What a coaching
client is worth.

Not one I'd trust. Search 'how much should a coach spend on marketing' and you'll find percentages of revenue with no study behind them. The best public data on the money side of coaching is the ICF's Global Coaching Study, and it measures fees, revenue and hours, not marketing spend.

What it does show is that money is tight for most coaches. Globally, 53% reported less than US$30,000 a year from coaching, and the share earning under US$10,000 fell from 43% for coaches with under five years' experience to 13% for those with more than ten. A new coach copying an established coach's ad budget is copying someone with a very different bank balance.

These are 2022 figures from the ICF's 2023 study, in US dollars as published. Oceania is the ICF's region that includes Australia. They're survey averages, not a census, and they're a few years old, so use them to sense-check your own numbers rather than to set them.

The number most coaches never work out is what the ICF calls hourly revenue recovered: annual revenue divided by all the hours spent working as a coach, including preparation, notes, admin and marketing. Globally it came to US$85, against an average session fee of US$244. So an hour of a coach's work earns about 35 cents for every dollar of the session fee.

That matters because most coaching marketing is paid in hours, not dollars. A LinkedIn post, a podcast guest spot or a free workshop in Newcastle all cost time you could have sold. Say your real rate is $100 an hour: five hours a week on content is $500 a week of marketing spend before a single ad runs. Most coaches budget that time as free, which is why the 'free' channels often turn out to be the dearest.

A client is worth more than one program. Some renew, some refer someone, and an employer-paid client can lead to a second coachee in the same organisation. The ICF's 2025 study found employers were paying for more than half of all coaching clients. Put in your own numbers below; the starting numbers are made up.

Two rules change the numbers you plug in. If your GST turnover is $75,000 or more, you must register for GST within 21 days of knowing you'll pass it, which changes what you keep from each fee, so use your fee excluding GST in the calculator. And the ACCC says the price you advertise must be the minimum total cost as a single figure, including unavoidable extra fees. A 'from $1,500' program can't have a compulsory assessment fee added later.

How GST applies to your business is a question for your accountant. This page is about marketing maths, not tax.

Small ad budgets behave differently from what people expect. Google Ads can spend up to twice your average daily budget on a given day, but no more than 30.4 times it over a month. So $20 a day means up to about $608 a month, spread unevenly. At that size, a test needs to run long enough to produce a few fit calls, not just a few clicks.

Here's the check I'd run, with made-up numbers. Say a client is worth $3,000 to you, you'll spend up to $600 to win one, and it takes 200 clicks to produce a client. You can afford $3 a click. If clicks in your niche cost more than that, fix the discovery call or the offer before spending more. When spend does go up, the Spend Curve is how I find where the next dollar stops paying.