When we look at the various ways to market your coaching business, you can use hundreds of different strategies and tactics. Often the thought of marketing any business becomes overwhelming because if marketing is not your forte, it can be challenging to know where to start.
In this guide, we will walk you through the five main strategies you should start with to market your coaching business so you can begin to be seen in all the right places. Together these 5 strategies form the basis of the Content Marketing category.
Get a professionally designed Website.
The reality is that most people now research businesses and shop online for many different products and services. Some of the buying decisions are made based on the look and feel of your website. While you cannot design a website that appeals to everyone, you can create a professional website and showcase your brand, which, if you have done your homework, will also resonate with your ideal client.
Your website has many different functions in your overall marketing and sales strategy:
- It acts as a digital brochure for your business.
- It acts as an information collection system.
- It gives you data on who is visiting your website and where they came from
- It serves as a storefront if you are selling products and services online.
- It tells search engines all about your business.
To have a website built professionally that oozes your brand and attracts your ideal clients, you should expect to pay between $2500 and $10000. The lower end pricing would be for a typical 5-page website, and the higher end would include more pages and things like an e-commerce store. Self-hosted WordPress websites are our recommendation (here is an article that highlights why), but platforms such as Squarespace, Wix and Weebly are becoming more popular among DIYers. Hubspot also offers the ability to build a website with their platform. If you want to dive deep into the world of sales and marketing and be supported with significant analytics data, that would also be an excellent platform to use.
One of the common mistakes made when building a website is that the content tends to talk about you – seems logical, right? Your ideal client doesn’t care what experience you have or what qualifications you hold. They want to know how you will solve their problems, so ensure that your copy speaks to that.
At the same time, your copy also needs to speak to the search engines so that you appear high in search engine results pages (SERPs). Creating the right messaging that speaks to your audience and the search engines while visually engaging is challenging. It is the biggest reason you should have your site designed and built professionally. Think of the cost as an investment, knowing that you will likely not change it for some time once complete. When you make it yourself, you will find you are constantly tweaking the content and layout, trying to get it looking better, and in the long run, this will cost you more in your own time that could be spent on paid work.
Get started with Email Marketing.
Email Marketing has one of the highest ROI percentages of all the marketing strategies. Potential customers (prospects) have already indicated that they may want to do business with you because they have given you their email address and said, “yes, I am open to receiving more information from you.”
Email Marketing is your chance to really wow your prospects and upsell to existing customers. By continuing to provide value in your email messages, this is your opportunity to make great connections and show your ideal clients why they should do business with you. The goal of nearly every other marketing strategy is to get prospects to your email marketing list. You do this by adding forms to your website where potential customers can sign up for regular information to be sent to them. You can use incentives such as lead magnets where they exchange their email address for something you are giving away that is of use to them or entice them with good quality content.
To manage your email marketing, you will need to use a software platform specializing in email marketing. There are particular privacy laws in place worldwide that help protect consumers from being “spammed,” and an email marketing platform is built to work with these rules and keep you out of trouble. Some of our favourite and easy to use platforms are:
Get Response
Email marketing is more than just sending a monthly newsletter. Newsletters seem to have become the standard practice, but remember, your prospects don’t care that you hired new staff or it’s someone’s birthday. They do care that you have a new service or product that will solve their problem or that you have something to say that will be of value to them.
Try to be consistent with your messaging and think about “campaigns” or “topic buckets.” If you have a new group offering that speaks to managing anxiety, craft several messages that speak to the challenges and present solutions to demonstrate your expertise. Then create an offer email with details of a special offer just for your reader.
Working with a good quality email marketing system will give you some automation tools, so you can set some of your messaging up to go out automatically. Crafting “evergreen” messaging that is always relevant to your audience and provides value is an excellent way to keep your readers engaged when you don’t have the bandwidth to create something new.
Get on Social Media
Love it or hate it, social media is part of a good marketing strategy, and it’s not just about getting likes and comments. When used effectively, social media helps with your SEO and acts as a doorway to your website and email marketing lists. It can also assist you to generate leads and help you build relationships.
Picking the right platforms to spend time on is one of the biggest challenges. You certainly don’t need to be on all of them, and in the first instance, you should pick the platform where your ideal clients hang out.
You can use Social media to attract clients and increase your brand awareness, so ensure you are putting out content that speaks to both.
Planning is your friend when it comes to Social Media, and nothing says “I’m winging it” more than a few random posts thrown up when you have time. Consistency in your messaging and your posting schedule earns you adoring fans that will help you market your coaching business.
For coaches, group environments can be a huge benefit, both joining others and running your own so take advantage of either Facebook or Linkedin for this functionality. As a coach, I would expect you to be on one or other of those platforms.
Get a Blog/Vlog going.
Blogging/vlogging is the process of getting what you have to say out to a broad audience. Blogs are written pieces, and vlogs are videos, usually housed in a blog area on your website. They serve several purposes:
- It demonstrates your authority as a subject matter expert.
- It helps with your SEO (see below) strategy (for vlogs, you would need to transcribe the video as SEO only works for the written words)
- It provides value for your prospects and clients.
- It’s an additional opportunity to market your products and services.
Blogging/vlogging must happen regularly to successfully building up a follower base. Consistency is what wins the race here.
A good blog or vlog’s general format introduces a problem or challenge that your ideal client has. Demonstrate behaviours that resonate with them; you want them nodding their heads and thinking, “yes, that’s totally how I feel.” Then present the solution – without selling. You need your audience to buy into this solution, so generalize it and then lastly offer your product or service that connects to the solution.
Other formats work too, Hubspot has some great templates for blogging, including a “how-to” template and a “list-based” template.
Ideally, you should be blogging/vlogging once per week. Regular blogging keeps your content fresh and keeps you top of mind, but that is a demanding schedule to keep up with, so I suggest once a month minimum and bi-weekly if possible. Consistency is what matters; when you start to build a band of followers, they want to know your content is coming out regularly, so don’t disappoint them.
Get smart about SEO
It’s all very well having that awesomely designed website, but if no-one can find you, it’s kind of a waste. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about making sure that the content you are putting out on your website, your blog and your social media is optimized so that prospects looking up specific terms in a search engine are shown your information. The way to do that is by ensuring those terms (keywords and phrases) are included in your content.
You may have heard the term “keyword stuffing,” which is an old school tactic where a keyword or phrase such as “executive coaching” is inserted into a website page or blog as many times as possible to catch the attention of the search engines. Thanks to algorithms’ changes, this strategy no longer works as search engines want good quality content delivered to readers and not spammy, salesy, vomit-worthy content.
SEO tools such as Yoast help you ensure that your Website and Blog pages are optimized and give you suggestions as to what else you can do to increase your SEO rankings (what number you appear at on a search engine results page). Hashtags used in social media also serve as keywords when prospects search on those specific platforms, and some social media platforms such as Instagram even allow you to follow hashtags. You can also add keywords to your social media profile pages so that they are pulled through on a search engine results page (SERP). There is nothing more beautiful than seeing your website, followed by several of your social media profiles listed together on a Google Search – that’s good SEO!
To get started with SEO, create a list of keywords and phrases that you think people would search for if they were looking for your services. Geographical keywords can be a massive help if you want to focus on prospects that are local to your area.
Some keywords or phrases that a potential client looking for a business coach might enter into google might be:
- Why is business coaching important?
- How much does business coaching cost?
- Is business coaching tax deductible?
- Business Coaches Calgary
- Business Coach
- Business Coaching
You would then create content that includes these phrases and keywords; note that they don’t all need to be in the same content. You could write a blog topic focused around each phrase or ensure that your site pages, such as your about page, include these phrases.
Joining the dots
When it comes to marketing your coaching business, there is no “one size fits all’ or one strategy that will do all the work. The five areas above we have talked about all produce results because they complement each other. Thats why collectively they fall under the content marketing hat. If you think just doing social media alone will give you any results, you are mistaken, especially from a long term perspective.
Content Marketing is also something that should be tailored to your business. You have a unique voice/brand/approach, it’s what separates you from the competition, and your marketing messages should reflect that, so don’t just do what the others are doing.
Marketing is an investment, and to see ROI, you need to be consistent and invest for a minimum of 12 months. That said, there is always the ability to tweak your strategies and make changes for improved performance.
If you are serious about growing a thriving business, content marketing has to be a part of your plan. Contact us today, and let’s talk about how Diligent Assistant can help you with your content marketing and operational procedures to create a rockstar coaching practice.
