FOR LIFE COACHES
What should a life coach say in a welcome video?
A simple structure for a homepage welcome film that feels like the first minutes of a discovery call, with UK notes on captions, embeds and claims.
How Google Ads can put UK life coaches in front of people already searching for a confidence or career coach, and when they aren't worth the money.
Google Ads for life coaches can be worth it, because they reach people at the moment they search for a confidence, career or life coach, often near them. They pay off when you coach a clear niche, the page people land on makes booking a discovery call easy, and someone tightly manages keywords, locations and the searches you block. They rarely pay off for vague offers, or when the budget is left to run unchecked.
Somewhere near you tonight, someone is sitting at the kitchen table after a hard week, typing “career coach for teachers” into their phone. Imagine your name being the first thing they see, with a line that describes exactly where they are, and a calm page that lets them book a twenty-minute chat for Thursday. They haven’t been persuaded. They were already looking, and they found you.
That is the particular appeal of search advertising. Social media builds familiarity with people who weren’t looking yet. Google catches people who already are, and the two work best as parts of the same marketing for life coaches plan. Here is how it works for coaches, where the money goes and when it isn’t worth it.
They tend to work best for coaches with a specific, searchable offer: a career coach for people leaving teaching, a confidence coach in Leeds, an executive coach for new managers. People search for those things in plain words. “Life coach” on its own is harder, because the people typing it range from potential clients to people wondering how to become one.
They are less worth it if your website doesn’t yet explain who you help and how to book, or if most of your clients come through referrals and you have no capacity for more. Ads send traffic. They don’t fix a page that doesn’t persuade.
Broadly, three kinds of search reach coaches:
Many other searches look relevant but rarely lead to clients: “how to become a life coach”, “life coach salary”, “life coaching courses” and “free life coach”. Those are where budgets quietly drain away, and the next two sections are about stopping that.
You choose keywords, and a match type decides how closely a search must match them before your ad can show. Google describes three, according to its help page on keyword matching options:
| Match type | How it is written | What it means for a coach |
|---|---|---|
| Broad match (the default) | career coach | Can show for searches related to your keyword, even without the same words. Widest reach, least control. |
| Phrase match | “career coach” | Can show for searches that include the meaning of your keyword, such as “find a career coach online”. |
| Exact match | [career coach] | Can show for searches with the same meaning or intent. Most control, fewest searches. |
Google recommends pairing broad match with its automated Smart Bidding. For a coach on a modest budget, phrase and exact match usually make the first few weeks easier to read, because you can see exactly which searches you are paying for.
Negative keywords stop your ad showing for searches you don’t want. For coaches, a starting list often includes jobs, salary, course, training, qualification, certification, become and free. Two cautions from Google’s help page on negative keywords: they don’t match close variants, so you need to add plurals and synonyms yourself, and too many can stop your ads reaching people you do want.
Then check the search terms report every week or two in the early months. It shows the real searches that triggered your ad, and it is where you will find the surprising ones worth blocking, and the occasional phrase worth adding as a keyword of its own. This steady housekeeping is the unglamorous heart of our advertising for life coaches work.
It depends on how you coach. If you see clients in person, target a sensible radius around where you meet them. If you coach online across the UK, target the UK.
One setting is worth checking. Google’s default location option shows ads to people physically in your target area and to people who have shown interest in it, according to its help page on location targeting. For an in-person coach, changing that setting so ads show only to people physically in your area usually wastes less.
If you meet clients face to face, a Google Business Profile is worth setting up alongside your ads, so you appear on the map too. Google says a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours to qualify, and online-only businesses are ineligible, according to its eligibility guidelines.
A good search ad mirrors the search. If someone types “confidence coach for women returning to work”, an ad that says those words back to them, then tells them what happens next, will do better than a clever line. Name your specialism, your location if relevant and the next step: a free discovery call, a workbook or a workshop date.
Send people to the page that matches, not your homepage. A dedicated page that says who you help, shows your face, explains how a first call works and lets people book there and then does most of the work. Our guide to the discovery call booking page explains how to set one up. Every word in the ad and on the page also needs to follow the CAP Code: no promised outcomes and no health claims. We set those out in our guide to advertising rules for life coaches.
There is no right figure. What drives it is how competitive your niche and area are, how many hours you have to fill and how much a client is worth to you over a programme. Start with an amount you are comfortable testing for a couple of months.
Know how Google spends it. On any single day a campaign can spend up to twice its average daily budget, but over a month it won’t charge you more than 30.4 times the daily average, according to Google’s help page on average daily budgets.
Judge results on cost per booked discovery call and, in time, cost per client. Clicks are only interesting if they become conversations.
Sometimes, but coaching can run into Google’s limits. Its personalised advertising policy lists sensitive interest categories, including health, relationship hardships and negative financial status, and says advertiser-curated audiences such as remarketing lists can’t be used when promoting in those categories, according to the personalised advertising policy. A career or confidence coach is unlikely to be affected. A divorce coach or a coach who talks about money worries may find remarketing restricted, and the ads may need to rely on search keywords instead.
They do different jobs, and many coaches end up using both.
There is a particular calm in being found by people who were already looking for you. We started as the in-house team of co-founder Jack Cartwright, a bestselling author, running his ads alongside his website and videos. Our advertising for life coaches service builds Google campaigns around your niche and area, blocks the searches that waste money and reports on booked calls, not clicks. A clear brief, scope and fee are agreed before any creative work begins.
They can. Target the whole UK, or the regions where your clients tend to be, and lean on niche searches such as “career coach for teachers” rather than local ones. You won’t be eligible for a Google Business Profile without in-person contact, so ads and a strong website do the work instead.
Allow at least a few weeks to collect enough searches, clicks and bookings to judge fairly, and longer for niches with few searches. Check the search terms report regularly in that time, because most early improvements come from blocking irrelevant searches rather than raising bids.
Only if you see clients in person. It is a strong search for local coaches but often competitive, so pair it with your niche and make sure your ad and page show where you meet people. Online coaches usually do better with more specific searches.
Not well. A search ad needs somewhere to send people, and a page that explains who you help and lets them book is what turns a click into a call. If your site isn’t ready, spending on ads first usually means paying for visits that go nowhere.
They complement each other. Ads bring visits from the day they go live and stop when you stop paying. Useful pages that rank in search build slowly but keep working. Many coaches use ads while their website content grows, then rely on them less over time.
A simple structure for a homepage welcome film that feels like the first minutes of a discovery call, with UK notes on captions, embeds and claims.
Prompts, framing, sound and simple ways through camera nerves, so UK life coaches can film short videos that sound like a real conversation.
Where stock images are fine on a UK coaching website, where they quietly cost you trust, and the licence and advertising rules worth knowing.
Four quick questions, and we’ll show you where we’d start. Your answers come straight to us with your message, so you won’t have to explain it twice.
A 30-minute introduction call on Microsoft Teams, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Your answers come with the booking, so we’ll be ready for you.
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