Why Highly Aware Coaches Struggle to Find Their Marketing Edge
If you’re a coach, therapist, or educator, chances are growing your audience sits fairly high on your priority list. Fresh eyes on your work matter. Without them, even the most thoughtful offering can struggle to find its people. And that puts you squarely in the territory of marketing, a part of business many of us have a complicated relationship with.
You know it’s necessary. You also know it can feel uncomfortable, noisy, or plain exhausting, especially if you’re someone who thinks deeply and cares about how you communicate. So you pay attention. You read, you listen, you notice what seems to be working for others, and you try to work out the right way to approach it.
And yet, despite all that consideration, movement can feel elusive. Often, the issue is that attention stays directed outward for too long, which makes it harder to build momentum from your own inspiration, originality and impulses.
This article explores why many highly aware coaches struggle to discover their marketing edge, their point of difference in the marketplace and what needs to be in place for that clarity to emerge.
— In this article —
What stalls your edge from surfacing
Most people don’t set out to copy what others are doing. It usually begins as a genuine desire to be effective and to not waste time or energy.
You look around. You notice patterns. Certain approaches seem to be working for others. Certain formats are trending. Certain strategies are being recommended again and again.
So you pay attention, and you take notes. At first, this can feel reassuring. There’s comfort in knowing you’re not making things up as you go along. But slowly, you stop checking in with yourself first. Instead of asking what feels true or interesting to you, the question becomes what’s the right move to make here.
When that happens, your own ideas tend to be put on hold until they can be validated elsewhere.
The irony is that the ideas you’re setting aside are often the very ones that would give your point of difference in the market place.
When everything stays in draft
This is often the point where things stop moving, even though you’re still thinking, adjusting, and trying to do the right thing.
You might revisit your messaging. You tweak your sales page. You refine an offer. You go back to what you’ve already created and try to make it clearer, tighter, more aligned.
Some refinement is part of the process. But there’s a point where refining becomes a way of keeping everything hypothetical.
As long as nothing is chosen, nothing has to be seen by the world. Your ideas stay safely in draft form. You can keep asking “what if”, keep imagining different outcomes, keep preparing for a future moment when you’ll finally feel ready.
The problem is that your marketing edge doesn’t emerge in hypothetical space. It emerges through real situations. Through choosing something and letting it be seen. Through noticing how people respond once your messaging, offers, and content are no longer theoretical.
When everything stays in draft, your edge never quite has the chance to emerge and take shape.
The problem with being handed solutions
One of the main reasons your marketing edge can stay hidden is that many business environments are set up to hand you answers. You ask a question. Someone more experienced tells you what to do. You follow the advice and hope for the best.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. But if it becomes the dominant mode you operate in, an important skill doesn’t get developed. The skill of sensing into options, noticing how they land in your body, and discerning what is aligned for who you are.
Often, when someone tells me they don’t know what their next step is, it turns out they do have ideas, and they can name them easily.
So why does this show up as ‘I don’t know what to do next’?”
Because when those ideas surface, an impulse to try a different format, a topic that feels more interesting to talk about, or a way of showing up that feels more like them, they’re often dismissed almost immediately. Thoughts like “That’s off-brand”, “I’d need to change my website first”, or “What will people think?” step in and shut the idea down.
So the idea gets parked. It doesn’t fit the set of rules they believe they need to follow.
This is the moment where the ability to pause and ask yourself this question can change your trajectory — If there were no rules about brand, message, or how this is supposed to look, how would I do this? When you let yourself answer honestly, something usually surfaces.
That’s where experimentation begins. You try something. You notice how it feels. You see how others respond. And from there, your unique edge starts to take shape, through experience.
What falling out of love with your business is signalling
This lack of connection to your own edge often shows up in how your business feels day to day.
When people fall out of love with their business, they often assume something has gone wrong. That they’ve lost motivation, or discipline, or clarity.
More often, what’s happened is that they’ve been forcing themselves to express their work in ways that no longer feel like them. Using models of visibility or marketing that drain rather than energise.
They may keep going because it’s working well enough. Or because they’re afraid that changing course will cost them income or traction.
But dullness isn't random. It’s a signal that the way you’re operating no longer matches how you actually want to work.
Exchanging certainly with experimentation
A common belief coaches and others doing client work have is that they need to be certain before they move. But in reality, clarity arrives once you start doing something real. Through doing the thing. Offering the thing. Saying the thing.
When you choose a direction and stay with it long enough, it starts to answer back. You learn what resonates. You notice what feels alive and what doesn’t. Adjustments become grounded in experience rather than guesswork.
This doesn’t mean blind faith or unconsidered moves. It means treating your business like a living experiment.
You try something with curiosity rather than certainty. You observe what happens. You keep what has energy, discard what doesn’t, and let the next idea build from there. For many people, this shift from needing to be 'certain' to being willing to test is where their marketing impact turns a corner.
The environment your edge needs to emerge
If you recognise yourself in any of this, it may be worth looking beyond what seems to be working for others and towards the environments you’re placing yourself in.
Are you mostly in spaces where the focus is on being given the right answer? Or are you supported to develop your own way of thinking, deciding, and responding to what you notice?
That distinction matters. One keeps your attention directed outward. The other supports you to build trust in your own perspective over time.
This is the kind of work I support people with. Trusting your own impulses, experimenting without overthinking, and letting your point of difference surface more organically. You can explore my work further here and here.
Finally, I'd love to know what's been most resonant for you here? Let’s chat in the comments ⤵
Dani Gardner
The Quiet Marketer
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