10 Ways to Grow Your Health Coaching Business in the New Year

This post contains affiliate links, through which we may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you. We only share products or services we personally use & recommend!

New year, new health coaching business? 😄

Whether you’ve been dabbling in health coaching for some time now, or 2021 is the year you’re launching your brand new health coaching gig, here are some helpful tips for building (and growing!) your dream wellness business:

10 ways to grow your health coaching business

It’s true, I could chat online biz tips and health coaching lessons learned all day—there’s just so much that goes into it!

But these are my top 10 favorite, tried-and-true methods for optimizing your health coaching business—things I’ve seen work well not just for me, but for other health coaches and wellness professionals I’ve worked with and consulted for, too:

1. Launch your health coaching website

We’ve talked about websites so much before, because: in this day and age, you absolutely need an online presence for your health coaching business. (And a good one!)

Full disclosure, I’m also a web designer, so this is extra important to me.

But your health coaching website is important. It’s your online storefront, your virtual business card, your elevator speech, your sales page, and very likely your payment gateway and perhaps your hub for client information and documents… you get the point—it’s everything!

If you already have an awesome health coaching website you’re happy with, that’s great! You can move on to tip #2. But, if you don’t yet have a website for your health coaching business (or, you have a website you’re not completely happy with or proud of), this is one of the very first, most important things I’d suggest for growing your health coaching business.

I use and recommend Squarespace as a website platform, and think it’s the best option for health coaches and wellness professionals. There are a bunch of reasons why:

Why I recommend Squarespace for health coaching websites

• It’s simple and easy to use. (You can totally set it up yourself, no web designer needed!)

• It connects with all my favorite business tools for managing a health coaching practice (we’ll get to these more below).

• It’s design-oriented, which means you can easily design a beautiful, inspiring site full of imagery that tells your brand story. As a health coach, so much of what you’re selling is a feeling, or a state of being you can help provide your clients.

• It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, and Squarespace is integrated with two awesome sources of professional stock photography to help you communicate your message. (That means, you can directly search for and add stock images right from the back-end of your Squarespace website.)

• It’s easy to incorporate your own SEO to help grow your visibility online.

If you don’t yet have a website for your health coaching business (or, if you’re looking to improve your website or switch to something you can easily manage yourself!), grab your free 14-day trial of Squarespace and use code PARTNER10 for 10% off your first year.

And, for more tips on what to include on your health coaching website, check out our full archive of Health Coach Business Resources.

2. Boost your health coaching website’s SEO

Once you’ve got your website up and running, the next step is to make sure it’s being seen by the right people (aka, your ideal health coaching clients)!

That means, giving some TLC to your SEO.

Yes, more than cute acronyms, this is one of the most important things you can do to grow an audience for your health coaching business!

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of “optimizing” your website to be seen and understood by search engines, so they use your content in the search results for people looking for exactly what you have to offer.

Here’s more about what health coaches should know about SEO, and some web-designer tips for boosting SEO on your health coaching website.

And, if you’re really wanting to boost SEO this year, I also created a step-by-step training on all things Squarespace SEO—how to find your business’ strategic keywords, all the places to add them on your website, and how to continue growing SEO for your website over time:

Use code HEALTHCOACH for 20% off!

3. Blog, blog, blog

Now, one of the very best ways to boost your health coaching website’s SEO is to publish regular, quality blog content.

There’s lots more to that (see the SEO resources above!), but in general, it’s a great idea to:

• Publish new blog content weekly.

• Aim for at least 1,000 words per post (more is better!).

• Focus on helpful content that’s relevant to your health coaching target audience.

Blogging resources for health coaches

Here are some additional blogging resources that may be helpful for growing your health coaching or wellness blog:

• Why your health coaching business needs a blog & how to start one

• How to attract your ideal health coaching clients with your blog content

• How to use your blog content to grow an audience for your health coaching business

• The best ways to use blogging to market your health coaching business

4. Perfect your opt-in gifts

Once you’re getting some website traffic on your wellness blog posts, the next step is to give those readers more opportunities to connect with your health coaching services!

Ideally, each of your blog posts will include an opt-in gift offer—something like a freebie download, ebook, free video training, etc. These special “opt-in gifts” are helpful, relevant wellness resources strategically developed for your target health coaching audience (your ideal clients!).

The end goal is to further connect with your website visitors / wellness blog readers, show them what you have to offer of value, and give them an offer to join your email list for future communication.

You may already have a health coaching resource that would work great as an opt-in gift… or, if you need some ideas, here are some of my favorite opt-in gift ideas for health coaches.

5. Enhance your email marketing

Like most things in life, email marketing doesn’t run itself. 😅 There’s some back-end set-up to be sure you have quality and consistent email marketing for your health coaching business:

• First, an email list! I recommend Flodesk for most health coaches and wellness professionals. (I used to recommend Mailchimp, but we recently switched over to Flodesk and I love it much more!)

• A welcome automation for your new subscribers: This could be just one email or an introductory sequence, whichever works for you. Here’s how to set up a welcome automation in Mailchimp or Flodesk.

• A branded email newsletter template for your regular email newsletters: Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a branded newsletter template in Mailchimp or Flodesk.

In general, focus on sending regular emails of value to your subscribers—things that are truly helpful and interesting to them. (“Them” being your target health coaching audience, which is who you should be aiming to attract to your email list—no sense trying to build rapport with people who aren’t likely to be interested in your health coaching services down the road!)

6. Join relevant wellness affiliate programs

Affiliate income can be a helpful supplement to your health coaching business. In essence, you join affiliate programs and promote your specific affiliate links in your blog posts, etc.—and then you receive a commission for any referred sales.

This usually starts off small (not much supplemental income to write home about), but can grow to substantial income over time, especially if you’re following the tips above on blogging, SEO, and Pinterest marketing. (Affiliate income is very heavily influenced by your website traffic, which can be grown through good SEO and content marketing.)

There are some more details and considerations to be aware of in a) choosing the affiliate programs you join, b) using them in your health coaching materials or resources, and c) properly disclosing your affiliate links for legal purposes. See our post on when and how to use affiliate links in your health coaching business for more info!

7. Streamline your health coaching client management

As you begin to take on health coaching clients (or, as you aim to take on more health coaching clients), it’s important to streamline your client management so your administrative tasks are as efficient as possible.

Here are some business tools and tips for easy and efficient health coaching client management:

Health coaching business tools for streamlined client management

• Use a specific coaching platform (like Practice Better) to serve as a hub of all your health coaching client documents, contracts, payments, scheduling and more.

• If you choose not to use a health coach-specific platform like Practice Better, you can still streamline health coaching session scheduling with a tool like Acuity Scheduling (which integrates super nicely with Squarespace websites!).

• Be sure you have all your client contracts and disclaimers in place before you begin working with a new client.

• Health coaching is rewarding yet tiring work! Be sure to thoughtfully set your schedule, preferred communication methods (and expectations), and client boundaries to honor your own work/life balance as a health coach.

8. Develop an online membership program

If you’re looking to scale your wellness business beyond 1:1 health coaching services (which, of course, you have a limited amount of time and capacity to provide), online membership programs are a great option, especially for health coaches and wellness professionals.

We’ve previously shared resources on setting up your own online membership program (aka passive income!). Some of the membership programs health coaches (and other wellness professionals) can add to your business:

Membership programs for health coaches

• online courses + trainings

• members-only video archives

• resource library

• online membership community

• members-only discussion forum

• community directory

Membership programs can be free (as a method of growing your email list) or paid (as a source of business income).

As a web designer, I use and recommend MemberSpace for most membership programs I consult on—though the new Squarespace Member Areas could also be an option in some cases. (Here’s more about the difference between MemberSpace and Squarespace Member Areas, if you’re wondering which would be best for you.)

And, here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up a membership program on MemberSpace.

9. Join the Health Coach Directory

All set up and ready to go, but having trouble finding clients for your health coaching business?

Our new Health Coach Directory (coming soon!) is designed to help connect our audience of interested readers with available health coaches. Sign up to be notified when it launches!

10. Start your own health coaching referral program

And, if you have a membership program (like those mentioned above), or other health coaching packages you’d like to promote, it can be helpful to start your own affiliate or referral program, to grow sales for your products or services.

Rewardful is a simple online tool for setting up both affiliate and referral programs for your health coaching business.

What’s the difference between a referral & affiliate program?

A referral program incentivizes existing customers to refer a service or product to their peers via word-of-mouth, in exchange for a discount on their own services.

An affiliate program recruits “influencers” to promote your product or service, in exchange for a cash commission on new leads generated.

Rewardful is easy to set up and use—both for you (you’ll need to do the initial behind-the-scenes set-up) and for your members (who will be able to sign-up, check their conversions and payouts, update payment and tax information, etc.).

It’s a great way to increase volume for your health coaching business, while rewarding your customers and champions for doing so!

Perfect your health coaching website

Grab my free checklist for optimizing your wellness website!

It’s got all the big picture must-haves (& all the important little details!) to make your health coach website shine. ✨