I run an International Coach Federation Special Interest Group for the UK chapter of the ICF called Marketing For Coaches. I’m often told by coaches who attend that they know they must be authentic in their marketing. When I scratch the surface of this belief, they think that being authentic is talking about things that are important to them.
That’s only one version of being authentic, and we all have many.
There Are Many Versions Of Authentic
The versions of authentic we can be are as varied and diverse as the facets of who we are. We could have an authentic conversation with our mother and an authentic conversation with our children, but they would probably be very different versions of authentic. We can be authentic with our intimate partners and authentic with our best friends, but again, they are very different versions of our authentic selves.
Being authentic doesn’t mean being the same person in every context. It means being genuinely ourselves whilst adapting how we express that self to the situation and the person we’re with. That’s not being inauthentic, that’s being appropriately authentic.
What Authentic Means In Marketing
When it comes to marketing, authenticity is about being able to describe the problem that our chosen audience is struggling with, that working with us can resolve. More importantly, it’s about doing that using the audience’s language and not our own – this is crucial to success.
If the people we want to reach cannot see themselves reflected in what we say, they will not engage us. The reason they won’t is that they won’t even realise that we could help them. We might be talking about their exact problem, but if we’re describing it in our language rather than theirs, they won’t recognise it as their problem at all.
Using their language isn’t inauthentic, it’s the most authentic thing we can do in our marketing – to genuinely understand our clients well enough to speak in their language about their reality.
Coach-Speak
Coaches don’t resist the idea that authentic marketing means speaking in their client’s language about the client’s problems, they simply don’t understand that they need to do it. Even when they do understand, it’s really hard to do.
It does become easier over time, but the thing that takes Coaching Revolution clients the longest time to do is to stop talking about coaching in coach jargon, or what I call coach-speak. They learn to speak in client-speak, and the reason this is so very hard is that it’s not how we learned to talk about coaching. Speaking client-speak is simple, but of course that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
We’re so used to talking about our work using coaching language that we don’t even realise we’re doing it. We talk about holding space and coaching containers and exploring limiting beliefs and creating transformational breakthroughs. We think we’re being clear, but we’re not because those words mean everything to us, but nothing at all to someone who doesn’t understand our kind of coaching.
An Example Of Coach-Speak
“I work with people to help them through difficult transitions” is coach-speak. It’s vague, it could mean anything (or nothing) to anyone, it doesn’t land with any specific person because it’s not describing any specific situation in language that person would use.
Client-speak, which is completely different for each kind of client, might instead say “I help women return to work after maternity leave without feeling guilty or unhappy” or “I help people change career when what they’re doing is making them miserable.” These are both transitions, but they’re far more understandable to a non-coach. There needs to be far more specificity around which women and which people, but the concept of coach-speak versus client-speak is demonstrated here. One version is about what we do, the other versions are about what the client is experiencing.
Language Matters
The language we use matters in client acquisition as much as it does in coaching. The words we use in a coaching conversation are inappropriate for marketing because people simply don’t understand what on earth we’re talking about without context.
What does ‘holding space’ mean if you’re not a coach? What’s a ‘coaching container’? What are ‘limiting beliefs’ when you’re experiencing them as just feeling stuck or scared or unable to move forward? What’s a ‘transformational breakthrough’ when what you actually want is to stop feeling so anxious about work that you can’t sleep?
We think we’re being clear and professional when we use coaching language in our marketing but we’re actually incomprehensible to the very people we want to reach.
The Authenticity Paradox
The paradox is that being authentic in our marketing doesn’t mean talking about what’s important to us in our language. It means understanding our clients well enough to talk about what’s important to them in their language.
That feels backwards to many coaches. Surely being authentic means being ourselves, expressing our values, talking about what we care about? Yes, but that’s a tiny part of it. The other part – the part that actually attracts clients – is being authentic in our understanding and empathy for what they’re going through.
When we describe our client’s situation using their language, when we demonstrate that we genuinely understand what they’re experiencing, when we show empathy for their challenges without resorting to coaching jargon – that’s authentic. That’s us being genuinely present to their reality rather than trying to force them to understand ours.
When We Get This Wrong
When we market using coach-speak, when we talk about what’s important to us rather than what our clients are experiencing, we think we’re being authentic but we’re actually being self-focused. We’re asking our potential clients to translate our language into their reality, and most of them won’t bother, mostly because they don’t speak ‘coach’.
They’ll scroll past our posts about transformation and breakthrough and reaching potential because those words don’t describe their lived experience. They may read our websites about our coaching philosophy and our approach and our qualifications and think this isn’t for me because we haven’t described their situation at all and so they can’t see themselves in our words. (Incidentally, they’ll only land on our website if we drive them there – but that’s another story.)
I speak to coaches who wonder why being authentic isn’t working. We think maybe we need to be more vulnerable, share more of our story, talk more about what matters to us and so we double down on the wrong version of authentic, instead of learning the version that actually connects with clients.
Authentic That Works
The version of authentic that works in marketing is the version that genuinely understands our clients and speaks to them in their language about their reality. It’s the version that sets aside our need to talk about ourselves and our coaching, and instead talks about what our clients are experiencing.
It’s authentic because it requires us to genuinely understand our clients, not just superficially but deeply. It requires us to use their language, not expect them to learn ours and it requires us to be present with their reality, not impose our framework on them.
That’s much, much harder than simply talking about what’s important to us. It requires real work – choosing a specific target audience, understanding them deeply, learning how they describe their challenges, and being able to speak to those challenges in their words rather than ours.
However, it’s the only version of authentic that actually builds a coaching business because authentic marketing isn’t about us – it’s about genuinely understanding and connecting with the people we want to serve.
Simple But Not Easy
Speaking client-speak is simple. Talk about what they’re experiencing in the words they would use. Don’t use coaching jargon and be specific about their situation rather than vague about transformation.
The big issue is of course that simple doesn’t mean easy. It takes time to stop defaulting to coach-speak and it takes practice to describe situations without using the coaching language we’re so comfortable with. It takes genuine effort to use our clients’ language rather than expecting them to learn ours.
This is what authentic marketing actually looks like. It’s not about talking about what matters to us, but demonstrating that we genuinely understand what matters to them. It’s not using the language we’re comfortable with, but using the language they speak. It’s not about being authentic to our training, but about being authentic to their reality. This version of authentic connects with clients and it’s the version that builds trust and credibility. It’s the version that makes potential clients think “they’re talking about me!” rather than “I don’t understand what they do” (or worse, not thinking anything at all!).
If you’re being authentic by talking about what’s important to you in coaching language, you’re being one version of authentic. Sadly, you’re not being the version that attracts clients. For that, you need to learn to be authentic in a different way – authentic to your clients’ reality rather than your own.
An Opportunity
If you’d like the chance for a robust conversation about this – or to just flat-out tell me why you think I’m wrong – why not join my next free challenge, Nail Your Niche? We run it several times a year and there’s even an option to upgrade to a VIP version, which gives you 3 x 60-minute group mentoring sessions with me for just £99 (inc VAT) – that provides us with time for a lot of robust conversations!
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