How to Find Paying Clients for Your Coaching Practice
Have you ever wondered how to find paying clients for your coaching practice?
You know that your website could have people racing to buy the products and services you provide, but it’s not and you don’t know why.
Most coaching websites are ineffective. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Your website has the potential to be one of the most powerful marketing tools you can use to connect with people are actively seeking a coach. That’s right… right now there are people searching the internet right now. They’re using very specific keywords like:
- cary nc business coaching
- raleigh business coaching
- leadership coaching uk
- professional life business coaching
- personal mastery and coaching
If you didn’t know what words people are using to find your products and service… then you can’t know what words to target on your coaching website.
That’s why the best investment you can make in marketing your coaching practice is:
- Sign up for an Easy Coaching Website.
With an easy coaching website, you can create search engine friendly content quickly and easily. - Sign up for Wordze
Unlike the free keyword research tools, Wordze gives you more accurate results… and shows you the keywords that are WORTH optimizing your web content around.
An Easy Coaching Website + a Wordze account deliver a 1-2 punch when it comes to potential clients finding your website.
With your Easy Coaching Website, once you’ve found the keywords that people are using to find YOUR coaching practice… you can easily create content on your page around those keywords. The thing is, these keywords change MONTHLY! Most of the free tools are reporting from old figures. But the time the figures hits one of the free tools, it’s old news. Subscribers to Wordze have already beaten you to the punch.
Your coaching website should be the best way to find paying clients for your coaching practice. If your current website isn’t delivering clients… it may be time to upgrade your website to one that works hard at attracting clients to your practice.
Fresh Content is a Key to Your Coaching Website Success
Fresh content is the key to your coaching website’s success.
The problem with “traditional” HTML websites is they are FAR from easy to update. So your faced with contacting your web master and having him or her make the updates for you. Usually it becomes such a hassle that you just don’t update your site as often as you should.
Since fresh content is the key to website success, your website is almost doomed from the start if you can’t update it regularly with fresh content.
If you are able to use a word processing program, then you can make posts to a blog.
Even if you don’t know how to code in HTML or transfer the files to the web, posting to a blog is MUCH easier than updating the content on a traditional HTML web site.
Your website can act as a way to introduce potential clients to what you can do for them. Imagine if you could post an article each week to reach out to potential clients. They could “sample” your services without picking up the phone to call.
This is a wonderful marketing tool…and you may already be posting your articles to article sites. But wouldn’t it be great if those articles appeared on YOUR website as well?
With a blog, they can feature those articles and more.
Fresh content is key… and providing readers of your articles a place to come to get MORE information also makes sense. If you have a traditional website, be sure to include your articles on it. If that’s a hassle… check out Easy Coaching Websites.
Blogging is not marketing magic for promoting your practice
Last week, I was searching for shining examples of coaching blogs….. coaches who were using their blogs to promote their practice by sharing bits and pieces of themselves via their blog posts. I went to the Blog Catalog to being my search. Unfortunately, I could only find TWO examples of coaches using their blogs in this manner and only ONE of those blogs was accepting a trackback link!!!! I was hoping to include many other coaching professionals who also share a piece of themselves via their blog in that post… but sadly, I found a lot of coaches who are blogging for the wrong reasons.
Remember, I am like any other web surfer on the web. I tried three or four other coaching blog sites in the list, but I didn’t by any means have the time or patience to do an exhaustive search. I chose to search Blog Catalog because at least these are coaching professionals who are supposedly serious about promoting their blog.
One blog I found during my search had what appeared to be a mandatory monthly post. The purpose of this month’s post was to promote an affiliate program. Hey, that’s what last month’s post was as well. According to the blog’s header, this was the blog for a coach who helped people, of all things, WRITE THEIR FIRST BOOK! Imagine, a book writing coach’s blog that is nothing but an endless stream of affiliate links.
The next blog I found wasn’t about anything to DO WITH coaching, despite being included on the list. (Blog Catalog users are able to choose what category hosts their entry.)
On to the next on the list. This one was so jam packed with ads that it was hard to read the content. The ads were for everything from weight loss products to web site hosting and many flashed on and off like a strobe light. Hurry! Look away! (My eyes STILL hurt from the experience!)
Your blog is NOT the magical formula for marketing your coaching practice. Your blog is a POWERFUL communication tool with which you can make contact with potential coaching clients. Think a free session is enough? Think again… you need a blog to establish enough trust with a potential client for them to even ASK for a free session!!!
Do I need two web sites or one?
One of the reasons coaching as a profession appeals to SO many bright and talented people is that they see coaching as a way for them to break out of the “box” imposed upon them by Corporate America.
For example, Nancy is an aspiring coach. She works for a Fortune 1000 company and while at work she is defined as “Nancy in accounting”. Nancy’s degree and aptitude in accounting are indeed what got her the job, but from Nancy’s point of view she’s a whole lot more than just accounting. In addition to having a knack with numbers, Nancy is also an exceptional organizer and she’s done a lot of work on “clearing clutter”, both the emotional AND physical variety.
It’s natural, as Nancy steps out to launch her business and begin working for herself for her to want to COMBINE her skills in accounting with her organizational skills. As any self employed person will tell you, it’s virtually impossible to divorce who you are from the services you provide. The web developer whose hobby is dog breeding will find her love of dogs permeates all she does in web development. Meanwhile, Nancy is all about “accounting_clearing_emotional_and_physical_clutter”.
So, Nancy launches her new business which offers the following services:
- Accounting and bookkeeping services
- Coaching services focused upon helping her clients deal with emotional and physical clutter.
Like every other bootstrapping entrepreneur, Nancy would rather launch one web site which focuses both on her accounting services (which she offers as a supplemental stream of income) as well as well her coaching services. It’s the web equivalent of killing two birds with one stone… right?
Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding “NO!”
Nancy needs TWO web sites, one for each of her two business ventures and the reason is NOT to frivolously pad some web developer’s bank account.
Nancy needs to think of her two businesses as two separate boats tied to a pier on the lake. If your businesses are small enough for your to consider using a single web site to promote all of them, then this word picture is for you. The water is deep and the boats you offer are small. Your prospective customer’s first thought will be, “Can that tiny little boat REALLY get me to the other shore?”
When you try to promote two micro businesses with a single web site, you are asking your potential client to put a foot into one tiny boat and the other foot into the other tiny boat. While a few brave X-treme sport style souls may bravely do so, most of your web site’s visitors will be frightened off by the prospect of either choosing which boat to use OR trying to balance between the two boats.
Of course a case can be made that the same analytical thought processes that make Nancy SUCH a great accountant are the same thought processes that make her a great organizational clutter busting coach. However, if Nancy tries to promote BOTH her businesses via the same web site, she’ll be spending a LOT of time trying to explain why these two businesses are a great fit rather than spending that time and energy explaining why someone should hire her as their accountant and/or their coach.
Instead of giving too many choices on one web site…. Nancy should launch two web sites. She can rest secure in the knowledge that her clutter busting clients, once they’ve experienced her methodical thinking will want to move from the coaching boat to the accounting boat and put their finances into her capable hands. On the other hand, Nancy’s accounting clients may make a comment about not being able to find a vital receipt… which Nancy can treat as an invitation to introduce another service she offers: Clutter Busting Coaching.
Offering too many choices is overwhelming. Tightly target your message to your tightly targeted audience… which means two web sites instead of one.
Take a look around and you’ll see that most professionals who make a good living on the internet have 5, 10 or even 20 web sites… each one tightly targeted to a specific product and a specific audience. Begin with one… then add the next. It’s the best path to take.
How important is a web site for coaching professionals?
According to Carol Solomon, developing an effective, professional web presence should be your #1 priority.
In her post, Attracting Your Perfect Clients Online she writes:
Your potential clients are looking to find someone with your skills online. They EXPECT to find you online. They expect you to answer certain questions on your website, such as “Can you help me?” before they contact you. It’s a bit of a screening process. They can search for and evaluate several practitioners in minutes. It’s easier, more efficient and less risky for your potential client to search the web than to call you right away. If they resonate with what’s on your website, and they are ready to take an action step, then they contact you.
Your website is the front door of your business. It has a big job to do. It needs to reach off the page and speak clearly to the needs of your potential clients. You need to communicate a professional image through your site, and you need to do it quickly. Why? Consumers make decisions in a matter of seconds. If you don’t have a compelling web presence, your potential clients will be gone in 1 click.
However, just having a web site may not be enough.
Kathleen Gage writes:
Making money on the Internet can be like baking a cake. If you don’t have all the right ingredients in the correct order you could have a total flop on your hands. On the other hand, when your systems are in place you can be extremely successful and have a very tasty outcome.
Patsi Krakoff over at writing on the web has added her 2 cents to the subject:
The process of article writing and distribution is a tool for credibility and positioning. So is blog posting. And newsletter publishing. But if you don’t have these 8 critical elements in place, well, you are writing to the wind. And you probably won’t make money.
Yes, a well designed professional web site (or blog) is essential to your coaching business. As a coaching professional, your web site’s goal MUST be to establish trust with potential clients. Trust is established on many different levels and through many different avenues. Two of the most common are:
- The design of the web site…. the colors and images used and how they are presented, will make a HUGE impact on first time visitors. Your business web site is NOT a job to be entrusted to Uncle Harry’s neighbor’s son who plays in a garage band, wears and multicolored mohawk and dabbles in web development using his pirated copy of Dreamweaver.
- The content of the web site is also crucial to building trust. Because you can’t build trust with a single web page or article, many coaching professionals are turning to blogs for their web presence. Shonnie Lavender shares some essential tips on building trust with your business blog.
In the end, like it or not, your coaching web site is literally the FACE of your business. In many cases, it’s the first (and sometimes last) thing your potential clients see. It’s the most important investment you’ll make in your business.
Basics of Targeting your Market
Unfortunately, when it comes to marketing your coaching practice, one size marketing does NOT fit all!
Everything you do in online and offline marketing flows from not only who you are, but who your clients are! From the content you feature on your blog (not to metion the design and usability) to the events and seminars you attend, to every other mode of advertising you use to create your business….. there is nothing more important than understanding who your potential clients are and what’s important to them.
The Basics of understanding your clients begins with basic demogrpahic information.
- Geography: Will your clients come from the local area? Are they grouped regionally, nationally, globally?
- Cultural and Ethnic Considerations: Does ethnicity affect their tastes or buying behaviors? What language(s) do your potential clients speak?
- Economic factors including income and/or purchasing power. The first question everyone wants to ask is "What is the average household income of your clients?" However, a more important consideration is what is the disposable INCOME of your potential clients. All coaches seem to want to target the individual who makes $100,000 a year or more, however a six figure income doesn’t necessarily translate into a lot of disposable income. Financial advisors report it’s often easier to create a budget for a family making $40,000 a year than it is for families who make over $100,000 a year. The reason? The higher income families have a hard time distinguishing between "essentials" and "nice to haves".
- Age and family structure: What is the age range of your potential clients? Are they married? Do they have children? How many children and of what age are in the family?
- Values, attitudes, beliefs. What are the predominant values that your potential or target clients have in common? Are they already familiar with coaching? How about self improvement?
- Learning Styles: How do your potential clients learn new things? Via the newspaper? Via the internet? Paul Harvey on the radio?
Once you have a better understanding of who your clients are, then you can get down to the work at hand: Promoting your Practice!
- Talk to your existing clients. Find out why they hired you in the first place.
- Talk to existing clients about all the services you have to offer. Are they satisfied with the work you are doing for them?
Make sure all is well with your current clients before you begin recruiting new ones. Better to fix any flaws BEFORE you begin your marketing campaign.
Marketing for Coaches
Marketing can be easy…. and maybe even fun if you keep these things in mind.
If you ask most service professionals their most dreaded task, you’ll probably hear marketing. Every coach, consultant or other service professional can attest that marketing ranks second only to public speaking as a dreaded activity.
First, let’s engage in an attitude adjustment about marketing.
If you’re like most, you began offering your services to others because you recognized a gift or talent that you possessed. If you have clients, then you have products or services that solve problems. Accountants and bookkeepers solve accounting problems while consultants and coaches solve a myriad of different problems. The key is, you’re offering solutions to problems business people have. Ideally, these are problems that business people are willing to write checks in order to see resolution.
With this perspective, you can see that marketing is merely the act of getting the word out about the solutions you offer.
Suddenly, your direct mail campaign will take on a different twist. Instead of "selling" you’re "solving". Instead of pushing, you’re offering solutions.
When you view your marketing as merely the act of getting the word out about the solutions you offer to everyday business problems, suddenly the world is your oyster. Those grains of sand irritating other business owners are you golden opportunity to shine. It’s your opportunity to solve a problem, win a client and save the world all in a simple, elegant act of using your skills, talents and abilities.
Now, with your new rose colored marketing glasses, you can see the different avenues available to you to "get the word out". For some independent service professionals, just removing the stigma of "selling" from the equation is enough. For others, recognizing that what they’re really doing is spreading the word about the solutions they offer is all it takes to open the floodgate of ideas.
One client is working on developing a television show for a local cable network with another service professional. When these two professionals realized how well their services "dovetailed", they approached a local television studio with an idea for a show. Because of their unique "offering solutions" mind set, the station jumped on the idea and their show is now ready to begin production.
Another client began offering teleseminars addressing the core problems being faced by clients on a daily basis. By offering these free teleseminars, she offers practical solutions callers can take and implement immediately. Instead of using these teleseminars as "selling" vehicles, she uses them as "problem solving" vehicles. It’s worked like a charm. Participants love her low key approach and her client load is now so heavy, she’s had to hire an assistant 4 days a week just to handle the workload.
Remember, marketing is merely the act of spreading the word about the solutions you offer to potential client problems.
What Is Online Marketing?
The term "online marketing" has been thrown around by information gurus for years. It’s been used as the key reviving sagging sales. It’s been used as the lazy person’s way to instant wealth. For the purposes of this article, and this website, the term online marketing shall be defined as follows with the help of Wordsmyth.net: all of the activities involved in transferring goods from a producer to consumers using the internet.
Despite what you may have read or want to believe, online marketing is really no different than OFFLINE marketing. What you need is a marketing STRATEGY, not marketing TACTICS.
A marketing strategy involves defining your target market and devising ways to reach that market with your message. A marketing tactic is painting your URL on the roof of your truck so office workers can read it from high rises in the city.
The hard facts are, creating and implementing a marketing strategy takes time. It’s a process of daily, weekly and monthly steps taken to reach a goal. On the other hand, marketing tactics are quick and easy to implement. Usually when offered up, marketing tactics are the quick and easy way to market a product or service. In a society where instant gratification takes too long, which do you think people prefer to pursue?
In marketing, whether online or offline, there are no magic formulas. However, those who make a commitment to implementing a marketing strategy will create a solid foundation upon which you may then choose to use various online marketing tactics to reach your goal.
As you embark on creating your marketing strategy, remember that the world is a big place. You can’t speak to everyone, so instead of trying to communicate with everyone about your product or service, try communicating with individuals. When you create your message, speak directly to someone. In other words, don’t think about a group of people, think about an individual as you write or speak about your product or service.
Think of your marketing as a series of interactions. Treat every interaction just like if you were meeting this individual face to face. Chances are you wouldn’t consider accosting strangers on the street and without so much as an introduction, launch into a hastily delivered, high pressure pitch for your product or service. The same is true in your marketing message.
Since the title of this article is “online marketing”, then it’s time to focus on the “online” part of your marketing strategy.
Your online marketing strategy begins with a web site.
There are as many different types of web sites as there are people in the world. Most web sites function as merely a virtual brochure, listing the scope of services and the location of the business. A virtual brochure is a great first step, but there is so much more your web presence can do for your business.
Most coaching professionals NEED their website to function as MORE than a virtual brochure. Most coaching professionals need their web site to be a congregation point.
See, coaching is an example of a major sale. Neil Rackham, the author of Spin Selling defines the major sale as having the following characteristics:
- There is more than one decision maker
- There is significant financial/emotional investment on the part of the buyer
- The purchase warrants significant time and research into alternatives
- There is the potential of a long-term relationship between you and your customer
- The consequences of making a purchasing mistake are high
In the major sale, the stakes are higher for the consumer. As a result, the buyer in the major sale transaction needs LOTS of information before making a commitment to purchase. Lot of information that can and should be delivered via your website.
That’s why a self hosted BLOG is the most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.
A self hosted blog can ROCKET to the top of the search engine listings by including an automatic Google Sitemap generator. That same blog can help you post literally hundreds of articles to the web and to syndicate them using RSS.
All that content, not only does well with the search engines, but also does very well with clients. Frequent blog posts give potential clients a way to "sample" your wares and allows potential clients to get to know you before making contact… a CRITICAL element in the major sale.
Launching a self hosted blog doesn’t HAVE to be intimidating. Acumen Web Services has made it easy for you to launch your own self hosted blog without learning anything about programming!
Why Traditional Marketing Methods won’t work to promote your Coaching Practice:
I’ve spent the better part of the last decade working with coaching professionals. They’ve come to me because they hoped that a web site would be the “magic bullet” in promoting their coaching practice.
In the last few years, it’s become painfully evident that the difference between successful coaches and coaches who are “barely making it” lies not in the level of expertise at coaching, but rather
Neil Rackham’s book Spin Selling covers the difference between Major Sales and Minor Sales in great detail. Whether your business is making Minor or Major Sales will determine how you structure your marketing and advertising strategy.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the techniques which work so well at moving gallons of milk off of a store’s shelves don’t work as well when applied to say, purchasing mutual funds or buying a home, yet Rackham appears to be breaking new ground in the area of applying these principles to sales thanks to the extensive research compiled by the Huthwaite Institute.
While Rackham’s research and reports on the subject are framed to help an outside sales person perform his/her job more effectively, we will use his observations to help your marketing/advertising message work as yet another productive member of your sales force.
To determine which type of sale your business offers, consider the following:
According to Rackham, your business is making Minor Sales if:
- There is a single decision-maker
- The buyer’s financial or emotional investment is low or insignificant
- The purchase does not warrant the time/energy necessary to research alternatives
- There is little interaction between you and the customer
- The consequences of making a purchasing mistake are inconsequential or insignificant.
On the other hand, your business is making Major Sales if:
- There is more than one decision-maker
- The buyer’s financial and/or emotional investment is significant
- The purchase warrants significant time and research into alternatives
- There is the potential for a long-term relationship between you and/or your business and the customer
- The consequences of making a purchasing mistake are high
In general, Minor Sales have a buying cycle that is short and are often driven by “desires.” On the other hand, Major Sales tend to involve more time and research on the part of the consumer. While desires drive Minor Sales, goals usually drive Major Sales. Purchasing shampoo is a Minor Sale. Purchasing real estate is a Major Sale.
However, it’s important to note that Major Sales aren’t always expensive. Price is but one of the qualifying criteria for the type of sale. Choosing a babysitter, while not a major expense, certainly qualifies as a Major Sale in the minds of the concerned parents.
Once you’ve identified the type of sale your business makes, let’s look at how the type of sale affects the structure of your advertising message.
Just as in the Minor Sale, your advertising message for the Major Sale has to make a great impression on potential customers in ten seconds or less. You must be able to anticipate the conversation going on inside your potential customer’s mind so you can join in the conversation and you must stay focused on the needs of the customer. In almost every other way, the advertising message for a Major Sale is very different.
Most of the information you’ll get regarding marketing does not take the characteristics of the Major Sale into consideration. While the Minor Sale customer usually buys at the first store that carries the product, the Major Sale customer puts a lot of time and research into the buying decision. The Major Sale customer may visit dozens of different web sites over a period of weeks, or even months, before making a purchase.
By nature, the buyer in a Major Sale requires a lot of information; therefore, the advertising message for the Major Sale needs to provide as much information as possible. Don’t worry about “information overload.” If someone isn’t interested in your product or service then s/he isn’t going to bother to read or listen to your advertising message anyway. In the Major Sale, too much “information” isn’t going to “scare away” an interested potential customer.
When you’re making a Minor Sale, you’re just trying to get people into your store; however, when you’re involved in a Major Sale, the approach is different.
While every business can benefit from a web site, a web presence is especially useful in helping to provide the information necessary to make the Major Sale. The company web site can easily convey the large amount of information necessary to begin gaining the customer’s trust, which is essential to the Major Sale.
To learn more about creating marketing messages for the Major Sale, pick up a copy of the book, Beyond the Niche.
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.
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