Marketing In Focus

This month we start shifting our attention to marketing. It will take us through most of the summer. Section 3 of the Coaching Business Builder explores nine different marketing vehicles coaches  may incorporate in terms of building relationships, and letting the world know about what they have to offer.
 
While a lot of new business owners think that marketing is only something, they will do during their first few years in business, think again! Most businesses continue to move through growth plateaus as they mature.
 
More importantly, as coaches, marketing goes hand in hand with relationships. A key part of marketing is about fostering support and services for your client (or prospective client) base. Coaching is a high touch service, and most people will want to get to know us (and like and trust us) before deciding to invest in coaching services.
 
Over the next couple of months, we’ll take a look at some of the many different strategies coaches can consider utilizing in building relationships and marketing.
 
As we get started with this topic, a number of things to keep in mind:
 
What’s important for your clients?
What do they want, need and prefer? For more than a decade I’ve shared what I term the Marketing Sweet Spot exercise with coaches who go through the Group Coaching Essentials program. You can read about it (and other marketing tips at the Digital chapter on Marketing Group and Team Coaching from my 2013 From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching Book. Click here to download and use code 4411 when prompted).
 
What’s going to add value?
Going hand in hand with what’s important for your clients (or prospective clients) is considering the question of “what’s going to add value?”. 
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As you consider this question you might also explore:

• What are they looking for?
• What are the issues that they are focused on?
• What approaches will add value – do they want more community and therefore a live program or something that will bring people together, or are they looking for something they can consume on their own time, at their own pace?

 
What do you want to do, consistently?
An old marketing adage is the 7 – 11 rule, which asserts that it may take 7 – 11 touch points before something registers and people even start to hear/notice something you are offering.  Consistency can be as important as anything else, and many coaches stop at 2 - 3 messages about what they are offering. What can you do to seed your message in different ways? Maybe you do a newsletter announcement, a Facebook live, a tweet or speak about it. Many messages take time to take root. What do you want to do consistently over time? What’s going to leverage your strengths?
 
What are the strategies you want to incorporate?
Keeping in mind what your clients want, and what you want to do consistently, what are the strategies you want to incorporate? Starting next week we’ll explore 9 different promotional vehicles you might want to consider leveraging in your own marketing, messaging and relationship building. I include these nine strategies, along with further examples and questions for you to consider, in Section 3 of the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner.
 
Over the next couple of months, we are going to explore nine different promotional vehicles I explore in the Coaching Business Builder – from speaking and blogging, to lunch and learns and partnering with associations. Stay tuned as we move through these areas in July and August.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416-996-8326
Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on  Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder.
Want to offer this to your clients? Consider joining us for the PlanDoTrack/Coaching Business Builder Facilitator Training which starts virtually on July 9th.