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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.
Three
Marketing Mistakes Most Coaches Make
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
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
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.
What Works?To make every marketing effort count, start with a Magnetic Client Attraction Plan,
- 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 href="http://www.prosperouscoach.com/members/181.cfm">Financial Manifestation Tool
a full business plan now, at least write down your client attraction plan.
Before you begin, you'll want to do these three things:
- Make certain that you have a narrow enough niche market. For help to choose
a narrow niche see href="http://www.prosperouscoach.com/members/173.cfm">Choosing a Niche Market:
How & Why
. - Research that one market enough to know their top compelling challenges and
desires, and where you can find them.
- Determine your goals, that is, what you want your marketing to do
for you
. What are your specific goals and when do you want toaccomplish 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.
Marketing Funnel
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. are -- the ones who really resonate with your message
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 target=_blank>Click here
A marketing funnel has three parts:
- 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
. - 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.
- 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
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 --
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.
href="http://www.prosperouscoach.com/members/images/Marketing Funnel.jpg" target=_blank>Look at the example
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 andproducts 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.
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,
market, and your new goals.
A Winning MindsetFor 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 href="http://www.prosperouscoach.com/members/171.cfm">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 thickskin 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.
Copyright © 2008 Bubbling Well Inc. All rights reserved.
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