What is Public Relations and How Can It Help Your Coaching Practice?

Key Takeaways

• Public relations is one of many tools to promote your coaching business.
• At its essence, public relations is the practice of engaging with your key audience where they already are to foster a relationship of trust and credibility.
• This most commonly takes the form of earned media opportunities, but can also encompass events, content creation, and other ways to strategically connect with your prospective client base.
• If public relations is new to you, choose one type and give it a try!
• Remember, public relations is most powerful when it’s performed on a regular, ongoing basis, as this is the best way to grow your reputation.

As a coach, you are likely both a professional and a business owner. This means you not only hold the responsibility to support your clients in unleashing their potential and achieving their goals, but also to grow your business through marketing and promotion. For many coaches (and business owners of all kinds), this self-promotion can feel much more challenging than mastering their profession!

You’re probably already promoting your business through a website, networking, advertising, or social media marketing.  But public relations (PR) offers something different; it lets you showcase your expertise and build your reputation by reaching potential clients through earned media — coverage and recognition you didn’t pay for, like press mentions, interviews, or speaking opportunities.

What Is Public Relations Really?

Public relations is about sharing your expertise with your ideal audience through the podcasts, newsletters, and resources they already trust. Instead of interrupting people with ads, PR earns their attention by being genuinely useful. 

The Public Relations Society of America formally defines PR as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” In plain terms, it’s about building trust with the people who matter most to your business.

Who is your target audience?

If you work directly with clients, your target audience is the community of people who represent your ideal clients. If you work with organizations, your audience is often the decision makers, like CEOs or HR directors, who choose which experts or vendors to bring in.

Just like in a coaching engagement, public relations is about bringing your expertise and insights to the table to build trust and credibility. It starts with a focus on offering value.

That trust and credibility come from building relationships with your audience of ideal clients, just as you do in a coaching partnership. That audience might already exist, like your social media following, a community around an industry hashtag, or a Facebook group for entrepreneurs. It may also be the audience of a media outlet in your field, like a parenting magazine or a podcast for HR professionals.

Reaching this audience still requires regular communication — it just looks different than one-on-one check-ins of a coaching partnership.

These communications can take many forms. Some of the most common strategies and tactics include:

• Media Relations. Use these opportunities to get your coaching insights in the press, whether by writing an op-ed or an article for a local newspaper or by giving an interview with a reporter.
• Content Creation. All communications you create, such as social media content or newsletters, are opportunities to build relationships with your target audience. Focus on consistency, relevance to your coaching specialization, and being helpful.
• Events and Speaking Engagements. Give a presentation or join a panel at an event for your target audience to communicate what your coaching practice can do and what you stand for.

Unlike advertising, public relations is built on demonstrated value, not self-promotion.

Think about networking events. We tend to avoid people who only talk about themselves, and we are drawn to people who offer something useful, advice, an introduction, an idea that actually helps us. PR works the same way, whatever approach you take, focus on being useful to your audience rather than selling to them.

How Can You Harness Public Relations for Your Coaching Practice?

Consider the promotion efforts you have underway or plan to undertake next year, and ask yourself the following questions.

• Who are the ideal coaching clients you want to connect with?
• What might complement and build upon what’s already working for you?
• What events might you be able to present at? For example, if you found a particular event valuable in the past, could you pursue an opportunity to join a panel this year?
• Are there any social media posts or topics you have expertise in that you could dig into further? If there is a topic that has gotten a strong response from your followers on LinkedIn, would you be able to turn it into a byline for a trade magazine in your industry?

Once you have a few ideas, pick one and pursue it! Then, learn from that experience and find another opportunity to pursue. Just like any new endeavor, public relations works best when you build intentionally over time. Consider public relations an opportunity for ongoing learning and experimentation that you can adapt and build over time.

Putting Your Coaching Practice in the Spotlight

Engaging in public relations may be a new opportunity for you to connect with new and existing clients while establishing yourself in your community. By building rapport with the segments of the public that matter to you and your coaching practice, you can foster trust, understanding, and connection that will elevate your profile, establish you as an expert in your space, and attract more clients to your practice.