Marketing may not be your favorite aspect of running your own business -- yet. When your entrepreneurial spirit really kicks in, you may find that you like marketing, which will make being a business owner more fun.

In any case, for nearly all businesses, marketing and sales are required. To fill your practice and build a pipeline of prospects, give at least 30 hours a week to marketing in the first phase of your business.

If you're like most service professionals, you may be using one of these three approaches that rarely work: "hunt & peck", "scattershot" or "cyclical" marketing.

Hunt & peck marketing lacks a long term plan -- it's a little networking here, a few ezines strung out over time there, mixed in with an occasional speaking gig or workshop. Each of these marketing activities has merit, but when they are not leveraged together they have little impact.

Scattershot marketing is often tried when the market is not narrowed enough. Generalist coaches find themselves speaking to lots of groups and writing many articles for a variety of publications. Trying to appeal to everyone, their message is broad and generic and so it falls on deaf ears most of the time. A narrow market is critical for marketing success.

Some coaches may have targeted and leveraged marketing campaigns, but another job or competing obligations allow them little time to market, so that all marketing ceases when a few clients enroll. The coach has to start all over again once those clients "graduate." This is called cyclical marketing. For marketing to really work, it needs to be continuous.

Because these approaches aren't well leveraged for the long term, they don't fill the pipeline with potential clients. Marketing becomes discouraging at best, and the business isn't given the resources needed to thrive.

To make every marketing effort count, start with a Magnetic Client Attraction Plan, which is:

• A long term plan
• that has repetitive programs and campaigns,
• which are all leveraged together,
• implemented continuously, then
• thoughtfully analyzed and tweaked.

Write your plan down. I recommend creating it as part of a one-year business plan. You can get a business plan template specifically designed for a coaching business from this site. Go to Financial Manifestation Tool and download the Simple Business Plan Kit. But even if you don't do a full business plan now, at least write down your client attraction plan.

Before you begin, you'll want to do these three things:

1. Make certain that you have a narrow enough niche market. For help to choose a narrow niche see Choosing a Niche Market: How & Why.
2. Research that one market enough to know their top compelling challenges and desires, and where you can find them.
3. Determine your goals, that is, what you want your marketing to do for you. What are your specific goals and when do you want to accomplish them? Example goals are:
   • Sell 100 ebooks by June 30.
   • Give a workshop every quarter with 8-12 attendees each.
   • Enroll half or more of those people into a follow up mastermind group each quarter.
   • Increase income by 20% each quarter.

To fill your pipeline with high quality prospects, you need to get in front of your market repeatedly, in ways that build credibility and trust. You also need to identify who your highest quality prospects are -- the ones who really resonate with your message. This takes time. It's more like growing vegetables in a garden than picking up take-out food.

The way to prepare the ground is by saturating your target market with offerings that directly serve the people in your market, adding value to their lives. As prospects are exposed to more and more of what you offer, they get to know you and build a bond with you.

The heart of your Magnetic Client Attraction Plan is a marketing funnel comprised of elements that serve your target market.

What is a marketing funnel? Imagine a funnel shape: wide at the top and sloping down to a narrow bottom. A marketing funnel brings many people in at the wide top, and gradually pulls the highest quality prospects down to the narrow bottom, where you offer your highest value products and services. Click here for an example diagram.

A marketing funnel has three parts:

1. Free or low fee products and services. These are valuable nuggets for your target market -- usually written materials such as a blog, ezine, free report, or free tools, sometimes a free teleclass or other learning opportunity. The prospect gives you their name and email address to get something that's free or low cost, and valuable. And then you have something priceless -- their permission to tell them about your next level of services.
2. Medium fee-based products and services. Some people, through exposure to your free services, will be interested in purchasing the next level products and services that are anywhere from ten dollars to several hundred dollars. Because the price is accessible, more people will buy these services and products than your high-end offerings.
3. High-end (also called back-end) products and services. These are the exclusive contacts with you, or a bundling of your best offerings that are higher priced -- going into the thousands of dollars.

Not everyone you market to will buy something from you. But if you begin by connecting with lots of individuals and offering them something free (the wide end of the funnel), with time you'll see your true target market -- the individuals who resonate with your offer and begin buying low priced products and services from you (the middle of the funnel). Then it's possible to up-sell those individuals into higher priced services and products (the narrow end of the funnel).

The marketing funnel is also the buyer's journey on their way to your highest priced services. As they experience you in more sophisticated ways, they build trust and are motivated to buy your higher end offerings. As they move down your funnel, they are both pre-qualified and pre-sold on your premium services and products.

To make your marketing funnel work, it must consist of repetitious and leveraged elements that touch prospects over and over again -- building a relationship with your true target market. That means planning and rolling out the elements one at a time in a natural sequence. Over time, you can add in a product funnel -- where a free product teases a fee based product which in turn leads buyers to buy the high priced back end products.

Look at the example of a marketing and product funnel for our case study coach, Michelle. Plan a funnel that, like Michelle's:

• Combines high touch approaches where your contact with prospects is live and in real time, with low touch approaches such as a website, ezine, articles or blog entries and products all benefiting your target market. (For Michelle, the high touch elements are her teleclass series, breakthrough sessions, and group coaching.)
• Leverages all elements so that each marketing effort is connected to the next level. (Every marketing effort Michelle makes is designed to link to the next so that her prospects never go cold. The funnel helps her continuously winnow out the low potential prospects while building a relationship with high potential prospects.)
• Brings in additional income. (Notice how Michelle has seven distinct revenue streams and all but one -- the highest priced -- cross-markets the others.)

Of course, writing down the plan is only the first step. Once you've created a funnel concept, it's easy to put together your work schedule by chunking down the projects into daily/weekly tasks and milestones. Then, launch each concept as soon as you're able.

Michelle created her ebook by re-purposing several of her ezine editions. The teleclass idea developed from noticing the patterns that emerged with her clients. Her $995 product came together after she'd run the teleclass series three times. The Platinum Club was a natural way to bring in more income in her third year of business.

The way to find out how well the funnel works is by putting it into action. At the beginning, marketing will probably require more of your time than any other single aspect of your business. As your pipeline becomes established, the time required to maintain it will be less. But the best way to reach your goals faster is to market consistently and congruently, week after week, month after month.

As you begin to see the results of your efforts, come back to the plan. Look at what is working and what is not. Plan your next steps. An effective client attraction plan is always changing, to reflect feedback from the market, and your new goals.

For many of us, marketing is hard to love. It brings up all kinds of fears and distastes.

What I suggest is, change your mind about marketing. Just flip the switch. Start by accepting these facts:

• You can market and sell your services in an authentic way. Many successful coaches are living proof that your authentic voice is a critical part of the marketing process.
• Marketing is not the same as sales. No matter how much marketing you do, you will still have to ask prospects to buy your services and products. For help changing your mind about selling, read the ebook How to Overcome All Your Fears of Selling.
• Only a small percentage of the people we market to will ever buy anything from us. Once you accept this it's really okay. Build a thick skin about it.
• Impactful marketing is a continual process, which is part and parcel of being a business owner.

If this seems like a lot to accept, work at it. Keep reminding yourself. I assure you that if you accept these four facts of business life, much of the pain and fear about marketing will disappear.

Rhonda Hess is Founder of Prosperous Coach™ and a business success coach for professional coaches. She is co-author of the Coach Training accelerator, a comprehensive coach training manual, and senior trainer for Coach Training Alliance. She also wrote Working Websites for Coaches, an ebook available in Resources for Coaches. For more information about Rhonda, see: Contributors. For more information about Prosperous Coach, see: About Us.

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