… but not so much for coaches.

That’s why we’ve gathered some of the best advertising tips to help coaches get started! Keep reading to discover:

• Facebook and Instagram advertising tips
• X (Twitter) advertising tips
• Google advertising tips
• Other advertising tips

12 Effective Advertising Tips for Coaches

Facebook and Instagram advertising tips

Facebook is a powerful advertising platform with many users and advanced targeting options. But it’s also much easier to learn than other platforms, such as Google.

Through the Meta ad manager, you can also run your Instagram ads. Most tips to succeed on Facebook ads can also apply to Instagram ads.

There are several key strategies and techniques to consider to make the most of your Meta ads. Here are some of the best tips specifically for this platform.

1. Let the algorithm do its job

The Facebook ads algorithm has gotten pretty good at serving ads to the right audience. While you can (and should) use some of the audience targeting tools in the platform, don’t fall into the trap of going too specific with your audience, either. 

Go as broad as possible and let the robots figure out who responds to your ads best.

2. Use your ad copy and creative to narrow down your target audience

Instead of using built-in audience targeting, rely on what your advertising campaign says and looks like to attract the right people. 

Here’s a very meta example – this ad specifically calls out coaches who need help with ads:

Notice how it calls out the audience in three ways?

• The image
• The headline (the bolded text at the bottom next to the call-to-action button)
• The ad copy (at the top)

See how this works?

You can adapt this to any coaching niche. Just be wary of the Meta ads guidelines. For example, you can’t call people out by their personal attributes.

But wait… how are you supposed to target your audience with your copy if you can’t call out any attributes?

Here’s the nuance… If I were to write an advertising campaign that says:

“You’re feeling anxious as a single mother of teenagers. But worry not – my coaching program will help.”

This ad would likely get rejected by Meta. It specifically calls out “you” – the person reading.

Now go back and look at the example I showed you. Notice how it doesn’t say anything about the person reading the ad?

It’s only speaking to “coaches.” Not “you.”

Avoid targeting the reader specifically, and you’ll be more likely to get your ads approved. But make sure to brush up on the entire Meta Advertising Standards right here.

3. Build up a warm audience to retarget with your offers

When people engage with your ads on Facebook or Instagram, you can retarget them later.

For example, if you have a Meta Pixel on your website, you can retarget anyone who landed on your page. A “pixel” is a piece of code that tells an advertising platform if someone visited a specific web page – the Meta Pixel is used for Facebook and Instagram ads. (You can read more about the Meta Pixel on the Meta Business Help Center here.)

But you can also retarget people who:

• Watched a portion of your videos
• Interacted with your instant forms
• Engaged with your Facebook page
• Engaged with your connected Instagram page
• And so much more!

This means you can launch your best-performing videos from your organic marketing channels as ads and retarget everyone who watches a part of it with your coaching offers! Instead of only targeting cold audiences (people who have never heard of you), you keep people in your ecosystem for longer and nurture them over time.

4. Validate lead magnets using Instant Forms

Instant Forms are a type of conversion location when you select “Leads” as your advertising objective on Facebook and Instagram ads.

Instead of redirecting traffic to your website, you can use these forms to collect information about your potential coaching clients without asking them to leave the platform. You don’t need to create a separate landing page to promote your lead magnet!

There are several benefits to using instant forms, such as:

• Cheaper cost per lead
• Faster to create than a separate landing page
• Easier for your audience to fill out

However, there is a downside to using instant forms: the lead quality can be lower than running ads to a separate landing page instead.

This is mainly because there is less friction for people to provide their information. As a result, more people will opt in. But you’ll also get people who aren’t as interested as others who still opt in because it’s so easy.

With that being said, if you don’t have a large volume of leads coming into your coaching sales funnel, you shouldn’t worry about lead quality right away. Sure, you’ll have to spend more time qualifying people who book calls with you later on… But you’ll have time to do that if you’re not fully booked.

However, once you do start getting more clients, you can afford to increase lead quality and decrease volume.

As such, I recommend the following:

1. Before building out an entire funnel, start with instant forms if you want to promote your lead magnet.
2. Validate that people want this lead magnet. If you test several ads and can’t get your cost per lead under $10, you should try a new angle or lead magnet idea.
3. You can set up a separate landing page once you’ve validated that people want your lead magnet. This will slightly increase your cost per lead, but you’ll also get more qualified people into your coaching pipeline.

This process will allow you to create quick iterations of your ads and lead magnet ideas without creating new funnels each time!

X (Twitter) advertising tips

X, formerly known as Twitter, can be a valuable platform for online coaches to connect with potential clients. Consider the following tips for successful Twitter advertising.

5. Staying concise is key

According to X Business, the best-performing Tweets are between 50 and 100 characters long. So, while it’s possible to create promoted Tweets that are longer, do your best to stay on the short side.

6. Specify your call to action

Unlike Facebook and Instagram ads, ads on Twitter/X aren’t as obvious. They don’t come with the call-to-action button you see on Facebook. 

This is why you should specifically write what you want your audience to do.

For instance, you can say, “Click here to book your free discovery call” right before the link to your booking page!

7. Avoid hashtags or mentions

Twitter is full of distractions. The last thing your audience needs is a way to click away from your ads… right inside your ads.

That’s why you should avoid adding hashtags or mentions in your ads. By keeping your ads free of clickable links (except for your call-to-action), you’ll keep your audience focused on what you want them to do.

Google advertising tips

Google is the go-to search engine for people seeking information and solutions… which means people look for coaching services daily! 

But Google ads are also expensive – and you can easily waste your entire budget if you’re not careful. Here are a few tips to avoid this.

8. Research high-intent keywords

Keywords play a crucial role in Google advertising. That’s why you must research and identify high-intent keywords relevant to your coaching niche. 

These are the words and phrases that potential clients are actively searching for.

Here are some tips for finding keyword ideas that make sense for your coaching services:

• Talk to your existing clients to understand their language when searching for solutions to their problems. Don’t assume the language they use!
• Don’t go too specific! You can narrow down your coaching niche but don’t target long-tail keywords, either.
• Use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant searches. For example, if you’re an anxiety coach who doesn’t specifically help with performance anxiety, you could add “performance” as a negative keyword.

You can use Keyword Planner (it’s free) to research your Google ads keywords.

9. Set up expectations correctly

If your potential clients see one thing on your ad and see another completely when they arrive on your page, they’re more likely to bounce away. That’s why you need to make sure your ad copy makes sense with your landing page.

Here’s an example of what NOT to do. I searched “parenting coach” and found an ad that says “15-Min Free Consultation.”

But when I click on the ad, I’m redirected to a page that promotes a 45-minute coaching session for $300.

Can you see how this offer is irrelevant to the ad that brought me here? I scrolled through the page and found no reference to the free 15-minute consultation. 

10. Direct traffic to a dedicated landing page

The page you drive traffic to should be as streamlined as possible. Remove all distractions from your page, such as menus or links to other pages.

For instance, you can use your coaching package landing page in Paperbell!

Here’s an example of a streamlined page free from distractions:

Yes, you can keep scrolling to get more information about this financial coaching offer. But there are no menus or other distractions at the top. This means people are more likely to fill in the form.

Other tips for advertising

Some online advertising tips hold true no matter which of the social media platforms you choose. While I could list out several hundreds, there are two critical tips I think you should focus on:

11. Test. Test. Test. 

We can only assume what your specific coaching audience will respond to until you’ve tried.

While best practices and proven advertising techniques and strategies exist, they are not universal. The best way to reduce advertising costs and get better coaching leads is to keep testing new advertising angles.

Test new images. Test new copy. Test new offers. Test new offers and headlines. The sky is the limit.

12. Analyze your data 

Let’s say you launch a new ad to promote your coaching program – and it bombs. Do you know why?

Be careful when making assumptions. You need to learn how to read your metrics and analytics correctly, depending on your platform.

Here’s an example. Let’s say I’m running an ad on Facebook to book more discovery calls into my calendar. After spending about $200, I realize no one has booked a call yet.

I could assume the image for my ad isn’t stopping the scroll. I could assume my copy isn’t converting. Or I could assume my landing page isn’t convincing enough.

In reality, any of these could be true.

But which one is it?

The exact way to figure it out will depend on the platform you’re using. But on Facebook, here’s what we can look at:

• Clicks (all) will determine how many people stopped scrolling and engaged with the ad
• Clicks (link) will determine how many people clicked through to the place you’re driving traffic
• Divide the number of conversions by the number of link clicks to figure out the conversion rate for your landing page to see if that’s the problem

So, for instance, let’s say a ton of people clicked on my ad. This means that my images stop the scroll, and my ad copy is convincing enough to get people to click.

In that case, my landing page is the problem.

If you’re getting tons of Clicks (all) but hardly any link clicks, it means people are stopping to look at your image… but they’re not going any further. This means the copy may need some tweaking.

Finally, consider changing up your images if even your Clicks (all) are low.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when analyzing the data from your paid advertising. I suggest reading through the user guides for the specific platform you intend to use to understand how the analytics work fully!

Leverage These Advertising Tips to Grow Your Coaching Business

There you have it – the 80-20 advertising tips for the main platforms you need for your coaching business!

Finally, I want to remind you to think outside the box. Yes, you should follow these tips. But don’t be afraid to try new things and shake things up. Whenever you see something new on your feed, someone must try it first. Why couldn’t it be you?Need to streamline the admin side of your coaching business so you have time to create high-converting ad campaigns? Then do yourself a favor and try Paperbell. It’s specifically designed to simplify the way coaches run their businesses online. Plus, you can try it for free! Grab your free account right here to try it out for yourself.