Marketing for coaches is mostly about trust, because coaching is unregulated in Australia: anyone can call themselves a life coach. Careful buyers look for things they can check, like training, a clear process and how fees work, then decide on a conversation. The work is being findable for the problems you coach, making yourself easy to check out, and keeping claims about results honest. The ACCC has taken wealth-seminar and mentoring businesses to court over misleading claims and testimonials.
Written by Dan Picken, founder. Last checked 2 November 2026.Figures from the ICF's 2023 Global Coaching Study, its 2025 study and its 2026 consumer research. The ABS doesn't count coaches separately: they sit with grief and trauma counsellors in one occupation of about 5,800 people. A small, fragmented field where most buyers can't easily tell coaches apart. That's the opening.
Source: ICF 2023 Global Coaching Study
How people choose a coach
Someone gets promoted, stalls, burns out or wants a change. They search the problem, ask around, look you up on LinkedIn, check whether you're legitimate, then book a call and decide how it feels.
The psychology
Coaching is personal, the price is real and the result is hard to picture in advance. Most hesitation comes down to these.
01
The outcome can't be tried before buying. People need something that lowers the risk of a wrong choice.
Show them: A clear process, what changes after a few sessions, and a fair way out if it isn't working.
02
There's no register to check. CHOICE suggests looking for qualifications, membership of a body with a complaints process, and experience.
Show them: Your training, credential and code of ethics, with links that can be checked.
03
With no figure, people guess, and they often guess high. The APS lists unclear fees as a red flag.
Show them: How fees work, a starting range or a typical program, before the call.
04
Research links a strong coach and client relationship with better results: a meta-analysis found a correlation of .41 between the working alliance and outcomes.
Show them: Your voice on video or in posts, real client words with context, and a fit call that's about them.
05
Coaching still carries a whiff of 'fixing' people. How you describe it changes who books.
Show them: Language about goals and situations, not problems with the person.
From my audits
These are the patterns I see most when I look at coaching websites and ads.
Headlines that could belong to any coach. Nobody searches for their potential. They search for the situation they're in.
Life, business, mindset and relationships on one site, so the site ranks for none of them and speaks to no one.
An About page that's the best page on the site, and service pages that say almost nothing about what happens.
Income figures, 'guaranteed' outcomes and before-and-after stories that Meta rejects and the consumer law doesn't like.
Calls booked, some don't show, and nobody follows up. The marketing worked; the calendar leaked.
Full-calendar maths
You sell hours, so your marketing target starts with your calendar. Put in how you work. It shows how many clients fill your week, how many new ones you need each month as programs finish, and how many fit calls that takes. The starting numbers are made up.
Fit calls you need a week
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AI search
People ask ChatGPT how to choose a coach, what coaching costs and whether they need a coach or a psychologist. In a US survey, 45% had used AI tools for local recommendations. The answers lean on what's written clearly and consistently across the web.
Who you coach, on what, where and how, said plainly on your site and the same on every listing.
Cost, process, credentials and the difference between coaching and therapy. The coach who explains these well is easy to quote.
What to do now
My take: in a field with no regulator, AI tools fall back on whoever explains things best and gets mentioned most. That's a chance for a careful coach to beat louder ones.
Australian rules
Coaching has no regulator of its own, so general consumer law and the ad platforms set most of the rules. These come up most, checked on 2 November 2026.
Claims about future results need reasonable grounds when you make them. The ACCC took DG Institute to court over its seminars and mentoring, and it was ordered to pay $14.7 million in refunds plus penalties.
Real, unedited and not cherry-picked to mislead. In the We Buy Houses case, the court found student testimonials misleading; the penalty was $18 million.
A protected title. Don't use it, or anything implying it, unless you're registered.
If what you offer counts as a health service, state codes for unregistered practitioners can apply, like NSW's Code of Conduct.
Meta bans ads that assert or imply personal attributes, like their health or financial hardship. 'Struggling with anxiety?' gets rejected.
A marketer's summary, not legal advice. The full list, by kind of coaching, is on the coaching advertising rules page.
The channel mix
The coaching hub
For most coaches: a clear site about one kind of coaching, regular LinkedIn or social posts in your buyers' words, and an easy fit call. Paid ads come after the site makes sense to a stranger.
No. Anyone can call themselves a life coach. Consumer law still applies, and some titles, like 'psychologist', are protected.
It's not required by law. In the ICF's 2025 study, 73% of coaches said clients increasingly expect a credential. Whatever your training, show it and make it checkable.
Mostly from referrals, content and conversations, then a fit call. The common thread is trust: people need to understand who you help and believe you're legitimate before they'll book.
Yes, if they're real and not misleading. Google Ads requires a visible disclaimer that results vary on testimonials claiming specific results, and Meta wants one on health results. Health-related coaching may fall under rules that ban testimonials altogether.
No. Google's guidelines require in-person contact with customers during stated hours. Coaches who meet clients in person can.
Keep going
Takes a minute. Audits come back within 1 to 2 business days. For anything else, I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
What happens next