Marketing is Not the First Step of Starting a Life Coaching Business
The most important step of starting your own coaching program is to understand yourself, the exact level of your knowledge and expertise, your communication skill, and the types of people that you have already been helpful to as a coach. If these are hazy in your own mind, then you will have trouble having the confidence that you need to build a coaching practice that people can sink their teeth into.
Marketing steps to promote your coaching program can come later. For example, it will be important early on to compile various products that are at different price points all leading up to the most expensive coaching program you can offer which is, naturally, one-on-one coaching with you. But you will likely get bogged down in these marketing steps if you are not crystal clear about who you are, what you have to offer, and the patterns of how people in the past have responded to you personally and benefited from your expertise.
But Marketing Your Life Coaching Offerings Begins Early On
Once your vision is clear, it’s crucial that you zero in on building relationships with people and follow your progress in this by watching your email list grow. To grow your list you need to start with the simplest tasks and marketing vehicles and progress to the more challenging. A good way to begin is to begin creating products to truly benefit people (as opposed to simply making a sale). How can your particular communication skill be used most effectively?
Some examples of relationship-building products that you can offer are:
- Blogs with useful, thought-provoking content
- Articles with practical steps
- Newsletter that inspires and motivates
- eBooks that people will want to read and refer back to again and again
- Print Books (as in Print-On-Demand)
- eCourses as simple as a set of autoresponder message all the way to substantial, paid online courses
- Group webinars
- Group phone calls
- One-on-one coaching
- One-on-one coaching via email
- One-on-one coaching via Skype or phone
Let’s take a moment to analyze these items. The first thing you should notice about the list above is that the first one, blogs, is your simplest and easiest item to create and the last item, one-on-one coaching via Skype or telephone is your most difficult due to the scarcity of time. So in your marketing endeavors consider how you can maximize your offerings at the top of the list, the middle of the list, and at the bottom of the list.
This means that you will need to charge less for the easiest to create for your own communication skill, offering it to more people, and charge more for your most time intensive products and coaching services creating to match the greater value for your client. So it’s important to develop a few simple products with broad appeal and get started promoting them in a way that is consistent with:
- Your personality and strengths
- The real needs of your potential clients
- The perceived needs of your potential clients
Now that you have some ideas about what type of products you can compile and offer in your coaching program, you can think carefully about the media that you will use. Here are nine ways to use your communication skill to market your coaching products and services in a way that will increase your profits. Notice that the first five tips are also products. They’re products that you can earn revenue from, but they are also marketing for your coaching practice.
Five Potential Products to Your Communication Skill Profitable
1. Blog — Create a blog that is attached to and part of your website. Try to write something useful on the blog daily. Do not over stress about what goes on the blog. It should be in your niche, it should be relevant, and not too aggressive in terms of asking for sale, although it should have a call to action of some kind.
2. Article Marketing — Even with the new Google algorithm article marketing is not dead. As normal you need to put out quality, original, relevant, and useful content to your article marketing directories of choice. Use only the most reliable directories that are picky about content that they accept.
3. Newsletters — Create a newsletter that everyone who signs up receives something useful at least weekly in their email in box. If you do not send out something regularly they will forget about you and think that you are spamming them when you finally send something. Don’t forget that you can use automation features within your newsletter software to automatically update subscribers to your blog posts, your sales, and events. But this type of product requires a particular type of communication skill if it is going to get the attention of online readers who are already saturated in information.
4. eBooks & eReports — Make full use of your eBooks and eReports. Realize that even when you ask people not to, they’re probably going to share them. So, make it worthwhile by including links to your other offerings, affiliate links, and anything that can bring more people to your coaching practice. Think of each short report as a teaser and preview of related ebook.
5. Print books –Believe it or not you can easily create a print book by updating and compiling all your other information into one book. Then you can use a self publishing service such as create space or lulu.com to create a wonderful book available for both print and eBook download on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble . Having your own book and being a published author can give you tremendous credibility within your niche whether you find a publisher or you self publish.
Four Tools and Approaches to Use Early On
The rest of the marketing ideas may be simple marketing tactics and not products, but they are very valuable and you can use them to market all the items above, as well as your coaching practice. As you consider each of these try
to determine which type of communication skill is necessary to make the approach effective. Then, use your self-knowledge to choose 2 or 3 of them that match your communication skill.
6. Press Releases — One often overlooked method of marketing is the tried and true press release. Today you can create a press release and send it to the online places like PR Web, but you should also send it out to a targeted list of offline sources so that you can get your press release in your local, state and national newspapers, magazines and television news spots.
7. Join Social Networks — Join social networks that your target market is joining. Sure you might want to join a few where coaches hang out, but it will be more effective if you join groups that your target market is joining. Then, here is the golden rule: Give away your advice free by answering their questions with nothing more than the knowledge that they can click on your signature line to find out more of what you have to offer. It feels good, and it works.
8. Offline marketing by phone and local participation — Participate in meet-ups where your target market is and again, offer free advice always pointing people toward your products and services without being pushy. After all, you only want highly coachable clients in your lucrative coaching practice and an unwillingness to buy your products means they’re not ready. This is especially true when you’re offering various entry levels to your coaching program in the form of lower priced, mid priced and the ultimate your one-on-one coaching.
9. Create a fan base — If you have an “inner-circle” club you can create a fan base that will create actual cheerleaders for your business. Allow your inner circle to promote your products and services for a referral fee. This is called an affiliate or referral program and is an excellent way to not only attract new clients but to retain the ones that you have.
