Feeling Generic? Here's How 10+ Coaching Businesses Set Themselves Apart (And How You Can, Too)

When you walk down the toothpaste aisle at the store, how do you choose which toothpaste to buy?

There are dozens of similar but slightly different options—How can something as essential as toothpaste hope to stand out in a sea of similar options?

Okay, I know you didn’t come here to listen to me rant about toothpaste.

Today, the coaching industry is larger than ever, with a market size of $5.43B in 2023. And with a relatively low barrier to entry, almost anyone can start their own coaching business.

Here’s the problem—with so many people offering similar services, how can you make sure your coaching business stands out?

First, don’t try to stand out by being:

• The cheapest option
• The loudest option

If you really want to stand out, you need to create core differentiators that are unique to you and can’t be easily replicated by your competitors. 

Seem daunting? Maybe. But even toothpaste brands manage to stand out in a sea of options.

So, what can set you apart from other coaches? We talked to over a dozen successful coaches to see how they stand out from the crowd.

Find Your Tribe and Understand What Matters to Them

Core differentiators only make a difference if they matter to your audience. And really, how can you know what matters to them without talking to them?

Understanding what’s truly important to your audience is key to success for every business. And you have the best advantage: as a coach, you spend all your time talking to these people!

So, write down your findings. What makes your audience tick? What pain points are they experiencing? What specific areas of your coaching make the most difference in their lives?

With this information, you can build an ideal client profile—a set of criteria that helps you deeply understand your ideal clients. 

How do you know who your ideal client is? Find the people you can really help.

Sefora Janel Ray, founder of Therapy to Thrive, says this, “In my experience as a therapist and coach, you don't REALLY need a differentiator if you are good. The biggest thing that can build a practice is being truly helpful to people.”

Once you know what matters to your audience, you can match that to the next point.

Choose a Niche Where You Can Prove Your Expertise

Aligning your expertise with what matters most to your clients is the sweet spot for differentiation.

That, in a nutshell, is your niche—the core target of your business. 

Your niche can be based on different factors, such as:

• A specific vertical: For example, a marketing coach may focus on eCommerce businesses, solopreneurs, or real estate agencies.
• The type of person you coach: Does your work apply more to a specific gender? Are you focused on people at a specific moment in their life, such as a career change, a growing family, or a serious illness?
• The goals you help your clients reach: For example, one fitness coach might focus on people who want to lose weight, while another may focus on people who want to gain muscle, run a marathon, or win in a bodybuilding competition.

How do you choose a niche that works for your business? Here are two simple steps.

First, be clear on your expertise. Your specific expertise can help guide you toward a niche.

As HR consultant Tim Toterhi says, “Anyone can claim to be a career coach. However, as a former CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer) who has managed talent and succession programs for large and mid-sized organizations, I can leverage that experience to offer practical insights others cannot.”

Second, listen to what people around you are asking for. When you talk to your coaching clients, what areas do they generally struggle with? Where are they specifically asking for your help, and where do you feel strongest in giving them advice?

Even conversations with friends and family can give you a hint about your best niche.

Dating coach Nash Wright says this, “I began coaching informally because other men had heard me talk about dating and then started asking for help. As I work with clients, I offer personal stories to help make a point.”

Know and Own What Makes You Special

You are a unique soul with a story and a purpose. So, use that to stand out in the crowd.

“In my experience,” says HR consultant Conor Hughes, “The most magnetic coaches share one core trait—radical authenticity. They lean unapologetically into the unique strengths, experiences, and philosophies that shape their distinct coaching styles. It could be a proprietary methodology they've pioneered, a life story that fosters instant rapport with certain clients, or simply an energy and persona that commands a room.”

In other words, you need to find your zone of genius.

Conor continues: “One executive coach I worked with had this fascinating bohemian artist background. Instead of shunning that side of herself, she leaned into it—incorporating creative visualization exercises, journaling practices, you name it. Her clients raved about how transformative those "out-of-the-box" elements were. 

“Successful coaches fearlessly bring their full, multidimensional selves to their work. They don’t conform to predetermined molds or water down their uniqueness to be more marketable.”

Focus on Building Strong Relationships With Your Clients

I could tell you that relationships are key for coaching businesses, but you already know that.

But here’s the catch: It’s way too easy to get caught up in acquiring new clients and forget to nurture your existing relationships.

Building incredible client relationships is key to standing out from the crowd (and it’s also a key piece of retaining your clients in the long term).

So, how do you do it?

• Build trust: There are plenty of coaches out there, so why should they trust you? Be transparent and honest.
• Set clear expectations: Clients should know exactly what they’ll get before they give you any money. When you set clear expectations at the outset, it’s easier to show them over time how your coaching has made a difference in their lives or business.
• Create a personalized coaching plan: Coaching is a journey, and your clients will be happier if they can see their steps through that journey and where they’ve made progress.
• Be extra communicative: Regular check-ins between sessions can help nurture those relationships and keep your clients happy.

With these tips, you’ll stand out as different from would-be coaches who aren’t willing to try to maintain client relationships.

Build Your Personal Brand Online

You know what makes you unique as a person and coach. Your personal brand is simply how you consistently express that uniqueness, coupled with a strategy to share it across multiple channels.

Whether you’re posting on social media, speaking at events, or publishing thought leadership content, staying true to your brand and expertise is a way to stand out.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Choose key content pillars within your niche: Learn from what’s currently out there, but also draw from your own expertise. Make a list of the topics you’d be interested in posting about, cross reference that to things that are relevant to your audience, and then start with the top three. Use these pillars as a starting point to organize your content, and share consistent, varied content that your audience wants to see.
• Set a publishing schedule that feels doable: If you can’t post every day right now, that’s fine. Consistency is key to building a personal brand, and you can always scale frequency over time as you gain more experience.
• Learn from your audience: Engagement metrics will tell you a lot about what resonates with your audience. You can even ask them directly what they want to hear from you—most social networks make this easy and fun with polls. Get your audience involved in the content you’re creating, and they’ll be more likely to engage with you.
• Share stories from your ongoing work: Real stories make people sit up and listen. Talk about your own successes and failures, share stories from your clients (with permission), or talk about what you’re working on.

“No one wants generic advice,” says Mimi Nguyen, Founder of Cafely. “They want hard-won lessons that they can relate to, and use as reference for their own situations. I believe that my experience in founding and managing my own small business is what sets me apart in this space. You know, the relatable “been-there-done-that” moments.”

Share your “been-there-done-that” moments, and your story becomes relatable (or even inspiring!).

Study What Your Competitors are Offering (and What They’re Not)

Every business can learn valuable lessons from their competitors, but coaches especially have a lot to gain by studying the competition.

First off, what are your competitors offering? Are they promoting self-paced courses, group sessions, or 1:1 coaching? Are they offering special discounts or deals? What kind of results are they promising?

From this, you can learn what your audience responds best to and what offerings make the most sense.

Second, what are your competitors not offering? Here’s where a bit of creativity will help you. Make a list of what your competitors aren’t offering but you could. For example, if your niche is helping women make a career change, maybe your competitors focus on building skills, while you could focus on helping them network.

When you study your competition, you can look for market gaps that your expertise could fill and discover your own core differentiator.

Leverage Your Client’s Success Stories

“What separates good business coaches from great ones is the ability to prove their impact,” says Scott Gabdullin, founder of Authority Factors. “Clients are looking for results, which is why showcasing concrete achievements is so powerful. Sharing success stories from past clients— testimonials about how you helped them achieve specific goals—is a great way to do this.”

Client success stories can help you identify your core differentiators and give you a much more powerful way to share them with your audience.

To start, build a system to regularly gather these stories. Try creating an automated email that asks your clients for feedback or to rate their experience at a specific moment in their journey—for example, after their first coaching session, near the end of their engagement, or after the engagement ends.

Next, choose the right questions to ask. Tailor those questions to the timing of your survey, and to the information you want to get. For example, are you more interested in learning how people feel about your onboarding process? Do you want to hear about the results they’ve seen from a specific aspect of your coaching services? Understanding what information you want to know is key to choosing the right questions, and linking those questions to your core differentiators.

Lastly, make it easy for people to share their experiences. Don’t create 10-minute-long surveys that require your clients to write a 1,500-word essay. You’re giving them enough homework to do in your coaching sessions, they don’t need any more! Instead, ask simple questions, give multiple-choice answers when appropriate, or even allow them to record a quick video or audio message to share their thoughts faster.

Once you have a collection of happy client stories, use them! You might share snippets of these stories on social media, spread testimonials across your website, or use them in your nurture emails to potential clients.

Remember—your clients’ success stories are your success stories, too, so use them as much as possible. 

Final Thoughts: Got Your Differentiators? Turn Them into a Core Message to Distribute Across Your Business Channels

Your website, social channels, and other mediums should reflect your core differentiators. In marketing, this is called your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). 

Going through the steps above, you’ve learned exactly why your clients see you as different from the competition and key areas where you can set yourself apart. So, lean into those differentiators.

Whether you’re choosing a key niche, drawing from your experiences, or learning from what the competition is lacking, you can summarize that into a phrase that can guide how you market your coaching business.

And once that’s done? You’ll attract higher-quality clients who appreciate your uniqueness and are happy to work with you.

Psst… Want to learn more about growing your coaching business? Check out how to build ideal client profiles and get higher-quality coaching clients.