Developing a Logo for your Coaching Business
Your logo is the literal "face" of your business. It will appear on your web site, your business cards, your stationary, even your client invoices! It’s the first place to start when building your web site. Develop your logo THEN develop your web site.
A professional logo helps to establish your credibility as a professional coach. Many coaches find logo development a frustrating process. After all, this is usually the first time they’ve trid to put a face on the essence of their practice. Color choice, font and images all play a part in conveying the eseence of your coaching practice.
Every major corporation has a carefully designed logo. These major corporations will invest HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS in logo development for good reason: a logo is the most visible mark of your business. It should be instantly recognizable and you should plan on featuring it in every single marketing piece produced for your practice.
For instance, a nutritional coach may prefer his company’s image to project health and vitality. His practice’s logo should instantly bring to mind health and vitality. This is done through color, images and even font style.
Logos speak volumes. A logo should reflect your business personality: like boldness, trendy, young, maturity etc.
When creating a logo, make sure that the logo includes your business name LEGIBLY! You’ll have to have deep pockets to create a brand around a logo that doesn’t feature your business name presented in a manner that can be easily read by potential clients. Do you really want your potential clients trying to figure out what the tiny print says within your logo or do you want them clicking away sending an e-mail or picking up the phone to call you?
Finally, be careful about your color choices. While you may be wild about orange and lime green, if you’re wanting to appeal to a corporate clientele, you’ll be better served choosing a more subdued and conservative blue/gray color scheme.
You may choose to work with a graphic designer for the development of your logo. This is the best route to go if you don’t have ANY idea where to start. Expect to pay $250 or more for this service.
Before contacting a professional, click here to take a stab at creating your own custom logo in just minutes online. You can choose from over 20,000 unique symbols, with tons of fonts, color and layout options as well. You can create a professional-looking logo immediately for a fraction of the cost. The best part of this process is you don’t have to pay until you’re happy with the result. This process allows you to experiment with different looks.
Even if you are going to hire a graphic artist, take a look at this program. It will help you immensely in communicating with your graphic designer.
Winning Email Ways
It may sound obvious, e-mail is by nature, a form of written expression. Like it or not, you will be judged by your ability to use upper and lower case letters, spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Dotting your i’s, crossing your t’s and making sure your grammar is up to par is only the beginning of developing winning email ways.
As a rule, you should always send e-mail via text rather than html. You’d be surprised how many people do not have html-enabled mail readers. If you use a web based e-mail program (such as Yahoo) make sure that your e-mails are sent in plain text. Each e-mail software program includes a way to send e-mail via plain text. Sending emails in plain text means you can’t alter the font, background or include images in the email, but it ensures that your message does get through. If you want to share a photo, include it as an attachment.
Keep your messages short and to the point. If your message is longer than 2-3 paragraphs, it should either be broken down into multiple e-mails or addressed via the phone or in person.
The subject line of your email should reflect the topic. If you change topics when you reply, then change the subject line. Address multiple points in multiple e-mails.
Line length is controlled by your email software. Keep your line length short. Long lines are difficult to follow. Be sure to include white space between paragraphs. When you reply, trim the included text to the minimum needed to set the context for your reply.
Who among us hasn’t wished for an "unsend" button for email. As a rule, let emotion packed e-mails "cool" for 24 hours. Until the day comes when you computer keyboard has an "undo" key for email, store your message in the drafts folder and look at it 24 hours after composition. THEN decide whether to hit "send".
Maintain a "free" e-mail account via Hotmail or Yahoo. Use this e-mail for e-zines, sweepstakes registrations and other "non secure" areas where an e-mail address is required. Use your "real" e-mail address for family and friends.
Never use cc: to forward a message to several people. It’s possible for e-mail addresses so listed to fall into the hands of an unscrupulous spammer. BCC means BLIND carbon copy. It means the entire list of e-mail addresses is hidden from each recipient’s view.
Another never is never send an e-mail to more than 10 people at once. Most ISP’s view an e-mail to more than 10 addresses as spam. If you want to make sure everyone got your e-mail, put your hotmail or yahoo account as the final address.
Finally, manage your e-mail and don’t let it manage you. Set up an autoresponder so the sender knows their message is received. Set aside a specific time each day to access e-mail and respond. Respond promptly to each e-mail, even if it’s to say "I need to research this".
Using images on your website
A picture truly can take the place of a thousand words. No where is this more true than on your website.
The images you use on your web site will determine the impression your web site makes on visitors. Great images, ones that are professionally shot will make the best impression. But how do you go about finding such images?
One way to find images is by using Google’s image search. Go to google.com and click on the images hyperlink. Using this option will return images whose name matches your search criteria. Use this as an idea starter only though. If you happen to find the perfect image using this method, you must know that that the image is not just there for the taking. Yes, you can just right click on the image and save it to your hard drive. However, if you place it on your website (especially your COMMERCIAL web site) without the image author’s permission, you are stealing. In order to legally have images appear on your web site, you must first LICENSE the images.
See, when the photographer took that picture of the incredible sunset, he or she was instantly granted a copyright in many countries for that image. The creation of that image made it his/her intellectual property. While you may think your use of this image is harmless, you are in fact VIOLATING the author’s copyright.
We all know stealing is a crime but stealing intellectual property is actually WORSE than stealing. While you may think the worst thing that could happen to you if you "steal" an image is that you might be forced to pay a small fine.. nothing could be further from the truth.
Image licensing fees can range from $30 to $3000 and up, depending upon the image and the intended USE of the image. While those fees can seem steep, they’re nothing when compared to the fines you could face should you be "caught" borrowing images without permission. Copyright laws provide for statutory penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement. (Use that image on your business card as well as your website, there are, not one but TWO infringements.) When you infringe upon a legal copyright, the owner of that image can come after you for $150,000.
OUCH!!!
In case you think you won’t be caught…. think again.
Remember the google image search function? That sword cuts both ways. Create your site and get it indexed with Google and you’re inviting prying eyes to see what you’ve been up to. With $150,000 bounty on each count, there is plenty of incentive to pursue copyright violators to the fullest extent of the law.
So, it’s best to pay up front for your image rights. (Oh, and keep the receipt because the burden of proof is upon YOU to prove you DIDN’T steal the image.)
Where to go to get images?
Comstock is the choice of many professional graphic artists. You’ll want "royalty free" images which means once you buy the rights, the image is yours to use in whatever manner you wish. (Rights managed images mean you negotiate for the period of time you’ll use the images and in what manner.) Another site offering quality images is Getty Images.
However, be warned that images from these two sources can be very, very pricey. Rates start at $70 per image and go up from there. Getty images offers a subscription plan which start at $399 for one month.
There are alternatives. Shutterstock. Shutterstock offers a monthly subscription rate for their images, but their rate is only $199 per month. Using Shutterstock, you can download up to 25 images per day and it’s an inexpensive source for quality images to use on your website.
Another low cost source for images is Istockphoto. Image costs begin at $1 and you can purchase them individually.
When it comes to images, better safe than sorry. Inexpensive services like Shutterstock are helping to remove the temptation to "borrow" images. Remember, Shutterstock keeps track of the images you have downloaded during your membership.
Helpful Shutter Stock tip: Experienced users recommend you first create and account and build up "lightboxes" in advance so once you activate your membership, then you can quickly access and download the images you need.
Web Site Hosting Basics
To help you get a handle on what "hosting" is, think of hosting as providing a place for the website to live while the domain name serves as an easy to remember "address" for the web site’s home.
Like conventional housing, there are many different levels of size and comfort.
- Dedicated Hosting is for very large sites. Think of dedicated hosting like living in a single family home. One website occupies one server.
- Virtual Server Hosting is similar to condominium or apartment living. Your website will share a server with many other websites. The cost of the server is spread out over many sites, therefore this option is popular with small and medium sized businesses.
A primary concern in this arrangement is bandwidth. Think of bandwidth as traffic in and out of your store. The more people who come, and the more they shop and buy, the more bandwidth they consume.
Your choice of hosting provider can mean the difference between web site success and web site failure.
A good hosting provider makes it all look effortless, however just like the duck gliding effortlessly across the pond, there’s a lot activity going on beneath the surface. Don’t be fooled by how easy a good web hosting provider makes it look. Providing exceptional web hosting is a 24/7 proposition.
Look for the following when choosing your web site host:
1. Plenty of disk space… this is the physical room you have to build your web site. You just can’t beat the 2000 MB that comes standard in the offer listed here.
2. Plenty of bandwidth… this is the amount of information you can push and pull through the internet "pipe". Again, the higher the number the better. The 60 GB offered here just can’t be beat!
3. Web Based E-mail… when you’re on the road or if your home computer crashes, you’ll still have access to your critical e-mail through web based e-mail. Just like yahoo or hotmail, web based e-mail allows you to access your e-mail through your web browser.
4. A way to contact them by phone. There’s nothing worse than trying to get timely answers to pressing questions via e-mail. The best case scenario is you’ll never need to call, but make sure you can…. just in case.
5. Finally, you’ll want to be able to find out who’s coming and who’s visiting your web site. Be sure your hosting provider offers web stats as well.
There are literally THOUSANDS of web hosting companies out there competing for your business. Unfortunately, web hosting is a business with a relatively low barrier to entry.
More than a few of these are planning on "getting rich quick". These "here today, gone tomorrow" companies are drawn by what they perceive as lucrative profit margins…. until they actually dig in and realize that providing business quality hosting is a 24/7 job.
So in order to find a great host, you’ll begin by asking people for their recommendations… people who have active growing web sites are best. And remember, the best host for an HTML web site may not be the same as the best host for a Php-Nuke or Word Press based web site.
Currently, I’m having a GREAT hosting experience with Host Gator and Hostican for word press blog sites. I was very happy with P4 hosting with plain old HTML style sites but when my clients began launching word press blogs… well, P4 wasn’t up to the challenge.
These recommendations are current as of 07-2007.
The biggest problem with hosting is it is a SERVICE based business. While I’m happy with these providers today, I am ALWAYS scouting new providers for the future. Why? Because 10 years ago, I was THRILLED with communitech… and then Interland bought them out. Overnight, my clients and I were plunged into the depths of hell as Interland dismantled Communitech’s business and assimilated it. One post to the Communitech forum wondered if Interland actually loaded up the servers onto the back of a rickety old pick up and drove them from Kansas to Atlanta, Ga! Yeah, the transition was THAT bad.
Choosing a Domain Name
Just like a sign for a brick and mortar based business, your domain name is an essential part of your online presence.
Your domain name is the part after the www. and the includes the .com, .net, .org or the .biz at the end.
A good domain name:
- Describes your business
- Is easy to remember
- Is easy to spell
It’s actually better to have a longer domain name that is memorable than a short, cryptic one that’s easily forgotten.
Remember that real words are easier to remember than cryptic combinations of letters. aNameThatIsKindOfLong.com is better than abw3g2.com. Of course, one that begins with the first five letters of the alphabet or a numeral is more likely to appear top billing of alphabetical directories.
Try to avoid hyphens if at all possible when choosing your main domain name. Of course, if you find your ideal domain name without a hyphen, it’ s a good investment to pick up the hyphenated version as well.
If you’re having trouble finding a great name, try adding a simple letter "a" to the beginning such as "Agreatdomainname.com".
Another option is to add your location to your domain name choice. Here’s the link to a word wizard tool that does just that for you.
Still having trouble coming up with a great domain name? Try doing the twist. The Domain Twist takes two essential word elements of your ideal domain name and combines them into dozens of combinations.
Finally, it’s essential that once you have your domain name, that you use it for e-mail as well as for finding your web presence. Nothing looks less professional than yourname@yourisp.com. Even if you don’t have your web site up yet, you can use an e-mail forward so mail sent to your spiffy new domain name can be delivered directly to your isp email box.
One final note: If you find the domain name of your dreams, be sure to snatch up all the extensions you can afford. There’s nothing worse than having a competitor snatch up the .biz or .net version of your domain name. It’s a small investment for the security it offers your business.
Use the tool below to register your ideal domain name!
Time Management and Online Appointment Scheduling
There are a lot of perks to being a solo entrepreneur. Acting as your own receptionist isn’t one of them.
That’s why most coaching professionals need online appointment scheduling. Since you’re viewing this web site, you already have all the necessary equipment to accept appointments online — a computer with Internet access. The rest is provided by Online Appointment Scheduling, a web-based appointment scheduling solution that fits your business and your budget.
Online Appointment Scheduling makes it convenient and easy for you to accept appointments over the Internet. Start booking appointments online and spend less time juggling your appointment book and more time working with clients.
Offering a free first session is a great way to attract new clients. However, getting potential clients to make the giant leap of scheduling their complimentary session can sometimes be difficult. Even the late Master Coach Thomas Leonard recommends offering the ability to schedule appointments online instantly. Read his article here.
Our Online Scheduling makes it easy for potential clients to book their free consultation and easy for you to maintain your online scheduling.
Any time of the day or night, you and your clients (and potential clients) can log on and to check your availability. Web visitors can quickly and easily book their free session. You’ll be surprised to see not only how many more bookings you get, but how many come in at odd hours. Current clients can book their appointments online too, freeing you up to do what you do best.
Use this link for a free 30 day trial with an easy to use RELIABLE online appointment scheduling tool
Being Found on the Web
Being “found” on the web…
If you are like most coaching professionals you already have a site on the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, if your site is like most coaching web sites, the very people who are looking for exactly what you have to offer are not finding it.
Now THAT is a serious problem.
See, most web surfers are not searching for your business by name. Chances are unless you are Nike or Microsoft; your best customers/clients do not know your business exists. Therefore, instead of searching for your business by name, your best potential customers/clients will instead be searching for the solution your product or business provides to solve their problems.
Therefore, the first step in being found on the web is to figure out WHY web visitors would want to buy goods or services from you. If you do not already have a good idea of WHY web visitors would want to buy from you, then take time to figure it out before going further. This information is essential for creating a web site that works hard for your business.
Once you have figured out WHY visitors are looking for your business and what SOLUTIONS you can provide, then you need to find out what terms these potential customers/clients are using to find those solutions. It is at this stage that most people get horribly off track. Instead of searching for the terms used in the search engine queries, many people do their own search instead. This common mistake is the beginning of the end of web site success for most business web site.
For example, if you perform a search query for the keywords “organizational development” you will get 4,360,000 different results returned. If you have never heard of Organizational Development or OD, you are not alone. Organizational Development is a broad term used to describe a field of work and study devoted to creating effective and healthy human systems within an organization. Few outside the field use the term, yet those within the field use it so freely and frequently that many are shocked to learn that it’s not part of the everyday business vernacular.
In our theoretical example, if you are an organizational development consultant doing your own research for your web site, you will find your search engine query on Google will tell you that there are 4,360,000 sites on the web devoted to organizational development. Naturally, you become either elated (there are MILLIONS of people searching for the solutions I offer) or deflated (I‘m the proverbial needle in a haystack!). What you do not see is the other side of the coin, which reveals that only 4368 searches were done in the previous month for those exact key words. That is the twist. There are over 4.3 million sites competing for less than 4400 searches. Note: One must also wonder how many of those searches were performed by organizational development consultants during the development of their own web site.
Meanwhile, a service offered by most organizational development consultants is the creation of systems that foster a sense of teamwork within a company. Not surprisingly, there were over 30,000 searches done during a 30-day period for the term “team building” according to just one source.
The key to being “found” on the web begins with focusing on the solutions you or your product provide. While this sounds like “Business 101”, it is amazingly easy to lose sight of as you develop your web site for your business. Keeping the solution you offer in focus is the first step in creating a web site that works as hard as you do at creating more business for your business.
Four BIG Myths of Internet Marketing
If you were to do a search about marketing on the internet, you’d see the vast majority of the listings are marketing gurus trying to sell you on the prospect of packaging your own “information product”. These gurus want to sell you a “system” you too can use to market your information products and services, sold and delivered exclusively on the Internet.
If you’re an independent professional whose web presence is primarily aimed at selling his or her own personal services, you may wonder if these tools will help you and your business. Perhaps you’re wondering if your services, you know, those services you deliver by interacting directly with your clients, could benefit from their advice?
The problem is that marketing your own professional services is simply not the same as marketing an “information product” (which is what most internet marketing sites are offering). An information product is an example of a minor sale.
According to Neil Rackham in his book “Spin Selling”, you are making minor sales if
* There is a single decision maker
* The financial/emotional investment on part of buyer is insignificant
* The purchase does not warrant time and research into alternatives
* There is not a lot of interaction between you and the customer
* The consequences of making a purchasing mistake are inconsequential.
In general, minor sales have a buying curve that is short. However, if you’re an independent service professional, chances are you are NOT making minor sales. You are making major sales, which tend to involve more time and research on the part of the buyer or consumer.
Your businesses is making major sales if
* There is more than one decision maker
* There is significant financial/emotional investment on part of buyer
* The purchase warrants significant time and research into alternatives
* There is the potential of a long-term relationship between you and/or your business and the customer
* The consequences of making a purchasing mistake are high
Purchasing shampoo is a minor sale.
Choosing a real estate agent, a life coach or an accountant are all examples of the major sale.
If you try to market your practice (whish is making major sales) by following advice designed for marketing Internet products and services (which are by nature, minor sales), you’re likely to make some serious mistakes.
Myth #1 – All You Need is a Great Web Site
A great web site with compelling and selling content is ESSENTIAL to the information marketer. The information marketer has one shot at making his/her $19.95 sale of an ebook or other low cost/low risk minor sale type transaction.
However, for the independent professional, the one who is making a major sale and whose aim is to develop a long term relationship with his/her client base, the place to stat is with a well-defined benefit of your service. If you don’t have a crystal clear picture of who you are speaking to and exactly what it is that you’re actually selling, (hint: chances are it’s not what you think it is) then no web site in the world will do anything towards getting you more clients.
Before you even think about building a web site, you must know who your target market is and most importantly WHY they are buying your product or service.
In the end, the content of your site is much more important than the graphic design. It’s of utmost importance that your web site professional in appearance but brilliant design and dazzling action won’t do nearly as much for your bottom line as a clear picture of why your potential client is at your website. What answers is he/she seeking?
Myth #2 – Big traffic numbers means a fat wallet.
It’s entirely possible that the only result increased traffic to your web site will guarantee you is a bandwidth use charge by your web host.
I once had a client who asked me to install a blog on his web site. I installed the software and left the administration information on the opening page. My client assured me he would go in and follow the tutorials I set up for him promptly. (The first tutorial was how to remove the sensitive information on the site and how to change the passwords.) You guessed it, my client left that information up on his web server for almost 6 months before the alt.sex.teen list members found it and began utilizing his blog. The 6000 visitors he got each day certainly increased his traffic and illustrated how traffic is meaningless without a well defined marketing plan.
Many pay per click and other traffic building campaigns offer web traffic that is about as useful as the sex.alt.teen posters were for my coaching client.
Before you begin engaging in any traffic building activities, ask your current clients to critique your site. Would they purchase your services based on your website? Is the website an accurate reflection of your business? Revise your site based on their feedback.
Prior to hiring me, one client of mine saw an alarming trend when she sent potential customers to her web site. Without exception, when potential clients visited her site, they never returned her phone calls. Alarmed, she contacted me and we created a new site even though the old one was less than 6 months old. We revised the color scheme from orange/purple to navy/gray and went from a funky, casual feel to a very button down corporate feel. The content remained the same, but the image was much more professional. This client signed 8 of the next 12 people who visited the redesigned site.
If you send one person to your web site and never hear from them again, you may have a problem. If you send ten people to your website and never hear from any of them, it’s time to call in a professional!
While we’re on the subject of quality vs. quantity, it’s worthwhile to mention that same principle applies your email list as well as to your traffic figures. While there’s no question that a tightly targeted opt-in mailing list is a valuable marketing asset, but there is one quality both email lists and direct mail list share with traffic to your web site: quality is infinitely more valuable than quantity. Names acquired via promotional gimmicks or from outside sources seldom turn into paying clients.
A well developed list, whether it’s email or snail mail, is worth it’s weight in gold and then some. Lists purchased, rented or borrowed rarely return the initial investment. Contacts acquired by offering some vague “secret report” are practically worthless. Many information marketing gurus promote the “high dollar value” giveaway to encourage as many sign ups as possible. Clients who have built lists via this tactic are usually alarmed to discover the percentage of subscribers who actually open these email messages hover around 5-10%.
Myth #3– Hard selling copy is the secret to sales.
Hard selling copy may be effective in selling certain minor sale items, but it‘s use in selling a major sale purchase will do more harm than good. The key to connecting with people who are in the market looking to hire you individually as a consultant, coach, trainer, designer, or financial advisor is not by offering "three valuable extras, valued at $329 each!”
The major sale requires that you build trust with your potential client. Every bit of marketing you do, whether it’s via your web site, your mailing list or even your advertising, should portray the same professionalism as the work you do with your clients. The copy on your web site, in your direct mail or your email should feature the benefits of working with you and be loaded with testimonials from clients who have experienced your services.
Myth #4 Your web site’s only job is to make sales.
It’s a fact! A recent study shows that only 37% of shoppers actually make their purchases via the web. That means 63% of shoppers will visit a web site to gather the information they need to make a buying decision. Then, they’ll buy the old fashioned way: via the brick and mortar store or by picking up the phone and calling.
Your web site can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal, but its job is to deliver your message in a professional manner to the right people. Better that you reach 17 potential prospects than 170 who have no potential of becoming your client.
Focus your attention on what your potential clients are buying and your web content will practically write itself.
Remember, in the major sale, you can’t provide TOO MUCH information to interested potential clients which is why a blog is a great resource for coaching professionals!
