How to research what your ideal coaching clients want

How to read your client's mind as an online coach

Most clients in a given audience share the same handful of problems. Research which problems repeat rather than assuming every client wants a different service.

Once you see that, building an online coaching business becomes simpler. Not easy, but simpler. Instead of reverse-engineering every client from scratch, you start to see patterns: the same goals, the same struggles and the same language, over and over. That is what it means to read a client's mind. It has nothing to do with intuition.

Why being a generalist works against you online

Most coaches start out trying to help everyone. It feels like the right thing to do, and it feels like being a good coach: flexible, capable and open to all kinds of clients.

As a personal trainer in a gym, that approach makes sense. Your niche is anyone within a 10-mile radius who walks through the door. You work with Margaret, 57, who wants to tone her arms and has a sore knee. You work with Keith, who is already big and wants to get bigger. You have to be a generalist because that is the environment.

Online, the opposite is true. Online reach extends beyond a local gym, but a useful audience definition still needs a specific problem and a realistic way to reach people.

A useful principle: do not be the person who has practised a thousand kicks once. Be the person who has practised one kick a thousand times.

The Pokémon framework

When you start online marketing at any real scale, you begin to see the world differently.

You notice that there are not infinite types of people. There is a manageable number of recognisable types, and when you spot one you recognise them immediately. They share the same goals, the same frustrations, the same buying behaviours and the same way of describing their problem. Meta already groups these people into targetable audiences. The platform has done the work of categorising behaviour at scale.

Think of them like Pokémon. Different types, different traits, different motivations, but predictable once you know what you are looking at.

This is not a superiority thing. We are in the Pokémon too. Plenty of people behave almost identically to us, clicking the same ads and responding to the same messaging. We are all predictable. That is the point.

The survey that changed our marketing

A few years ago we spent weeks writing copy we believed was outstanding. We were proud of it, and we put real ad spend behind it at launch. It flopped.

A few weeks later, Jonny did something simpler. He put out a short survey on Facebook to our specific audience with one question: "What's your biggest struggle with training right now?"

When we read the responses, the same phrases kept coming up. We took those phrases, almost word for word, and used them in the next ad. It took off immediately.

Use audience conversations to improve the offer, then test the response. Stated preferences and buying behaviour can differ.

What deep specialisation gives you

Go back to Keith. Imagine you work with 30 Keiths over a year. By the end, you know Keith better than Keith knows himself. You understand the psychology, the goals, the common pitfalls, what keeps him motivated and what makes him quit.

That knowledge compounds. It produces:

• Marketing that writes itself. You know how Keith talks about his problem, so you use his language. Your ads feel like they are reading his mind, because in a sense they are.
• Coaching that scales. Because you work with the same population, you can build semi-customisable templates that deliver most of the benefit of one-to-one coaching without the time cost.
• Results that improve over time. Every Keith you coach teaches you something that makes the next Keith's experience better.

The longer you operate in your niche, the better you get, and the harder it becomes for anyone else to compete with you.

The myth of personalised programming

The common objection is: "Isn't the whole point of coaching the individualised plan? Doesn't templating remove the value?"

We felt this strongly when we first moved from one-to-one to group coaching. It felt like cutting corners. The evidence we have seen does not support the idea that customisation is the deciding ingredient.

When you serve the same population, with the same training background, goals and experience level, the variation between individuals is smaller than we like to think. Customisation often becomes busy work that coaches use to justify their fees, when the time would be better spent on direct client communication.

The connection is what moves results. Not the spreadsheet.

How to apply this

1. Pick a specific avatar. Not a vague demographic, but a real type of person with a specific goal and a specific problem.
2. Ask them what they want. A simple survey to your existing audience or targeted traffic will tell you more than any copywriting course.
3. Use their language. Take the most common phrases from the responses and use them in your marketing.
4. Build templates around that niche. Semi-customisable frameworks that you refine over time with real data.
5. Invest the time you save into relationships. More check-ins, more responses and more genuine coaching conversations.

That is the whole system. It does not require a unique insight or a clever angle. It requires the discipline to go deep on one thing instead of spreading yourself across everything.

Specialise. Listen. Deliver. Repeat.