A Simple Guide To Help You Market Your Coaching Practice Lisa Lentino 1
T his guide is for informational and educational purposes only. The reader should make their own decisions and judgements based on their own research and investigations when selecting a professional coach. The Coaching Connector cannot be held responsible for any issues or problems arising from the information in this guide. The reader is fully responsible for the decisions they take and the choices they make. 2
The Essential Prerequisite to Effectively Marketing Your Coaching Practice Even the best marketing efforts will fall flat on its face if your coaching and ability to create good results for your clients is weak. The essential prerequisite to effectively marketing your coaching practice is to be great at what you do. It s not enough to be average or mediocre. (The message out in the coaching world and the exact numbers change a little here and there each year - is that 80 to 90 percent of all coaches make somewhere between 10-20k a year as a coach. Our aim is to ensure all TCC connected coaches are in the upper 10-15 percent who are making a healthy income from their coaching) There s always room at the top, especially in the Coaching profession. Today, more than ever, the coaching profession is viewed as being on the same professional level as those in the medical or legal fields. And because of that, the expectations and requirements to be an outstanding coach are high. So how do you become an outstanding coach? How do you separate yourself from the mass of coaches available to a potential client? You coach, outstandingly. There s no getting away from the obvious that continual practice and refinement of your coaching skills is not only a necessity: it s vital. 3
Effective marketing happens as a direct flow and consequence of your ability as a coach to create effective results. What areas of the marketing mosaic should you concentrate on? By surveying the number of marketing strategies, techniques, tips and ideas that are available to you especially by looking online and seeing one new idea cropping up after another it s as easy to throw yourself head first into every single tactic and idea as it is to throw your hands up in the air and run for the hills. ( The dizzying array of marketing resources available is for the uninitiated, gets more mindboggling and confusing by the week.) Although you can simplify your marketing strategies into a nice looking one-page infographic, it doesn t mean the activities needed to be carried out are simple or easy. Usually, they re not that easy and straightforward to do especially if you plan to carry out your own marketing activities yourself. The infographic you see here is from a company called Dragon Search. It certainly has one-page simplicity, yet is shielding multiple strands of required, ongoing activity. 4
And, this infographic only highlights the online marketing strategies available! The specific guide you re reading here isn t about front loading your brain with 101 different marketing ideas, strategies and marketing tactics to choose from. What it is about is showing you a handful of the most effective strategies that will help you acquire your first 5 clients (or your next 5 clients) and to build from there. A solid prosperous coaching practice is built by serving and servicing one client at a time. When just one client is served and serviced really well, they ll open up doors into their world for you where it s possible you ll never need to officially market your coaching services to the outside world. That s precisely how you build a referral based coaching practice one client at a time. The KEY Question that ll determine your own Coaching Prosperity (and more importantly, your particular answer to the question) is What Do You Do? (And then, the natural follow-up question you want to hear from those you speak to is ) This what do you do question is being continually asked by your prospects and potential clients whether silently or openly, they re looking for answers to that question. 5
I m a coach. I help people live their dreams. I help people reach their goals. The problem with those answers is that they re broad, vague and general. Many hearing those answers won t necessarily be able to accurately frame in their minds exactly how those answers relate to them and their problems, pains and desires. As a coach, when you re able to better articulate your answers into a specific area of focus and expertise for a specific kind of client your receptivity from the market will be rather different than if you give a general, generic answer. (Please take note of how important this area of discussion is and how it will affect your entire marketing and practice building effort because, simply bracketing yourself as a coach won t help create an emotional connection with the people you re speaking to about your services.) I m a fitness coach helping women over 30 years of age shed those last few stubborn pounds they ve been trying to get rid of I m a business coach helping 2-5 year old businesses to reach 250k - 500k revenue figures I help people from all walks of life become better public speakers and better presenters (so they can have better paying jobs, careers and businesses and be more fully expressive in their personal relationships) I coach professionals to transition from corporate life into creating their own online business venture I help coach people to overcome shyness and their fears of talking to people (picking a specific targeted group to help engineers, teenagers, 6
writers, divorcees, online entrepreneurs would position you much higher, be appreciated more and valued differently than if you simply said I m a coach and help people overcome their fears. ) As you ve seen from the above demonstration, once you define who you are and to whom you want to deliver and provide your services, not only will you have more focus and commitment to serve that identified group because your resources are being tightly matched to a specific group of people, but you ll also become the most credible and most wanted coach in your sector area of expertise. You will have positioned yourself in a way other coaches haven t. You ll be your prospective client s most natural and authentic choice for what you can help them with. But Won t I Be Losing Out? Now, you may be wondering that if you were to specialize in one or two core coaching areas that are tailored and matched to a specific audience or a targeted group, you ll automatically exclude a great chunk of the population who would be viable candidates for your services? The answer is yes, you would be right. You will be excluding many others who you realistically could be targeting with your services. However, as you ve read a solid coaching practice is developed one client at a time, so you just won t need everyone in the prospect universe to be your client. You don t need to invest your resources in targeting and marketing to everyone. Plus, a lucrative side note is that when you position yourself as a specific kind of coach serving a specific kind of person or group, you ll find that you actually 7
won t be restricted or limited. When you re able to demonstrate outcomes and results for your clients in one area, you ll find many more opportunities open up to you in coaching the same person in multiple areas of their lives. Let me repeat an earlier message again, so you ll never forget it: Marketing your services is futile and expensive if you cannot serve and service your clients to create the outcomes and results they want. A KEY Marketing Philosophy So where should you begin your marketing journey? We suggest the following: Invite as many qualified prospects who want your services into a coaching conversation with you because without any conversations, you have no potential client to make a coaching proposal! The interesting thing about the coaching profession is that you cannot really sell someone into a coaching relationship without someone experiencing first-hand what your coaching services can do for them. And the only way for that to occur is to invite potential clients into a coaching conversation with you. Because then, you ll have an opportunity to demonstrate exactly how you can help your prospective client, which is what they ultimately want to have happen. 8
So where can you reach people who would be potential clients for you how do you get in front of them? As you ve read already, there are multiple ways and strategies to reach your market via, so which ones are the best to begin with? If you ve followed the advice and instruction in this guide so far you ll have positioned your coaching services to serve a particular group (or market) out of the entire prospective universe of clients available to you. If everyone is your potential client, no one is your actual client (Can you now see how positioning yourself as a specific kind of coach, not just a coach, can reap multiple rewards and benefits for you?) In this guide we re only focusing on 3 useful and profitable marketing strategies to help grow your practice (not a hundred) and you can employ them and get up and running within two weeks. Maybe one can be started and sent out into the marketplace within a couple of days. 1. Your First Ultimate Marketing Strategy (These are partnerships with vendors /suppliers/ business owners / entrepreneurs who already serve your prospect target market with their products and services.) 9
So how would you use this marketing strategy to build and grow your coaching practice? AN EXAMPLE: You ve positioned yourself as a coach to help practitioners in private medical practices to create a far healthier work/life balance. How would you begin to create a relationship, partnership, strategic alliance with those who may already have your ideal prospect market? 1. You can, of course, begin by finding out the names and addresses of medical professionals used by your relatives, friends and colleagues. And then, create a communication to those professionals to invite them into a conversation with you about how you are a work/life balance coach to medical professionals in private practice and you d like to speak to them about the problems and issues they face in their lives. Not only would each medical professional you contact be a live prospect for your coaching services, but in your conversation with them you ll be able to dig deeper into the various bodies and institutions these professionals are members of who you can then approach to offer your coaching services to their members. 2. You can research what publications (online and offline) your target audience reads and ask the publisher if you can contribute to their publication by writing a monthly article about work/life balance for dentists, medics, chiropractors, etc. This exposure to your specific target market will be invaluable because you can now also say you re a coach helping practitioners in private medical practices create a much healthier work/life balance who also writes for the Ultimate Dental Practitioners Journal and Chiropractors Today, etc. 3. Find out who the workshop and seminar providers are to those in private practices and find out what kind of arrangement you can make that will get in 10
front of their audience. Whether you create a specific talk at the next workshop or seminar, publish your own newsletter and have it circulated to all members who attend the workshop or seminar, or even host a live teleconference or webinar on your specific subject matter, this strategy will get you in front of the precise kind of people you can help. 4. Speak to the institutions and schools who certify these professionals where you become the institution s authority figure in helping newly qualified professionals to understand what their perfect work/life balance formula is and create their practice and lives around that plan. These are just a few ideas to help stimulate your thinking. You ll come up with many more, once you begin thinking more about this strategy. No matter what group of people you want to help with your coaching, there are others who already have your target market of prospects they ve already invested time, money, energy and resources into creating relationships with their audience your work is all about identifying who these groups are, connecting with them, and making a simple proposition to them. Remember again, the essence of this guide is to help secure at least 5 paying clients for your services. It s not to help you conqueror the world and become a millionaire coach in the next 5 years (We ll reserve that for a future publication.) 2. Your Second Ultimate Marketing Strategy - What is it? 11
It s a process where a happy contented client refers others like them to you for your services. And the process here is very simple: Coach one client to a level that they cannot reach without your help, where your coaching creates a breakthrough for them in something they ve not been able to do or experience without your direct coaching help and assistance because once you re able to do that for a client, what happens next is that you won t have to explicitly ask is there someone you specifically know in your life whom you think a conversation with me would help them? it will automatically happen. It will be a normal and natural consequence of your client telling others, even bragging to others about you because of the results and impact your coaching has brought into their lives. Restated differently: Here s your referral marketing strategy in a nutshell : Serve just one client at a time and It s how Walt Disney built his business (Disney thrives and prospers because of many happy customers coming back again and again, year after year, telling more and more people about their experiences.) And if the simple referral strategy can work spectacularly for a theme park attraction, it can work stunningly well for a coaching practice like yours. 12
3. Your Third Ultimate Marketing Strategy You actually don t have to have a website to create a thriving coaching practice. A few successful coaches not only do not have a website, they don t have a business card. However, if you choose to have a website (and most coaches do) to promote your coaching services, please keep the following as your guide: 1. Your website is primarily about how you can help others with your services and how they can benefit because of coming to your website your website shouldn t be a rambling self-promotion vehicle about you and how great you may be. 2. Use your website to communicate and demonstrate your abilities. It should be geared and aimed at helping your specific ideal client. Educate. Help. Inform. (For example: create informative reports, give specific help, tips and suggestions, and get people to register for a course or a series of instructions.) 3. Your website is only a tool to help your potential clients find you and for you to help those you choose to help. As such, you needn t invest much time in website activities. We all know coaches who constantly invest their days fiddling with one aspect of their website, or spending enormous amounts of time creating a big social online network, making connections and contacts and all this interactive busy work. 13
However When the following questions are asked: 1. How many invites did you make to people for a coaching conversation with you? 2. How many coaching conversations did you have this week? 3. How many proposals did you make? 4. How many clients registered for your services? there are generally very little specific answers to these questions. All your marketing efforts must align with answering the above questions because anything else is a complete waste of your time. 14
You have a choice as to how you want to grow and market your practice. The 3 Strategies Mentioned in this Guide OR This. (Infographic courtesy from Strategic Profits) But What About Facebook, LinkedIn, Email and All The Other Strategies Available to Me? Unless you make a clear cut time plan for your coaching activities as well as for your practice building strategies, you ll be exhausted each day, scrambling from one idea, thought and strategy to the next. Certainly use whatever strategies you feel will help you answer the four coaching profit indicator questions listed again for you below: 1. How many invites did you make to people for a coaching conversation with you? 2. How many coaching conversations did you have this week? 15
3. How many proposals did you make? 4. How many clients registered for your services? If your marketing and practice building efforts aren t supporting you in moving your answers to the above questions, upwards by the way of numbers, then you will need to recalibrate your actions and how you spend your time. This is because ultimately, you want the above questions to be your ultimate guideposts ultimate benchmarks that will show you the results of your weekly activities. So What s Next? You have invested time, money, energy and resources, and in return, you have gained specific coaching skills, wisdom and insights that can make a measurable and significant difference in other people s lives. As a coach, your job is not to keep those skills, insights, education and knowledge to yourself. Your job is to share them with as many people who are viable prospects for your services as you can. The marketing insights and strategies inside this guide are invaluable. They will certainly help you, but only if you first embrace them and then use and apply what you ve read here. Of course, as you deepen and broaden your marketing and practice building knowledge, you ll want to experiment and try out any number of ideas and strategies to grow your coaching practice. That of course, is expected and natural. 16
By sticking to a few core strategies in the beginning, you ll find that your time, money, energy and focus won t be sprayed in a hundred different directions like you would as shown in the infographics shared in this publication you ll be laser focused and committed. In this publication, you ll have all you need to draw in your first 5 clients (or 5 additional clients) without driving yourself crazy in order to keep up with the various catalogue of marketing strategies and advice bombarding you from every directions. And to prove how valuable the content inside this publication is, America s No1. marketing wizard, Jay Abraham someone who is responsible for $9.4 billion in sales for his multitude of clients in 400+ separate industries said that if you take away all his marketing ideas, concepts and strategies and left him with only one key strategy, the one he d want to keep above all others to get him back on track in the fastest and smoothest way possible, and that too, without having to invest much at all from a financial standpoint, is the first strategy mentioned in this guide getting help from others: Strategic Alliances/ mutual partnerships, joint ventures. Growing a thriving prosperous coaching practice takes continual effort and commitment. With the right guidance and instruction, you can go as far as you want to go. However, you can t simply sit around, investing time and energy in reading a publication like this and then wait for inspiration to strike. Just like the people you ultimately coach where it will ultimately be up to them to make the necessary personal shifts and take the necessary actions to create the results they want to see happen it s the same for you too. You have to create a thriving coaching practice based on your own actions. 17