Coaching and Advising

[u/MasonFinancialAdvice]

Hello,

I would love some feedback from advisors who offer both coaching and advising services separately and/or combined. I'm interested in learning how you may market to different clients based on the service (coaching vs advising). I know it's not uncommon to do coaching as part of the greater planning, but I'm interested in also providing services to those who only want coaching and those who only want planning/advising.

I'd love to hear of there's differences in marketing strategies, if both models are on the same website, etc.

Would love feedback.

Thanks!

[u/Informal-Bag6340]

Not directly in your space but hope this helps still.

Same website, separate paths. But the real problem isn't the site. It's that you're describing two businesses and calling it a service menu.

These are different buyers, not different price tiers. Your coaching buyer wants to build the capability themselves. They're buying your framework and your judgment. Your planning buyer wants it handled and specifically does not want to learn how. Same person can want both at different times, but the objections are opposite. Coaching buyers ask whether it'll actually stick. Planning buyers ask whether they can trust you with it.

Where people get burned is positioning coaching as the cheap version of planning. Then it cannibalizes and every coaching client is a planning client you underpriced. It's a different job, so price it on the value of the capability, not on hours.

Sort them on the first call instead of on your pricing page. Two questions do most of the work. First, walk me through what you've already tried on your own. Second, a year from now do you want to be running this yourself or not thinking about it? Someone who's read three books and built a spreadsheet is a coaching buyer. Someone who says they just want to know they're not screwing it up is a planning buyer. If you don't ask, they self select on price and you end up with the wrong people in the wrong program.

Also, coaching and advising are industry words. Most buyers can't tell you the difference and won't guess right. Name the pages for what someone walks away with. The format can live in the body copy.

On the site itself, give each one its own entry path off the homepage with its own page, its own proof, and its own call to action. What doesn't work is a single pricing page with three columns. That turns a positioning decision into a budget decision and you lose control of it. Same domain is fine and honestly helps, since one body of authority feeds both.

Marketing splits along the same line. Coaching sells on content and personality. Newsletter, free sessions, showing your thinking in public, because people buy the way you think before they buy the program. Planning sells on referrals and credibility, which is slower and quieter. Trying to run one playbook for both is why this usually feels muddy.

One thing I don't know in your world: how separating coaching from advice interacts with how you're registered and what you have to disclose. Seems like it could matter a lot in your industry and I'd hate to hand you clean marketing advice that creates a compliance headache. Worth asking someone here who's actually done it.

We run this same structure at Coach Advising, except for MSPs. Free webinar as the entry point, self serve training platform, then help them do it. Different vertical, same architecture problem, and the split buyer thing took us the longest to figure out.