The Best Lead Generation Strategy for Your Coaching or Consulting Businesses (with Examples)
Most experienced consultants and coaches know that a one-to-many strategy is best for creating leads. Yet, few are doing them as a systematic, regular occurrence in their marketing calendar.
You might already be presenting at conferences, symposiums, or other guest speaking opportunities when the invitation arises, but the real growth comes from creating your own events.
The best strategy for generating leads isn’t an all-or-nothing approach or dependent on other people’s priorities and calendars. The best plan keeps your pipeline full and helps you continually build and develop relationships as part of your online platform in a way that builds trust and brings more like-minded people your way through referrals.
What if instead of doing random events as part of your marketing strategy, you create a regular one-to-many transformation to give to prospective clients? This will allow for an authentic and mini-transformational experience with your brand.
This first step maximizes trust, memorability, and connection.
At Outspoke Design, we love to create mini transformations (or quick wins) in our clients’ businesses that are a practical and useful way to bring in new clients.
To illustrate this, I’m going to give you three lead generation examples below. When most people think about online lead generation, they probably think about Google Ads, landing pages, or lead magnets like:
Books
Webinars
Cheat sheets
Checklists
Guides
Video or audio training (mini-course)
Challenges
Quizzes
Calculators
Each of these is great to get people on your mailing list, but they’re not delivering maximum value as a strategy. They need to be paired with an in-person component that is the gateway to building the know, like, and trust factor your prospects need to feel to buy.
What builds trust more for coaches than delivering a mini-transformation through a scaled opportunity to see what it’s like to work with you? That’s why a lead magnet works best when there’s a piece to do on your own and a piece to work on together as a group on a 1: many call.
Here are three excellent examples of lead generation strategies:
Marisa Corcoran - The Copy Chat
As a copy confidence society alumna, I first got into Marisa Corcoran’s universe through a great lead magnet called 50+ Scroll-Stopping Subject Lines on her homepage.
In that lead magnet, I got so many gems and three memorable strategies I could immediately implement in my copy.
It built trust by providing valuable tips upfront and got me to join her mailing list and later her summit, The Copy Chat (which she used to produce annually but is now used as an evergeen lead magnet).
Listening to a few sessions of the Copy Chat solidified my trust and made investing in The Copy Confidence society (her signature cohort-based course) an easy investment.
She delivered value at every brand interaction, so I jumped at it when I was presented with an offer.
Kelly Irving - Expert Author Coach
I recently came across Kelly’s work in another community we’re both a part of and was impressed with her lead generation method.
Kelly Irving is a book coach for change-makers and trailblazers who offer a lead magnet to “Choose your best book idea in just 15 minutes” with her Book Screening Canvas.
When you click through to download the canvas, you are invited to the next monthly live event, where she helps you work through the questions and areas in the canvas.
This is a great way to get people started on the transformational journey and offer personal support to establish connections. Coaches can help at scale to multiply their impact without burning themselves out on individual support.
Justin Welsh - LinkedIn
Justin Welsh is an expert at creating a scalable content creation system for LinkedIn. He first catches your attention by creating highly engaging content on LinkedIn, and his profile is full of gems that further bring you into his world. Everything he demonstrates on his profile he teaches in his extremely affordable course [AFFILIATE LINK]—The LinkedIn Operating System.
His lead generation strategy is his LinkedIn profile, which is optimized to get you on his mailing list, where he provides immense value (seriously, if you’re running a one-person business, do yourself a favor and sign up for The Saturday Solopreneur).
There are so many non-spammy ways to generate leads, as seen in the examples above. You don’t have to creep people out in the DMs on LinkedIn (something that has become a thorn in many people’s sides) or spend way too much money on ads to generate leads. Instead, look for the strategy that feels most aligned with your brand.
Think: “What would be the most on-brand way for me to generate leads?”
If you’re an event producer, throw an event!
If you’re a podcast producer, produce your own podcast.
If you enjoyed this article, be sure to sign up for the Outspoke Leader, where I’m breaking down how to create more courage, connection, and community in our work.
