Coaches are the most positive and heart-centred people around. They do what they do because they love helping make a difference in people’s lives, and that’s why they start their own coaching businesses. But I’ve seen the same problem time and time again – they don’t know how to get coaching clients online.
Coaches who have excellent skills, but don’t get a chance to use them because they can’t actually get clients. Or at least enough clients to build a business that are financially sustainable.
It’s like these coaches are the world’s best kept secret, and I don’t want that to be you.
This situation comes about because coaches actually have two jobs, but they usually only focus on one.
So what are these two jobs?
- Marketing and selling their coaching
- Delivering their coaching
On episode 25 of the Thought Leaders Business Lab podcast, “Using Automation to Create Connection With Your Prospects”, Tim Hyde explains that only 3% of your prospects are ready to buy now, 30% of the people hearing your message are not an ideal fit, and the other 67% are people who could possibly buy from you in the future, but are not ready to buy now.
So how do we create marketing to attract and nurture our future clients, without being all salesy and spammy?
Through content marketing.
This is content you produce with the intention of stimulating interest in what you do, while building a tribe of people who know, like and trust you.
For your prospects to decide to make a purchase, they generally need 9 to 11 touch points to feel safe to make a purchase, so it’s extremely important to be regularly showing up in their world. If you’re not producing regular content, your prospects will forget about you, or even worse, they won’t even know you exist in the first place.
There are three stages in the buyer’s journey that you need to create marketing content for, so let’s dive in.
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Awareness Stage
This stage is about creating awareness and educating the market with what you do and why you do it. Your prospects will become aware of you, and through your content, will realise they have a problem that you can potentially help them solve. In this stage the types of content could include:
- Your brand story
- Vlogs
- Explainer videos
- Social media posts
- Podcast or online TV show content
- Books / e-books
- Expert interviews
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Consideration Stage
At this stage, people are now aware of you, and are looking for more focussed content about how you could possibly help them alleviate a problem they are experiencing. Buyers will often revisit this cycle numerous times before making a buying decision. In this stage the types of content could include:
- Demo videos
- Webinars
- Blog posts
- Program/product teaser
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Decision Stage
At this stage, your prospects are doing research online to find a solution to their problem. In this stage, your content could include:
- Success stories and testimonials
- Case studies
- Comparison Charts
- Free offers
- Live demonstrations
Once you’ve created your content, the journey doesn’t finish there. You need to distribute this content online in the places your target market are hanging out.
The first place you should be sharing your content is your email list, as these people have already shown an interest in you, and what you offer.
Social media is your next consideration. But which social media platforms should you be using? Again, where your target market are hanging out. Some options include:
- Facebook has over 2 billion users worldwide, and I suggest everyone share their content on Facebook.
- LinkedIn is where career and business professionals connect. With 2 new users joining per second, and 250 million active users, this is a great platform if you offer B2B services.
- Instagram is highly visual, so there are certain niches which do better than others on this platform. Fitness & health, weight loss, relationships, self improvement, beauty and branding are all great examples of niches which would do well on Instagram.
- YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, so this is a great platform for your video content to live.
There are many, many more platforms including Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, Medium (and so many more), but it’s very easy to become overwhelmed and stop posting. Instead choose a couple of platforms and plan for consistency over quantity, as the algorithm’s are more likely to reward you, and show your content more often, than if you show up randomly and less often.
So get your content out there. It’s time to move from being the world’s best kept secret, to becoming the authority in your niche, and building your influence so you can make a bigger impact.
