The missing link for so many life coaches in their social media marketing is Facebook ads.

Over a third of the 2 billion Facebook users purchase on the platform. That’s a lot of potential coaching clients you could be reaching with your ads.

I’ve been running Facebook Ads for myself and my coaching clients for over a decade now, and I’ve learned some things along the way. The biggest is that you don’t need a huge budget or a complicated marketing funnel to start using Facebook Ads.

Here are some foolproof steps to get into Facebook ads for coaches to grow your business and create a new stream of clients.

The Advantages of Using Facebook Ads for Your Coaching Business

Facebook has billions of daily users worldwide, so it’s the perfect place to reach life coaching clients without leaving home.

Many life coaches already use Facebook to promote their services with posts and comments, but ads can get your efforts to get noticed much further. They can position you as the go-to coach in your niche so you can land new clients and increase your revenue.

And the best part is you don’t have to spend a fortune or be tech-savvy to get started.

4 Types of Facebook Ads You Need as a Coach

The key to making Facebook ads work for you is choosing the type of ads best suited to the coaching industry and your business, and basically, ignore the rest.

Facebook ads reporting tools can help you understand the difference by measuring the performance of your campaigns. This way, you can focus on the ads that can bring in quality leads and reiterate them for better results.

I would recommend you use four types of ads as a life coach, so let’s look at what they are.

1. Engagement Ads

An engagement ad allows you to show up in a prospective client’s Facebook feed or stories. It looks like a post that could be from one of their friends or a brand they follow, so it blends in.

These ads are generally positively received and create a connection that leads to action. In this instance, it means clicking on your site to learn more about you and your services.

Engagement ads can generate clicks, likes, comments, and shares. They can be a video or an image post with a caption, and you can reuse one of your existing best-performing posts for them.

They will reduce your ads’ cost while allowing you to connect with a wider audience, even if they don’t take action immediately.

2. Lead Ads

A lead ad gives you the best chance to capture leads by asking them to submit their contact information so you can follow up with them later—and you don’t need a fancy marketing funnel to do that.

In fact, you can get started without a website and let Facebook collect email addresses for you. All viewers need to do is click on your ad and it will auto-fill their details so they can sign up for your freebie.

This is what it will look like to auto-fill their details:

3. Video Ad

The Facebook ads that get clicked on the most are video ads.

Why? Because in the age of 15-minute reels, we would rather watch than read.

As a life coach, you can take advantage of that without producing a high-budget video. Just get started with a selfie video and turn it into an ad that gets your potential clients to pay attention.

4. Messaging Ads

Facebook Messenger has given coaches an amazing opportunity for highly personalized communication with new prospects. You can create ads requesting a comment and then directly message those who reacted.

This is a great way to start a personalized dialogue with your audience and encourage them to invest in you.

Examples of Facebook Ads for Coaches

The right Facebook ad for you depends on your objectives. If you want to create more awareness for your brand, you can get started with a simple ad and drive users to your Facebook page.

Then, you can promote your free group, offer a giveaway, or combine the two like my client Hayley did. She got 15 new clients from her group alone who engaged with her for six months.

The advantage of a Page Post ad is that you don’t need anything other than a Facebook Business Page (this is separate from your profile) and your Meta account to start reaching more people.
You can set up your Facebook Business Page by selecting “Page” from the drop-down menu of your Facebook profile.

To grow your email list, you can offer your audience a free goals guide, a vision board starter kit, or a manifesting kit in exchange for submitting their email address.

Then, you can set up an ad for your freebie and start growing your subscribers at your budget (as little as $5 a day).

If you want to showcase your expertise and go deeper with your audience, why not try running your Facebook ads to a webinar, video series, or even one of your Facebook Lives?

Recording yourself can feel intimidating at first, but you can keep it simple and think about it as a mini online workshop. Introduce the wonderful benefits your coaching can bring and help your viewers imagine how you could help them transform.

Best of all, you then get to make an offer and, potentially, sign a new client. Yep, it’s possible to land clients who never even heard of you by stopping them from scrolling.

How to Set up Facebook Ads for Your Coaching Business

Facebook ads aren’t as complicated as they might seem initially, and Meta even has some built-in features to guide the process.

Here’s what you need to remember to make the most of your ad spend and get in front of the people most likely to buy from you.

Facebook breaks your ads down into three levels:

• Campaign,
• Ad Set, and
• Ads.

At the campaign level, you can choose from several objectives but, mostly, you’ll only need one of these: Traffic and Engagement.

Traffic is perfect for most ads, including those driving to freebies, webinars, and videos. Basically, anytime you want to direct people away from Facebook to a landing page or a website.

A landing page is a specific page you create for lead capture. It’s simpler than a website and focused on your audience taking just one simple action—usually entering their email, registering for a webinar or video, or applying for a discovery call with you.

It’s best not to send ads directly to a payment page for your services, especially if your ad targets a cold audience who has never heard of you.

Instead, you can warm them up first, establish your credibility and authority, and build that all-important trust factor that will inevitably lead to a new coaching client.

On the other hand, the Engagement objective should be selected for your campaign if you want to keep your traffic on Facebook and share your posts and videos to reach a wider audience.

This will still build a relationship with your coaching prospects over time, but it may not be the fastest path to get them to take action. However, this way, you can be sure that you’ll be their first thought when they are ready to hire a coach.

Mistakes to Avoid When Running Facebook Ads for Coaches

I am encouraging you to dip your toe in the water of Facebook ads. However, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. 

Having run Facebook ads for a decade, I’ve seen many coaches successfully use them.

Think $3,000 coaching clients from scratch, $7,000 mastermind clients, and $497 workshop sales, which have really just been the tip of the iceberg.

Never mind the rising costs and privacy concerns, one thing has held over the past decade: Facebook ads work.

And they work even better when you avoid the big mistakes I see repeatedly that lead to so many coaches walking away from this platform.

So, let’s call out the top three mistakes I see coaches make with their Facebook ads.

1. Targeting 

It’s easy to get clicks on your Facebook ads. However, you want to get the right kind of clicks since you’re paying for them.

Facebook does an amazing job at getting into the hearts and minds of its users, and as an advertiser, you get the opportunity to access all of this to find your people.

Not only can you target your audience based on demographics like age, education, and family status, but you can also target who your ads are shown to based on their likes, interests, and online behaviors.

Many people try to keep their targeting general, thinking they’ll get more people clicking and taking action.

However, the bigger your audience, the more you’ll pay for your ad, as the Facebook algorithm will have to work even harder to find the right people for you.

So try to think beyond the general and broad. Instead, think of the unique interests of your audience, including authors and thought leaders they follow, as well as therapies and modalities they may have tried before.

Specifically, some great targets to use for life coaches can be found on this go-to list:

2. Images

When you’re looking for images to use, many coaches think they need influencer-level, professional shots. But this is a mistake. The best images look like they would be a regular snap from one of your friends in your feed or eye-catching visuals that stop the scroll.

If you would like to use pictures of yourself in your ads (and why not?), some natural snaps of you are perfect. Feel free to take some selfies, too. Just make sure you’re looking at the camera.

If you want to get creative, AI image tools can alter your photos to make them pop.

If that’s not your style, the raw and real you is perfect, perhaps even better to create a genuine connection with your potential clients.

3. Budgets

Now, I know you might be tentative about throwing your cash into the money pit that Facebook ads can seem to be…

So rather than starting high, set $20 a day for each ad set and scale up 10% of that budget—as long as your ads hold firm. That way, you keep on track and adjust slowly rather than burning through your cash (and your confidence) too quickly.

Keep an eye on your Cost Per Click (CPC), especially if it creeps above $2. Your Click Through Rate (CTR) should sit above 1.5% at least. Pay attention to those stats, and you can’t go too far wrong.

This image shows you where to find those:

Of course, there are other metrics to look at and ways to set up your ads, but this post aims to keep it simple so you’re not afraid to DIY.

If I can leave you feeling it’s possible, this post has succeeded.

Sustainable success with Facebook ads requires you to think of them as an investment rather than a cost, accept that there is a learning curve, and tweak them regularly to stay on track.

It’s a small price to pay, given the ongoing rewards you get from connecting with more clients, allowing you to share your coaching on a much bigger stage.

FAQs About Facebook Ads for Coaches

Do Facebook Ads Work for Coaches?

Facebook ads are excellent tools for coaches because they allow you to target your audience in hyper-specific ways. You can set up ads for people with unique interests and those who follow big coaching and personal development brands.

How Do I Target Coaches on Facebook Ads?

If you’re coaching or mentoring other coaches, you can set up ads for people with specific professions, interests, and behaviors.

You can even set up “lookalike audiences” for your ads based on your existing clients. Facebook will identify people with similar characteristics and behaviors, allowing you to reach a highly relevant audience.

Where Can I Advertise Coaching Besides Facebook?

Other online platforms that are perfect for promoting coaching services are:

• LinkedIn,
• Google ads,
• Instagram, and
• YouTube.

You can also consider joining networking events, guest posting on blogs, or appearing on podcasts.

Manage Your Coaching Business With Paperbell

While you’re rocking your ad game, Paperbell takes care of the admin side of your business.

It handles your schedule, payments, contracts, and much more so you have more time helping clients and growing your business.

Try Paperbell for free with your first client.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2021 and has since been updated for accuracy.