How to Define Your Target Audience as a Health Coach

Melissa, integrative nutrition health coach and founder, Four Wellness Co. // Four Wellness Co. for health coaches: business tips and resources for health and wellness coaches, fitness instructors, personal trainers and other wellness professionals

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In business, as in life, you can’t be everything to everyone.

In your health coaching practice, it’s essential to narrow down who you really serve, and target your work to focus specifically on them.

Why you need a target audience as a health coach

As you start and grow your health coaching practice, it’s best to get crystal clear on who your target audience (aka your “ideal client”) is, and how your business and marketing strategies can best reach and engage them.

(Unfortunately, not doing this can waste precious time & resources.)

Below I’ll chat through a couple different strategies to narrow down and define your health coaching target audience, depending on which phase of business you’re in—whether you’re just starting out and looking to define the the type of health coaching clients you’ll be taking on, or if you have an existing health coaching practice and you’d like to find more clarity around who you can best serve.

But first—why do we go through the trouble of narrowing down a specific, defined audience?

how having a clear target audience helps your health coaching business

Intentionally defining your health coaching target audience (aka your “ideal client”) is important for several reasons:

It provides clarity into your clients’ real and most pressing wellness needs, so you can better offer solutions to meet those needs.
It helps you focus your efforts (and resources!) on the potential clients most in need of your health coaching services, and most likely to purchase from you.
It helps you refine your communication and marketing strategies so you can truly reach your ideal health coaching audience with compelling content.
It gives clues to where your ideal clients are “hanging out,” and thus where to find and connect with them… and eventually introduce them to your health coaching services.

How to define your target health coaching audience

How to narrow down and define your target health coaching audience depends a bit on whether you’re a new health coach just starting out, or if you’ve been working with clients in a health coaching capacity for some time now.

If you’re a new health coach…

If your business is still somewhat new (or perhaps you haven’t even started yet and are ahead of the game here in your research phase!), you can start with your ideal client in mind and build your health coaching business around reaching them, specifically.

Here’s how to get started defining your ideal health coaching client:

1. Create your ideal health coaching client Avatar

In this brainstorming phase, you’ll clarify exactly who you’d love to work with as a health coach. (Only by knowing who your ideal clients are can you really focus your efforts on reaching and serving them!)

Envision yourself in a health coach/client relationship with your ideal client—someone whose burning health and wellness needs your particular skills and expertise can meet, someone you enjoy working with, and someone you could see a beneficial health coaching relationship with.

Ask yourself the following questions about this ideal health coaching client:

How old are they?
Are they male? Female? Non-binary?
What do they do for a living?
What’s their education level? Income level?
Where do they live?
What are their hobbies?
What are their goals or aspirations (either personally or professionally)?
What are their fears or worries?
What’s their current health status?
And feel free to define any additional characteristics of your ideal health coaching client that are significant to your business—perhaps what language they speak, if they have children, etc.

After musing on these questions, write them down into a cohesive character description. If you’d like, you can even give your “health coaching client avatar” a name. (We’ll be referring back to them again in a later step!)

2. How will your ideal client interact with your health coaching business?

Next, we’ll explore how your ideal client will interact with you and your health coaching business—how they’ll find you, why they’ll reach out to you, what your health coaching relationship will look like.

Ask yourself the following questions about the ideal health coaching client you defined in Step 1:

What burning health or wellness problem brought them to you?
What can you do to solve this problem? (Be specific!)
How do you want your health coaching client to feel when they interact with you or your business?
What type of health coaching relationship do you have with them (short-term, ongoing, etc.)?
How will you communicate with them? How will they communicate with you?
How will they use your health coaching website, resources or other materials?

3. Where is your ideal health coaching client hanging out?

By this point we’ve created a good picture of who your ideal health coaching client is, what they like, what you can offer to them as a health coach, and how you’ll interact with them.

But now we need to know: where can you interact with this ideal client?

Think about:

What groups or organizations might your ideal health coaching client be part of?
What are some relevant interest areas they may follow or seek information on?
What are some search terms (aka keywords!) they may use to seek this information?

4. Define your ideal health coaching audience

Now it’s time to make some friends for your ideal health coaching client avatar!

Think about the key characteristics and needs you’ve outlined above and re-write your avatar description at the community level, with the following components:

Demographic (e.g. female, 20s-30s, busy professional)
Burning need (e.g. wants to lose weight and boost energy with healthier lifestyle habits)
How we’ll connect (e.g. Pinterest wellness boards, Google search for weight loss topics)

Use this description about your ideal health coaching client to inform how you structure your health coaching services, who you’re writing for or speaking to on your website or other business marketing materials, and where you’re investing in promoting your health coaching business to attract new clients.

If you’re an existing health coach…

If you’re starting with an existing audience of health coaching clients you’ve already been working with in your business, there’s a slightly different strategy to define and narrow it down—and you have some additional information and tools available to you.

With an existing audience, you already have some useful data you can turn to for a glimpse into who your audience currently is, and which segments of that audience are a better fit for you.

Here’s how to better understand your current audience & use it to define your ideal health coaching clients:

1. Take a snapshot of your current health coaching audience

With an existing audience, you already have at least some information on who your people are and how they’re interacting with your health coaching business. Depending on your particular business structure, here are some methods for taking a snapshot of your current health coaching audience:

Your past or existing client list: What information about your client demographics, health needs and goals can you discern from this list?
Take a look at your website analytics—who’s visiting your health coaching website or your wellness blog? Where are they coming from? What content are they viewing? How are they interacting with that content (are they subscribing to your newsletter, downloading certain resources, purchasing 1:1 sessions)?
If you have a large social media following, you can take a look at your analytics for that particular platform. Both Facebook and Instagram have audience analytics dashboards that include demographic information.
Don’t have a useful snapshot from the methods above? Conduct a survey of your current audience! You can send a survey to your client list or email subscribers inquiring about some of the details mentioned below.

Some of the details we’re looking for in your existing audience:

How old are they?
Are they male? Female? Non-binary?
Where do they live?
What do they do for a living?
What’s their education level? Income level?
What are their hobbies?
What are their goals or aspirations (either personally or professionally)?
What are their fears or worries?
What’s their current health status?
And feel free to define any additional characteristics of your ideal health coaching client that are significant to your business—perhaps what language they speak, if they have children, etc.

2. Differentiate your “best” + “worst” performing clients

Not all clients are necessarily your ideal client. Some could have health or wellness needs you can’t necessarily solve. Some could be a pain in the you-know-what to work with. Some could have a budget that’s really too low for the value of your health coaching services.

It’s okay to accept that not everyone is going to be your ideal health coaching client, and you don’t need to enter into business relationships with each potential client you come into contact with. The goal is to free yourself up for establishing those ideal coaching relationships that bring you the most joy, impact and income!

To get started on differentiating your ideal client from your not-so-ideal clients, first choose an action or attribute that defines “success” in your health coaching relationship. This element will vary considerably depending on how your health coaching business is set up and the phase you’re in, so choose something that applies to you and your personal business goals.

Some potential measures of client success include:

Purchasing a specific product or service from you
Completing a certain number of purchases
Completing a specific action
Having a certain subscriber rating in your email marketing service

Next, segment your audience into three groups:

Those who have achieved your measure of success
Those who have not achieved your measure of success, but are on track to do so
Those who have not achieved your measure of success, and are not on track to do so

The way you segment your audience may vary depending on your success measure, but the purpose is to start differentiating your higher performing and lesser performing audience members.

3. What are the qualities of your “best” performing clients?

Now, let’s look into what makes the difference between a high or low performance on your success measure. Explore your data to look for trends on the differences between the audience members of your first and third lists. Are there any differences in:

Age?
Gender?
Geographic location?
Income or education level?
Interests, hobbies, profession?
Specific promotions received from your business?
Specific actions taken in your business?

4. Define your ideal client

Now let’s bring it all together to define your ideal health coaching client based on the trends of people who have completed your success measure.

Outline the key characteristics of your ideal client:

Demographic (e.g. female, 20s-30s, busy professional)

Burning need (e.g. wants to lose weight and boost energy with healthier lifestyle habits)
How you connect with them (e.g. Pinterest, Google search)